I'll check and see if they have a trial version. One of the nice things in Sonar is that after you paint in the notes, you can instantly hear if anything is off (timing or pitch) compared to the reference track being transcribed. Then, you already have the MIDI notes which Sonar can display and print as tab.

True, that's why I said your workflow seems pretty nice too :) 

Sanderxpander
True, that's why I said your workflow seems pretty nice too :) 

But it takes me FOREVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
 
Just like any other method I've tried.  :-(   But I think I do like this one better because of the instant feedback on your success ... or lack of it, so you can immediately fix it.

PeteL

Sanderxpander
On an entirely separate note, are you aware of the program Transcribe! by seventhstring software?
Your workflow honestly seems pretty nice but I really like that program, it's cheap and very lightweight and has useful tools available for slowing down, transposing, isolation EQ, spectrum view with note guesses, etc.
Been using it for ages for learning songs and parts for cover work.

Yeah, I looked into it, but I never bought it.  All the "slowdowner" software I've used is somewhat poor audio quality on a 50% slowdown.  The Izotope Radius algorithm that comes with Sonar is much better compared to what I've tried (I don't recall the names of the apps). 
 
All the things you mention I've been accomplishing with Sonar in conjunction Melodyne and AudioSnap, EQ'ing, though Melodyne is tedious as far as fixing it's note guesses and false notes due to harmonics.  Bright fingerstyle guitars are hard to do in Melodyne.  How does Transcribe! work for solo acoustic fingerstyle material?  Or sparsely accompanied fingerstyle?  If it really helps, I'd consider buying it.

You can try out Transcribe! for 30 days. I recommend checking it out.
 
I recently got my reel-to-reel tape deck working to check out and digitize some of my old tapes. I've found lots of music I did that I don't remember at all. I tried and eventually bought Transcribe! to figure out what's going on in some of the better ones.
 
It has trouble analyzing some if the sound quality is especially bad or if the pitch is off. However, you can adjust the pitch of what you're working on, and usually that's all it takes to get good results.
 
On one song the guitar used a picking pattern that I couldn't quite figure out until I slowed it down in Transcribe!, and then I was able to tell exactly what was going on.