I wonder how the LH-700 compares to the LH-600 sonically. The significantly higher price of the 700 is partly accounted for by materials (AAA spruce/maple neck vs plain-old-spruce/mahogany neck) and a slightly fancier headstock decoration, but I wonder whether extra time and effort go into the carving and voicing. Hard to know without a direct comparison--and even then instrument-to-instrument variations are going to make generalizations difficult.
I do know that my 600 is a very adequate archtop even in a stable that includes an Eastman 805 and a 1946 Epiphone Broadway. The Loar isn't as refined as the Eastman for fingerstyle, but it does fine as a swing-rhythm guitar, with plenty of volume and none of the thinness I hear in, say, 1950s-60s budget archtops.
My repair/upgrade guy made a pickguard and mounted an old Sekova floating single-coil, which turned the Loar into a respectable version of an electrified big-band guitar for a lot less than it would have cost for a genuine-vintage item of equal solidity and playability.
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