Finding the best jazz electric guitar or archtop guitar isn’t that easy. Great jazz guitars need to have crisp, clean sound with extreme playability, so you can handle all of those ridiculous jazz chords. That’s why archtop jazz guitars are a favorite among jazz guitarists. These guitars have a clean sound that helps carry each note clearly with a fretboard and neck shape that allows you to wrap your around each chord.
Two things to think about when looking for a jazz archtop guitar is the pickup configuration and the bridge setup. Many archtops have different pickups and electronics that give you a slightly different tone. Also, some archtops have a floating bridge while others have a fixed bridge.
We review all the different top jazz guitars, so you can find one that fits your playing style, sound, and look. Let’s check out some guitars!
Compare the Top 10 Jazz Electric Guitars in 2021
Contents
- 1 Compare the Top 10 Jazz Electric Guitars in 2021
- 2 What We Recommend and Why
Here is a list of the best electric guitars for jazz that are super easy to play and have great tone.
- Gretsch G100CE Synchromatic Archtop Hollowbody
- Godin 5th Avenue CW Kingpin II Jazz Guitar
- The Loar LH-302T-CVS
- Ibanez Artcore Expressionist AM93QM Jazz Archtop
- Epiphone DOT ES Jazz Hollowbody
- Ibanez Artcore AF55
- Hagstrom Tremar Viking Deluxe
- Fender Jazzmaster Special
- Godin LGXT Jazz Electric Guitar
Gretsch G100CE Synchromatic Archtop Hollowbody
Specs, features, and benefits
The Gretsch G100CE is made as a reminiscence of the early Gretsch Synchromatic guitars from the 1940s. The body of the G100CE is constructed with a laminated spruce top, and laminated maple on the back and the sides. It has a three-piece maple neck and rosewood fingerboard.
The bridge on the guitar is made out of rosewood, and it is height-adjustable, and the tailpiece is a vintage-looking one, made out of chrome. It has one Gretsch single-coil pick-up, located close to the neck, and two control knobs, one for the Volume, and one for the Tone.
The guitar is finished with a beautiful Matte Urethane finish.
Pros and Highlights
- Affordable – The Gretsch G100CE guitars are now manufactured in Korea. This is why they are cheaper than most of the jazz guitars, yet they are high-quality.
- Great sound – The Gretsch G100CE sounds great, the parallel tone bracing, the hardware, the wood, and the pick-up work great together!
- Extremely playable – The neck of the guitar is a C-shaped one, and on the fingerboard, you have twenty extra broad frets. Also, the body has a cutaway that is allowing you to play the notes in the higher range easily.
Cons and Potential Flaws
- Only one pick-up – This might a drawback for some, but think again before running away. The single coil on this guitar is doing its job perfectly.
Bottom line
If you are a newbie in the jazz world, and you are on a budget, you can’t go wrong with the Gretsch G100CE. It is a beautiful sounding guitar, with a beautiful tone and looks. It might be a drawback for some of you that the guitar has only one pick-up, but when you think about backing off due to that, ask yourself – do I need more? Gretsch G100CE is a great instrument.
Godin 5th Avenue CW Kingpin II
Specs, features, and benefits
The Godin 5th Avenue CW Kingpin II is an archtop, hollow body jazz guitar, with a single cutaway, that will suit many, many players. The body of the guitar is made out of Canadian Wild Cherry, while the neck is made of a silver-leaf maple with rosewood fingerboard featuring twenty-one frets.
The bridge on the guitar is an adjustable Graphtech TUSQ with a chrome tailpiece, and the tuners on the guitar are sealed chrome ones. The magnets on the guitar are where this guitar becomes a modern one. It has two Kingpin P-90 single-coil pick-ups, that sound great clean, but also can handle distortion very well. It has a three-way selector switch, and Volume and Tone control knobs. Versatile, great sounding, mid-range jazz guitar.
Pros and Highlights
- Affordable – It is an affordable guitar compared with other jazz guitars of this quality!
- Beautiful sound! – The guitar sounds beautiful!
- Versatile – You can get great jazz tones out of it, but also you can get a great country, rock, surf, and blues tones due to the P-90 magnets. It also sounds great both plugged and unplugged.
Cons and Potential Flaws
- No cons! – The Godin 5th Avenue CW Kingpin II is a great guitar. No flaws or cons on this one, folks.
Bottom line
If you are looking for a mid-range jazz guitar, that plays and sounds great, you should try the Godin 5th Avenue CW. It is a reliable and versatile archtop guitar that sounds great with many genres and styles of playing. The Tusq bridge, the tuners, the neck, and the wild cherry body are producing very pleasing sounds. Great guitar for a great price.
The Loar LH-302T-CVS
Specs, features, and benefits
The Loar LH-302T-CVS is a thin line, hollow body archtop guitar that comes for a really affordable price. The body is made out of laminated-maple, while the C-shaped thin neck is made of mahogany with rosewood fretboard on top. It has nineteen medium frets.
The bridge on the guitar is a Tune-o-Matic one, with trapeze tailpiece, and the tuning machines are Kluson. The Loar LH-302-CVS has two single-coil Dogear P-90 pick-ups, and they both have separate Volume and Tone control knobs. There is also the three-way selector switch.
You can opt for either a Cherry Burst or a Vintage Sunburst finish.
Pros and Highlights
- Lightweight – Those guitarists with back-problems will appreciate this!
- Versatile – This guitar sounds great with many different styles of playing;
- Looks nice – The design of this guitar is taken from the sixties archtop guitars, the cutaway is a “Florentine”-inspired and the cherry burst/vintage sunburst finish looks amazing.
Cons and Potential Flaws
You might need to polish the frets – This is pretty common for a guitar that is made in China. But it is fixable. You can do that on your own, or if you don’t have that much of an experience with a guitar, just take it to your local luthier, he will do the job for you cheaply.
Bottom line
The Loar LH-302T-CVS is a great guitar. It sounds nice with jazz. It also makes a great blues guitar and even a rock’n’roll guitar.
It looks very nice, it plays even nicer, and it sounds good. The P-90’s by Loar are great pick-ups. The only flaw is that you might want to polish the frets, but as I mentioned before, this is an easy-fix problem. Great value for the money-guitar.
Ibanez Artcore Expressionist AM93QM
Specs, features, and benefits
The Ibanez AM93QM is a semi-hollow, archtop electric guitar, with a body made of quilted maple and a glued-on three-piece neck made out of Mahogany with an ebony fretboard on top. It has twenty-two medium frets.
The bridge on the AM93 is a fixed Tune-o-Matic bridge with stopbar tailpiece, and on the headstock, there are the die-cast tuning machines.
It has two Super 58 Custom humbucker pick-ups made by Ibanez, one at the neck, and the other at the bridge position, and of course, there are the three-way switch, and the Volume and Tone control knobs for each pick-up.
Pros and Highlights
- Versatile – You can play whatever genre you want with this guitar, rock, jazz, blues… It works well with every style and genre.
- Great sound – The Super 58 Custom are great pick-ups. Some of the most-famous guitarists love them and play them both live and in the studio.
- Playability – The AM93QM is very playable. The neck, the body, the pick-ups, and the pickguard – they work great together under your fingers!
Cons and Potential Flaws
- You might need to do a setup right out of the box – Depending on when and how you are buying this guitar, it might need a guitar setup.
Bottom line
The Ibanez AM93QM is a versatile and very playable semi-hollow guitar. It sounds nice due to the design, the wood choice, and the Super 58 pick-ups. It plays very nice due to the great neck design. It’s a very cool looking, and very good sounding guitar for the money.
Epiphone DOT ES
Specs, features, and benefits
The Epiphone DOT ES is a great semi-hollow guitar, with a body made out of laminated-maple for the tops, and a mahogany block in the center, that sounds nice, plays great, and is affordable. The neck of the Epiphone DOT ES is made out of mahogany, and it has a “slim D”-shape design. It has a rosewood fingerboard with twenty-two frets.
The bridge on the guitar is a Tune-o-Matic one with a stopbar tailpiece, and the tuners are Grover. It also has a black Epiphone pickguard. The two pick-ups on the guitar are Alnico Classic Humbucker pick-ups, and they have separate control knobs for Volume and Tone. Of course, there is also the three-way selector switch for the pick-ups.
Yes, you guessed it! – It is an affordable version of the Gibson ES-335 guitar.
Pros and Highlights
- Versatile – This guitar works great with many different genres and styles of playing!
- Great sound – The two Alnico pick-ups, and the wood of the guitar are sounding warm, yet punchy!
- Affordable – Can it get any better than this? Affordable, yet high quality, the Epiphone stands out in the crowd with both is playability, flexibility, and price!
Cons and Potential Flaws
- No cons! – The guitar sounds very good, it is flexible, and it is affordable. You might want to change the pick-ups if you are a hardcore tone-freak, and the guitar would sound even better than it sounds out of the factory. However, the guitar is great out of the factory too!
Bottom line
If you want a Gibson ES-335 for an affordable price – a guitar that sounds great plays awesome and looks beautiful – the Epiphone DOT ES is your axe of choice.
Great value for the money, sounds great, performs great… It could be your guitar for in the studio, and for live playing.
Ibanez Artcore AF55
Specs, features, and benefits
The Ibanez Artcore AF55 is a hollow-body guitar, with its body made out of maple, and a set-in neck made out of mahogany with a rosewood fretboard and twenty-two medium frets.
It has a Tune-o-Matic bridge with floating tailpiece and decent die-cast tuners. The pick-ups on the AF55 are two Ibanez-made ACH-ST humbuckers that sound great with jazz, but also can sound great with distortion and any given genre. You can set your tone with the Tone and Volume control knobs, and the three-way selector switch. Great guitar, for an affordable price.
Pros and Highlights
- Great value for the money!
- Versatile – Due to the humbucking magnets, this guitar can play many different genres!
- Performance – The guitar is very playable. The neck is very smooth and it just inspires playing!
Cons and Potential Flaws
Jazz fellas may not like the pick-ups – Although some players really appreciate the versatility due to the pick-ups, the hardcore jazz guys may want a straight-forward sounding jazz guitar without bells and whistles.
Bottom line
The AF55 by Ibanez is a great sounding guitar. It looks nice, it sounds great, and it won’t break the bank. It is a full hollow body guitar made of maple, which is why the guitar sounds so great. Although Ibanez is most famous for their hard rock/metal guitars, they are surely doing a great job with their jazz guitars also. The AF55 is definitely one of their best models. It is very flexible, very good constructed, great sounding archtop, hollow-body guitar.
Hagstrom Tremar Viking Deluxe
Specs, features, and benefits
The Hagstrom Tremar Viking Deluxe is really one of the most beautiful guitars on the market. Hagstrom is a Swedish guitar company that was founded in 1958 and makes one of the best guitars since then. Some of the world’s biggest music stars have owned this guitar.
The Hagstrom Tremar Viking Deluxe is a semi-hollow body guitar with a full laminated-maple constructed body and a set-in Canadian maple thin neck with a Resonator fingerboard with twenty-two frets. Resinotar is a material that Hagstrom uses for the fingerboard on all of their instruments; it has similar performance as Ebony wood has, with the difference that with the Resinator you won’t have any bad spots on your fingerboard. It is a very strong and stable fingerboard. It has a Tune-o-Matic bridge with Tremolo tailpiece, and GraphTech Black Tusq XL nut and high-quality Hagstrom die-cast tuning machines.
It has two Hagstrom HJ-50 pick-ups, at the neck and the bridge position, which are selected with a three-way toggle switch, and it has separate Tone and Volume control knobs for each pick-up.
Pros and Highlights
- Beautiful sound – The Hagstrom Tremar Viking Deluxe sounds absolutely amazing!
- High-quality build – The guitar is made with an enormous amount of attention;
- Extremely flexible – The guitar will inspire you… It sounds great with many different genres.
Cons and Potential Flaws
- It might need a little adjustment – You might want to adjust the action on the guitar to make it work for your playing. Once you do – it will become hard to put your fingers away from the guitar;
Bottom line
Even if you are not planning to buy one of these, if you see one at the guitar store – try it… You will be amazed by how good this guitar is! The Hagstrom Tremar Viking Deluxe is a great instrument. Sounds great, plays very nice, and it is extremely flexible. High-quality guitar.
Fender Jazzmaster Special
Specs, features, and benefits
The Fender Jazzmaster guitar was first introduced in 1958 and was marketed specifically to jazz guitar players. However, since then many different guitarists coming from all kinds of genres played this iconic guitar. From jazz through surf rock, to indie and grunge, the Jazzmaster absolutely rocks in many different genres and styles of playing.
The Fender Classic Player Jazzmaster has a body made out of Alder, and a C-shaped maple neck with Pau Ferro fingerboard featuring twenty-one medium jumbo frets.
The bridge on this guitar is an Adjust-o-Matic one, with vintage-looking tremolo tailpiece with a button for the tremolo lock system. It has two Special Design Hot Jazzmaster single-coil pick-ups with Tone and Volume control knobs and a three-way selector switch, plus Rhythm/Lead switch selector and their level controls.
Pros and Highlights
- Flexible – Jazz, Surf, Rock’n’Roll, Indie, Grunge… This guitar performs astoundingly in many different music environments;
- Plays awesome – Many guitarists are trying hard to put this guitar away. It is a pleasure to play this guitar!
- Legendary sound – The sound of the Classic Player Jazzmaster is very nice and distinguishable. Excellent sounding instrument!
Cons and Potential Flaws
Try it before you buy it – The Jazzmaster is a very specific guitar, and you may like it, but you also may not like it at all. There are a lot of owners that bought this guitar over the internet, and then they did not like it. So, if you are thinking that this guitar might be a good fit for you, try it out at your local store to see if you are really digging this kind of a guitar.
Bottom line
The Fender Classic Player Jazzmaster Special is a really great guitar. It is of high-quality construction and tone. It is designed specifically for playing jazz, but there are many guitarists that prove that this guitar is a lot more flexible then Fender thought when they first introduced it. However, if you haven’t tried a Jazzmaster before, try it before planning to buy one. There are a lot of players who buy some guitar, and then they are stuck with an instrument that they don’t like. Do your research, and try it at your local store.
Godin LGXT
Specs, features, and benefits
The Godin LGXT is probably the best solid-body jazz guitar. It has a body made out of Canadian silver leaf maple, and neck out of Honduras mahogany. It has a Richlite fingerboard with twenty-two frets. It has a Tune-o-Matic bridge with a tremolo bar and high-quality tuning machines with a locking system that allows great stability. It has two Seymour Duncan humbucker pick-ups, Tone and Volume control knobs, and a five-way selector switch. But that’s not all.
The Godin LGXT has three output jacks, Electric (the standard one), 13-pin output (Which is for use with guitar synths), and Mix/Acoustic output (The guitar has a built-in piezo pick-up and acoustic preamp, which are later enhanced by the three-band EQ on the guitar. You can use it on its own or blend it with the sound from the humbuckers). The guitar also has two mini toggle switches, one that lets you can choose your signal path, and the other is a momentary switch, and you can also use it for several different things paired with the synth you are using.
You can use all three outputs at the same time too!
Pros and Highlights
- Versatile – This is the most versatile guitar on this list, due to the three outputs…
- Great sound – You can play whatever style and genre with this guitar – it will sound amazing!
- Smooth feel, great playability – The body, the neck, the frets on the fingerboard, and on top of that – the finish – they are all adding to one of the most beautiful guitars on the hand;
Cons and Potential Flaws
Pricey – Well kids, if you are planning to have this beauty in your arsenal, you better start saving!
Bottom line
The Godin LGXT is the most versatile guitar on this list, but it is also the priciest one too. What to say better than, it is the jazz guitar of the twenty-first century. It has a lot of flexibility. It can be played in many different genres, it sounds great, it is versatile, and it plays awesome. This is a perfect to play jazz guitar.
What We Recommend and Why
While there are many different guitarists with different guitar preferences, and we strongly suggest to do your research before buying an instrument, we are recommending the one guitar that will probably work with every jazz cat on the earth. We recommend the
Ibanez Artcore Expressionist AM93QM! It is an affordable, nice sounding, and extremely playable guitar. You should definitely try it out!