[frankhond]

I have a GB10 made in Japan. The neck is one of the easiest, fastest necks I ever touched, if one likes slightly narrower necks. It comes with flats although one can certainly string it with rounds. It's very comfortable to play with its slightly smaller body and the plugged in tone is very jazzy with a nice attack, it's really easy to get the George Benson tone if that's what one wants. Seems most jazz cats mainly use the neck pickup, blending in the bridge pickup for some edge.

Can't say how it compares to a 175 but it's designed to give an archtop sound while being smaller and comfortable on the road and I could certainly imagine it being just the thing for you. The build quality of Japanese Ibanez'es I tried have always been impeccable, so is this one. The cheaper Korean and Chinese ones are slightly less perfectly put together and one can feel that they are cheaper guitars. OTOH they cost less...