The thread on Agile guitars got me thinking about a recent find that I had last year. I had G.A.S. for a nice hollowbody guitar for playing Jazz. I sarted looking around and found the Ibanez Artcore series guitars. I was shocked at how good they sounded for the price range. For about $320 you get get a very nice guitar for Jazz, that also works great for heavier stuff too.

I've played everything from solo Jazz guitar, to Reggae, to classic rock gigs with this guitar and it performs great. Here is a link to the one I bought:
http://www.ibanez.com/guitars/guitar.asp?model=AF86

It actually looks like a very expensive axe. The finish is awesome and it seems to have real flame maple for the top and back. People seem to take notice when I show up with this guitar, even though it's the cheapest guitar that I own. It's a little sensitive to feedback, like most hollowbodies, but man does it have a warm fat tone.

I recently put some flatwound strings on it and it came alive with tone. It sounds like George Benson's guitar with the flatwounds. It's definitely not the quality of a good Jazz guitar but you would have to spend a whole lot more money to find a better one than this. It sounds and plays better than the Epiphone Jazz guitars that I tried.

-- Jim