Hi Joseph,
Welcome to the board ...good to have ya here!
You'll clearly get lots of opinions on this, but just as a headsup, this very question comes up regularly, and I do recall it has come up fairly recently here. Perhaps try the "search" and look for that thread.
That said, I'll offer you my quick opinion (since you asked
): the
best guitar for your purpose is the guitar you feel most comfortable with and "good" about. Really, no more to it than that. So much variance exists in band size, stage setup, stage volume, material played, room acoustics, PA equipment, and ultimately the sound guy, that
any guitar can be made to sound horrid, just as most any guitar can be made to sound decent; while any decent guitar can sound pretty dang good. So amidst all those variables,
you and your guitar should be the constant.
FWIW, I currently use a sitka/maple, but have used cedar/rw, spruce/ovang, sitka/rw, cedar/mahog, engel/maple, spruce/lycra (Ovation
...I "think" that's it...) and in all different body shapes from GC to Jumbo ...and all of them sounded solid and clean in the house as well as sat well in the mix. Let your gear simply be the "best" gear that works for you, and allow your purpose to drive your playing. IMHO and modest experience, anywho.
But I gotta piggyback on what cigarfan just said: the 2010-current ES is a superb system that sounds great. This I
highly recommend without reservation --yes, even over other pup systems, all told, it's
that good. Oh, and let us know what you picked, then celebrate here with pics!
Edward