Faust Wurstkotzenhauser

WOW! That's purdy!

Too bad they aren't going to bulldoze him under with the building!

They are all different... Every archtop I have played is different from the last one... some are similar to each other, but no two are exactly alike... I have an Ibanez AF-105... It sounds as good as my H-550... but different... the rosewood board and the floating bridge as well as the wood trapeze piece are the most obvious differences... This is my Guild X-170. It is the thin-body version... kind of a singlecut 335'ish guitar...

I have an H-550 and it works nicely overdriven, but at high volumes it is not very controllable. It would work fantastic for recording though... it has a really nice character...

I love jazz guitars... I own several and they do just what you described quite well, but at higher volumes the feedback can be a bit hard to control. If you want something that sounds good unplugged, I strongly recommend a spruce top. The flame-maple top semi-hollow guitars sound GREAT plugged in, but they don't have the acoustic tone of a spruce-topped guitar. My personal favorites are Epiphones. The AlleyKat is one of the best semi-hollow guitars for the buck... small and easy to handle but packs a lot of tonal punch for the size and money... The Epiphone Joe Pass has a really nice resonant spruce top. Mine is modified with Gibson 57 Classic pickups and it sounds great from acoustic to high-gain... The Dean Palomino packs a really great set of P-90's... 3 pickups with a 5-way switch and the guitar sounds very nice... they can be had cheaply on the used market... Took a moment to locate this pic... but if you are in the market for something to be played mostly plugged in and willing to foot a few extra bucks, you'll find the Hamer Artist Korina is hard to beat for right around the $1K mark...

The Powerhouse Strat is one of the best deals for the money... and that is a SMOKIN price for one... They are great players, better than the vintage reissues because they have medium jumbo frets... and that +12db boost sounds amazing! That's a killer deal for someone looking for a really GREAT player strat!

It's a Euro... and according to Google today's exchange rate is: 1 Euro = 1.3459 U.S. dollars

If you still have one, I may be interested...