The jazz box revolution

Just when we thought it was all over for the hollow bodied jazz box style guitar (possibly due to the low acoustic feedback threshold) they are back in abundance. It's every (old) guitar players dream to play jazz on the big box and escape from the pentatonic scale but there is always rock-a-billy if you don't make it. Well that's a little unfair as rock-a-billy style guitar is definitely s credible musical art form. Besides, if we hadn't had Stray Cats we probably wouldn't have the resurgence of the Gretsch brand of fine instruments.
This week I had a play on two rather nice hollow body boxes. One clearly aimed at the rock-a-billy market, the other, well not.

The Epiphone Swingster

First up I took a look at the Epiphone Swingster. This is out of China but we won't hold that against them. The Chinese made instruments these days make the old cliche of - you only get what you pay for - a load of hog wash. Personally, as a proud owner of three Chinese made guitars, I think that other cliche - good for the money - is no longer valid either. Back to the Swingster, geezz who named this??

The Epiphone Joe Pass Emporer 2

This instrument is once again a twist on available parts in that the Swingster is built on the Epi Joe Pass Emperor 2 jazz box. Both have the exact same body and neck. Epiphone decided the pickguard could go, perhaps someone thought it was uncool to have a pickguard? I've watched rock-a-billy picker Carl Perkins play many times and the style requires a lot of 6th string thumb-over, the Swingster woodworkers obviously missed this and have given us the typical base ball bat neck profile, a little wide, too flat and very fat. Having said that, it is a very sturdy instrument and should survive a bar brawl just fine. The pickups are a new design for Epiphone and looking very Gretschalike. They have some pull-knob switching on the tone controls which kicks each pickup into either series (wiring) or parallel. Unlike the usual pull up for single coil tones, i.e. down for fat and up for thin, the Swingster system is up for fat and down for thin. I don't understand the logic of why you would have a switch on an instrument that gives you a thin sound?? Gretsch orange, Gretschalike pickups and a Gretsch licenced Bigsby vibrato featuring a Chet Atkins 'wire' vibrato arm. No, this isn't a jazz box is it??

The Ibanez AF55

The other hollow body I checked out was the new Ibanez AF55. Also from the people that gave us chop suey. This is the cheapest model of the AF range. The first thing you notice about this particular stripped down nudy is the lack of tone sucking glossy laquer. This thing was alive. While not a Gibby L5 feeling neck it certainly was closer to a jazz guitar neck than the Gretschy Swingster. The AF55 was also less a pickguard but on this instrument it didn't look like it was missing. The trapeze tailpiece also enhance the 'tone' of this more traditional style instrument. The one volume, tone and three way switch is fine but the pickups being of the ceramic magnet variety may be a little bighty for some. What the heck, at half the price of the Gretsch (oops!!) the Epiphone Swingster, it's a twenty minute job to throw some top of the line jazz buckers at it. I know which one I'd have.