schmidty:

  I almost bought one last year, but ended up going with an Epiphone Sheraton instead, which is just a much better instrument than the Epi 335

 I should add that the Sheraton (which is actually the Sheraton II to be precise) is not available in Cherry, unfortunately.  The Vintage Sunburst with gold hardware still looks pretty good though, and it sounds great and plays beautifully -- I've barely touched my Strat since I bought the Epi, except for EBow use.

 See http://epiphone.com/default.asp?ProductID=8&CollectionID=1  and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphone_Sheraton for more info on it.