Jazz Guitars - a good middle ground?

IMO jazz guitars are definetely a lot more simlar to electric guitars than acoustic. If you're looking for an acoustic sound, a jazz box isn't really what you're looking for.

If you're trying to get an acoustic sound with a feel that's closer to an electric, a lot of folks say go with an Ovation. They have fairly unique aesthetics too, if that's something you're going for.

Jazz boxes are super fun, and I think everyone should have one in their arsenal, just make sure it's the sound you're looking for before you buy one.

are you looking for an accoustic sound, but in a smaller package??
maybe more like an electic

you might check out the Fender Telaccoustic or the Stratacoustic.
"plastic" body with wood top. strat/tele style neck with a "thin line" accoustic body.

just something to look at....
and they also have pickups and electronics.....and should be had for under the $400 mark

http://www.zzounds.com/item--FEN957400

There's also Rondo Music. The Agile Cool Cat has gotten some good reviews:

http://www.rondomusic.net/coolcat.html

http://www.rondomusic.net/coolcatprestvintstoptail.html

For me personally, I love the upper bout toggle and the florentine cutaway, but wish they offered them left-handed (like they used to) AND with the vintage-burst (or whatever they called it)

Wow, just cruising around their site brought me to this:

http://www.rondomusic.net/doublevalkyrie.html

I'll have to check Rondo out more often!

I was actually recomended an agile guitar before I bought my Dillion
the Dillion line is a bit more expensive that the agiles....but they were praised VERY highly for thier price bracket!!

definatly worth checking them out.
only problem is....you can only order them from Rondo
so you might have a hard time finding one to see if that is what you really want

I don't have a Cool Cat, but I have an Agile AS-820 335alike. It's a terrific guitar! (And you can get it with great sounding P-90s!)

mm, thanks for the advice guys!

A friend of mine has an Ovation - very nice, very easy to play, good action, sound, incredibly lightweight. I'm definitely picking one of those suckers up when I want to get an acoustic.

As for the jazz box stuff, I will most DEFINITELY look into those guitars. I was struck the most by the aesthetics of the Ibanez line (I'm young, us young people like things that look purdy/shiny), as I said, not much of a chance to sit down with some and jam.

Also, if you don't mind entertaining another beginner question, what are the differences between some pickups? I know that the wood involved in construction of guitars contributes a certain sound, but how much of a particular sound can be attributed to that, and how much more can be derived from pickups?

The pickups have a pretty strong influence on the sound, particularly when you're playing "clean" (which lets the undistorted sound of the pickup come through clearly) or when you're kind of on the edge of overdrive, where soft playing sounds clean but harder picking gets you into distortion. That's where the pickups' dynamic range and sensitivity really show through. It's much like how different microphones affect the sound of a singer's voice, or an acoustic guitar.

So far as "jazz boxes" go, there are two main types of pickups. P-90s were Gibson's main pickups from sometime in the '40s to 1957, when they introduced humbuckers. (P-90s hung around on some models, and can still be had of course.)

P-90s are single coil pickups, but made differently from Fender's. They have a bigger coil with more turns of wire, and two magnets lying edgewise on the bottom with like poles together against the screws that act as pole pieces, the opposite poles on the outside at the edge of the coil. They're way "hotter" than Fender type single coils, and deeper toned, but let more bright treble through and they make a "quack" sound like Fender pickups, but deeper voiced. They hum like crazy, being very sensitive to alternating magnetic fields in the environment. A lot of '50s rock, blues and jazz was done with these. They've got a wider frequency range than humbuckers.

Humbuckers have one of the P-90 magnets lying horizontal with two sets of iron pole pieces sticking up from either end (making them reverse polarized), with two coils of wire, one around each set of pole pieces, either reverse wound or connected in reverse. That makes them cancel out any voltages induced by external magnetic fields (assuming the coils are identical), thus they "buck" hum. But the magnetic influence of the vibrating string induces voltages in the two coils that add together, producing a very strong output. Because you can't get the two poles very close together and have enough wire wrapped around them, they sense a pretty long section of the string and miss the very high frequencies with wavelengths on that order or shorter, so you don't get a lot of bright harmonics out of a humbucker. They're very strong, and very "warm" or "dark" sounding. That's a lot of the "mellow, woody" sound that many people associate with hollowbodies nowadays.

Few hollow guitars are now being offered with P-90s. Epiphone offers a reissue Casino with them, and Agile makes that semihollow I've got. Otherwise, you're going to get humbuckers, and they're a classic sound as well. Most of the "jazz boxes" made since 1957 have had them.

Thanks a lot for such a detailed and easy-to-understand reply, Ricochet. :)

You're welcome. Hey, you live in Jersey! You might want to check out Rondo, they're in your neck of the woods.
http://rondomusic.net/

Awesome, not only is it 45 minutes away, but I can pretty much get there in my sleep.

I guess that'd be a nice trip to take over winter break. :D

For sure!

I sure am happy with my AS-820.