Yes. I have tried several and they were not even close to my picked Japan stuff. I emphasize picked because a good sounding Elegee will beat a bad sounding Japan guitar. By the way, I heard an Elegee that blew away the MIJ Ibanez prestige serires it was copying but was kind of heavy. On the other hand, I have heard and played a dead sounding Elegee guitar.
In terms of pagkapolido, talo pa rin sa mga good Japan stuff ang Elegee. Jon knows this and I believe he is constantly improving. As I said before, kung magpapacustom ka ng bagong design sa local luthier, nobody beats Jon. Pero kung mas traditional ka at mas polidong gawa, kay Arie ka pumunta.
You have to ask yourself kung ang Fender USA mo at Gibson blues hawk mo ay the best sounding of the wood batch. According to an ex- Fender QA guy who is now working for a renown guitar luthier and amp guy, 97% of all Fender stuff are bad sounding whether Mexican, USA, or Custom Shop. Sometimes a Mexico strat will beat a Custom Shop. So you have to ask yourself if your American Fender is part of the crummy 97% or the top 3%. Likewise with Gibson, it takes a dealer to sort thru 100-200 Gibsons to find a good sounding one. So does your blues hawk belong to the 199?
Let us do a simple test. Can somebody call up PJ of PJC and ask him how many elegee guitars he has sold compared to the PRS and Ernie Ball guitars there? I bet zero. Zero pa rin ang PRS and Ernie Ball --- please update me if I am wrong. But this goes to show that despite Elegee being cheaper than those two brands, wala pa rin nakaka-afford which means the asking price of Elegee is not commensurate to its value on the market at least in PJC. Let us go a bit further, suppose you ask PJ to bring down the price of the PRS and the Ernie Ball to the Elegee's price, ask him what he thinks will sell...
What I think for Jon to really succeed is to make guitars equivalent to high end USA guitars at standard USA prices... So, what I mean by high end is the level of quality of destoryallguitars.com luthiers. After all, PRS also did the same thing at the start. Proof? I have a 1989 price brochure for his Artist Series guitar which only costs US$2950 fully loaded with his hand picked wood. Wala pang internet into ng nakuha ko noon ito by snail mail.
Also, please let us not get into nationalistic stuff about guitars because I will tell you that you should also support Arie aside from Jon. He does custom work but he just is more careful managing your expectations.