If you like old Silvertones, Godin makes an acoustic archtop called a 5th Avenue; another with a P-90 called a Kingpin; and one with a cutaway and two P-90's called Kingpin II.
I had a 5th Ave, and a Kingpin II. Godin's website shows him as a youngster with a ('60's?) Harmony H-162 jazzer, which I think he took his inspiration from for this series.
These are nice acoustically responsive archtops, and cheaper than most Guilds (but not by much when it comes to used Guild archtop hollowbodies), depending.
I liked mine, but am actually happier with my used '06 X-150D (in the avatar). It sounds better plugged in, doesn't hum, and the neck is superb! Looks better too.
Otherwise, I think archtops (even with a couple pickups screwed onto them) have a distinctive dry midrangey sound -acoustically- that I associate with jazz music.
Joe Pass cut his seminal record on Concord, "Virtuoso," on an ES-175 with the F-holes taped off. They somehow lost the electric tracks, so the acoustic sound is all that ever made it onto the finished product (with just a hint of amp bleeding into the acoustic mic). Yet it is still the quintessential jazz tone, even from a taped off laminated 16" production guitar!
I have had some very nice American made archtops, including a Gibson L5, and I am fully satisfied by my bottom-of-the-jazz-line Guild Savoy.
But I'll now let you in on a little secret: recently I bought a used made-in-China Ibanez AF-75 for an around the house "beater," so I could leave my nice Guild in its case when the dogs are scampering around, etc.
Here's the rub: at $220 used, the Ibanez is almost the equal of the Guild in terms of playability and unplugged sound!
Naturally it needs better pickups to get it into the same league "plugged in." And the Guild certainly looks nicer and has more bragging rights (around this site anyways).
Pride of ownership notwithstanding check out some Ibanez archtops (especially check for sharp fret ends and neck straightness - mine seems fine in those depts, but I've seen some not so good ones). You may be surprised!
The ainco humbuckers sound fat and you can also get a thin twang out of it using the bridge pickup. I just love playing it...Also, because it has medium sized frets, the G string does not go sharp when you fret it (like when you play a D chord)...All of the other guitars I tried had jumbo frets which had me getting sharp notes on th G string when playing the cowboy chords.
