Here's another one who'd stick with the XK. That said, cameras are a visceral pleasure as much as a practical one, some register in our affections while other leave us stone cold - even if the rest of the world thinks otherwise. I bought a used F2AS to replace the plain prism F I'd sold some years earlier, and the camera did absolutely nothing for me. It was sold a few months later with no regrets whatsoever. Like your earlier camera, my F was a low number model in near perfect condition, and finding another plain top F in similar fettle would cost way more than I'm prepared to pay. We move on.
It can only be their ubiquity that accounts for the disdain, the Canon A-series are perfectly good cameras carrying some great lenses. My A-1, AT-1, AV-1 get regular use. Curiously, the Canon F range hold their value as well as any Japanese professional camera of the era, and better than most. It must be the plastic bodies that modern consumers resent, the slippery technological and construction slope that gave us the modern DSLR.