Jeeze, here we go again!
You can see my extensive comments on
the X-155 on alt.guitars, along with the flames they provoked from a couple of bozos.
I have an X-155 right here. Got it for $224 or $234 (can't remember exactly) at GC on Memorial Day, just out of curiosity. I don't think you'll find one for that price these days. It's a very loose copy of the Guild "Manhattan."
Long story short - the GoldTone pickups aren't very good for jazz. This is the prevailing opinion of those who have had the X-155 for a while and can maintain any objectivity. The GoldTones are usually very harsh and twangy and this isn't what you want for jazz, though I think this would be an adequate rockabilly axe. It is impossible - even after extensive tweaks, such as fat flatwounds, pickup lowering, etc. - to get a decent jazz tone out of mine on most of my amps. I finally got it to sound OK on one of the channels of my "Evil Twin," which is a very versatile amp.
The guitar itself is so-so and varies quite a bit from one to the next. The neck is relatively fat and the guitar weighs over eight pounds.
Lots of people who aren't jazz players got this guitar to "fool around" with jazz and don't really have the experience with good jazz hollowbodies to know what one should sound like. These people tend to get pretty defensive about their X-155s.
In that DeArmonds are very unpredictable, it's possible that there are X-155s that are adequate for jazz, but I haven't personally encountered any.
I'm not a big X-155 fan.
