This guitar has a very cool sound, almost like a gypsy jazz flattop, and has the advantages of an electric with a 1 11/16 nut and super high fret access. It also fit the bill for me and killed three birds with one stone, being an archtop with a floating pickup and tone controls.
I bought this guitar from Gruhn about a year ago, and had a few things done to it right off the back. The luthier, Corrado Giacomel, lives in Italy and since sending the guitar back to him wasn't practical, he built me a new tailpiece and pickguard out of ebony, which I preferred over the walnut.
The tuners were also a problem, as he used his very cool mandolin headstock shape (he's much more known for his mandolins, maybe having made only ten or so guitars but probably at least a hundred mandolins.)
It originally had grovers on it, but they were very tight with weird angles, and for a while I had Steinberger tuners on it, similar to a firebird. My luthier friend here in Key West just finished putting Waverly banjo tuners on it and we're going to see how well they work holding acoustic jazz strings, which was a problem with the steinbergers.
Here's a cool article about Corrado from Fretboard Journal a few years ago:
https://www.fretboardjournal.com/fea...rado-giacomel/
Here's a link to the original Gruhn photos:
http://guitars.com/inventory/ar4243-...el-j-5-archtop
I'll have some updated photos soon but for now here are a few:
Thanks for looking!