D'Aquisto DQ-JZ Jazzline

This is a follow on sreview after 2 years of the purchase and continuous play, recently i have stripped down all of the hardware for cleaning and checking and found out that the tone capacitor seem to be incorrectly installed, the reading i found out the polymer cap originally installed was 473 (0.047) such a reading should be only found in single coil style guitar, once u discovered, simply swap back to a typical humbucker style cap with a reading 203 (0.022) the Jazzline should sound good as it should be.

again, no need to change the pots to CTS or any other hot rod pots as they almost perform in a same way.

Another interesting issue is that i have also experiencing a more "electric" sound feel by swapping the ebony bridge to a ABR-1 type style bridge, sound most alike a gibby sound, you can experienced on your own, but i prefer the original. slightly dull/woody sound

An elegant guitar. Light, 16" body, laminate, 1 pu, ebony tailpiece, thinner than an es-175 with a round cutaway, lovely finish color (although not nitrose, rather polly, essentially a copy of Jim Halls guitar, made in Japan, comfortable to play standing up or sitting down, well balanced, please see other reviews.

Delicate when compared to an es 175, neither better or worse, louder sans amp, woodier, less feedback than a carved top. I love the sound. I have previously used heavy gauge strings on my guitars 13, 14, or 15 this guitar likes it lighter. I am currently using 11's...which for me is unbelievable coming from my previous 15 or 16 fetish when I was in my Pat Martino phase.

I have come to appreciate laminate guitars for playing through amps. I also have an L-5 and the sound is, well you all know, Wes. A great sound, punchy, deep, focussed. This sound is different. Softer. And of course, laminate produces less feedback. However, this is a very resonate guitar

This guitar feels like a good wine glass, it allows a more introverted sound.

My only beef is with the tone control. It has a very narrow, fast band. I intend to get a better pot in there

In many ways excellent...finish is flawless, fit is dead on, it did require a set up as several frets buzzed. It feels less solid than my old es 175...then again, that guitar is over 30 years old and it is set. However, that said I LOVE the neck, the size, the feel, everything about it.

I think that the Sadowsky model is set up better...it strikes me that the Sadowsky guitar is this guitar with a better set of pots, maybe the pu is better, and a great set up from him or his employee. But hey, with a street price around 1800 that's less than half of Rogers, so its quite a bargain.

Don't know. Only had it a little while. Seems well built.

Don't know

I really enjoy this guitar. It feels poetic to me if that is possible. I love the feel, the size, the neck, the sound. It has inspired me to completely rethink my guitar approach. Lighter strings, lighter picking style

Made in japan 16" wide thin body, flame bookmatch maple top, side & back, with 5 plys laminated maple on top observed, extremely thin top allows the top (and PU) have a free movement

here i must day the original D'Aquisto jazz line model (Jim hall's guitar) had a thicker body, i never made the measurment, but at least as thick as es175

typical "C" cut body very vintage look 6 pieces of Gotoh 510 tuners fitted with wooden knobs for very accurate tuning wooden vol & tone control knobs and a thick wooden "mini" triangular pickguard, ebony tailpiece 1 original humbucker 1 piece maple neck with ebony fingerbaord with block inlays mine is a non-bird eye maple neck.

neck is thin and not wide very comfortable to play chords and running licks

bridge is famous "accu-tone" 1 piece ebony bridge, no sharp edge so that you can laid down your plam on top with ease and comfort.

come along with basic tuning tools, D'Aquisto cleaning cloth, hard shell case with golden hardwares, a hand written testing certificate with inspector's signature 1, limited lifetime warranty (japan only)

very very vintage tone, 1 thing i would like to share is that it take some time to "dial-in" a desire tone i want to be, output of this guitar is a little bit weak, tone control is a little bit narrow, at first 15 mins of testing this guitar i have difficulties to search for the right tone but after that, it just sound sweet pure as water. all electronic is dead quiet. now i face this D'Aquisto against a CRT mon and no noise come out from my audio monitors

to be specific i never expect it come out the sound is different against a es175 it not even came close, nor a PM100. since i had these 2 instruments for years, i can very easy to dial in the tone i want to with extreme ease but not with this one. but once you are there, you will found this guitar will behave more like "acoustic" than "electric" which is every note i picked from this, the entire guitar will resonate accordinly for me it's a another part of important information on playing this instruments, i dun say the gibson nor ibanez lack this resonate feel but for this guitar the feeling is very strong.

it means this guitar will tell if you are hitting the strings with enough strength or not. very important in playing small combo gigs.

at the time of buying this guitar, i had also tried the D'Aquisto low end model "Jazz LIne Junior", the "jazz line violin sun burst" guitar, and the "New Yorker". the shop had allow me to sit alone in a booth and with a polytone combo amp. i got plenty of time to test and switch between guitars.

Junior had a thinner and smaller body, with 2 pickups, but the rear pickup is useless to me, also the sound, (same amp same setting) comes out thinner, so not my cup of tea.

New Yorker is the most expensive of 4 choices, biggest body, but all i can get is "django sound" unfortunately not the sound i after, so drop this.

longest match is the violin sun burst jazz line and the natural color jazz line, the only difference is different color (sunburst /natural) and the sun burst got a bird eye maple neck. i try to convince myself there must be a difference (since the sun burst got about $500 more on the tag) but i cannot tell there is a sonic difference between these 2.

choice is very clear to me drop the rest and pick this up.

i check and check this D'Aquisto but i cannot found 1 single flaw nor defects.

neck is set up at factory with a slight relief, a little higher than usual action, but no big deal, a 90 deg turn in the truss rod will correct the neck profile to ruler stright, low down the thumb wheels (about 1-2mm travel) at both sides of saddle can made this plays like dreams

a little down side here, upper fret access is not comfortable. at here i must say PM100 take the highest score on this matter. on this guitar you need some time to readjust your fingerings

poly catalyst spray finish, mine is natural as far as i concern there were violin sunburst finish available

finishing is again japanese standard-"top notch"- nothing can be challenge of

delicate instrument, needs care and attention as a matter of fact, it is necessary to treat all musical instruments with care. treat them well and they will sound well is'nt it??

seem to be well built and soild craftmanship, not afraid to bring on stage without a backup

no need to nor there will customer support provide overseas services (except maybe in US) but i dun live in japan nor us, so no comment here.

this is the 4th archtop in my inventory, before that i got a PRS archtop, es175, pm 100, among other soild bodies, friends always told me this is a redunant and i should kept my money in pocket instead of being attack by GAS

i have to say this: "i cannot miss this for the price tag if i skip this i might never found this again"

for the sound, feel, price & craftmanship the glory days of geat US of A made guitars is over that's simple

Single surface mounted humbucking, laminated, flamed maple top, back and sides. D'Aquisto (made by Aria Custom Shop) that looks exactly like Jim Hall's guitar. It has an ebony bridge, tailpiece, control knobs and pickguard. Sunburst ("Almondburst") finish. Gotoh pegs, one piece maple neck, 24 3/4 scale, 2 1/2 thick, and 16" wide. The workmanship lacks nothing that I can see, on a par with Gibson (in my opinion).
It's something of a mystery instrument. Apparently, Aria bought the D'Aquisto name and designs when Jimmy died. I've also read that they bought up his stock of woods, but can't confirm that this is true.

This is a great, workingman's jazz guitar, that has the classic archtop tone (sounds a lot like Hall's guitar). It's easily better than past ES-175's that I've owned. It's pretty impervious to feedback for an archtop. I doubt you'd find any jazz box that sounds this good, for the money. I believe that it could hold it's own with any top jazz instrument out there. I mean no comparison with floating pickup acoustic archtops, this is an electric instrument.

No problems observed here. I don't anticipate any.

It seems as solid as any guitar that I've owned. Again, it seems like a top flight instrument. I've only had it for a few months.

This is hard to say. The D'Aquisto line from Aria is difficult to find any information on (thus I'm writing this review to correspond with others that might be interested). The guitar comes with no warranty card (a first in my 30+ years of playing) and absolutely no literature. I contacted the folks at Aria and they confirmed this is the case.

I've been playing for 30+ years and have owned a bunch of guitars over the years. I did my archtop homework before buying this guitar, and feel like I did very well by myself. I can't imagine that I would ever feel that I need something more in a straight ahead jazz box.