Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe-Bob
Some are MIK, mine is definitely an MIJ model, though.
 |
That is a really nice guitar! How much was it back then and what year? I wish Ibanez could have made the Artcores for the budget level, Artstar for middle lines, and the Scofield/Benson/Metheny lines on top. As it stands, most Artcores I see are between $400 to $900 dollars and then you have their signature lines all up over $2500 dollars. That's a huge jump there.
I suspect the reason they do this is so as not to go against Gibson in that middle range that is their popular ES-137s and ES-339s which I see so many of in the $2000 dollar market. Two grand is also a perfect price to buy a nice, used Gibson hollowbody which is what I would do if I had that money and sought a pure jazz guitar. I saw a great early-60s Gibson ES-125 sans original pickup for $1300 dollars (like the attached photo) but otherwise really nicely kept up. I don't ever use the higher frets in bebop anyway so that would be a great instrument as long as I found a proper dogear P-90 or similar reissue pickup to bring it back to original tone. So many people replaced P-90s in the old days thinking that humbuckers were always necessarily "better".