Ibanez Artcore series guitars

does anyone know if these are still as surprisingly good as they were back in 2006? (i'm looking at you, jjj.)

also, while i'm tentatively on the hunt - i figure what i'm looking for is something that will cover my gottschingy/balearic and jazzy leanings as well as my more noisy/droney leanings, i don't particularly know what i'm doing (and perhaps the hollow body could cause problems as the volume and desire for controlled feedback increases?) so does anyone have any other thoughts and suggestions in a similar price range?

I got an AG86 last month. It plays pretty good. It sounds ok. It *looks* fantastic. If I was more serious about getting a good tone I think I'd swap out the pickups. I don't think I'd use it for noisy stuff though, the feedback can be piercing and uncontrollable.

I never thought much of these. I'm surprised/intrigued by the love here.

love my AG86 to death, and miss it dearly as it gathers dust in a texas closet.

i still stock about 8-10 of them at the shop. hard to beat at that price point imo.

When I was last looking for an inexpensive semi-hollow (to do extended/prepared stuff with as well as resonant clean fingerpicking and to run through electronics) 7 years ago or so, I ended up choosing a Hamer Echotone (which is something like a dead ES-335?). I'm really fussy about minimizing uncontrolled feedback + I didn't find the Artcore's tone very satisfying. The couple people that I've spoken to about the Artcore since then felt the same way. It has been a long time, though, so I'm interested in what you like about it, jjj. (My electric guitar life is complete now that I have a real ES-335 that I'll be paying off for three more years.)

It was secondhand and admittedly, I was really looking for a secondary instrument I could scrape strings with etc at that point. Still wasn't that happy with the Artcores though.

My other cheaper semi-hollow is a second-hand Hondo 945 Deluxe. I know Hondo doesn't really have a great rep but I was always pretty happy with that one!

I'm enjoying my AS-73 very much, it sounds quite implausibly nice for a £200 purchase. The volume and tone knobs are perhaps a bit insensitive (there seems to be a bit of a leap between levels of volume and tone at points) but besides that I could ask for nothing more.

picked up an as-93 a couple of weeks ago - really enjoying how it plays and sounds. lovely flamed maple top, back and sides, too.

sadly i'm still a shitty guitar player