Which Tom Anderson for Jazz?

[mrichman]

... so after about 15 years of playing Andersons in a myriad of rock bands, I've always wanted to find an Anderson that can do the jazz thing - a warm, thick, fat and juicy sound for clean neck pickup sounds.

I've got an '89 Grand Am, a '96 Hollow Drop Top Classic, a '02 Walnut Hollow Drop Top and a '99 Hollow Cobra, but even after multiple pickup swaps, heavy gauge strings and other experiments with all these guitars, nothing really gave me the sound I was looking for..... until now.

I really thought the Hollow Cobra would do it, with all that Mahogany and Gibson short scale length but even that didn't really work. After a frantic email to Tom to try and arrange multiple pickguard assemblies, I took a chance and bought another Tom Anderson - this time a '02 Hollow T with mahogany back and H1-/SA1/H2+ pickup assembly. It just about gets me there, and will replace my old Tele w/humbucker solid body and maybe even my trusty old ES 345 some nights on those Jazz gigs.

I still wish Tom would consider making a set neck, carved top 2 pickup guitar, but for now the Hollow T with mahogany body really comes close to an authentic solid body or even semi solid body Jazz sounding guitar if anyone out there is looking for those sounds.

[dannopelli]

You know I usually use an ES 165 or PRS Hollow I for Jazz. But I can get some really nice tones form my Hollow T Classic. It is Swamp Ash on Swamp Ash, Maple neck. Obvioulsy I do'nt get the big air sound of the 165 nor the nice full bodied compressed sound of the PRS. But what I do get is a pretty diverse tonal pallette.

The key is to replace the volume and pots and the cap so that yu can roll off more tone in a more linear way. Tom has discussed this in other posts. It really works well for me, when I don't want to lug a third guitar around. Plus it looks more "Jazz" than My HCS or My HDT!