Thanks, I am familiar with his patches, unfortunately they're not the sound I'm after.   My reference std is an Acoustic Image head with a Raezers Edge cabinet and I was hoping for something close to that.   I just spent a lot of time a/b'ing dry tones with the live rig against the pod and I can't find anything yet in the pod that's as smooth.   What my ears hear in the Pod is a different eq that doesn't round out the highs and clarify the lows - it's a harsher tone and I hear in in Jim's patches too.   Metheny would be a closer reference point to what I'm looking for.

Good idea to use the looper function - I haven't used it yet but that's an incentive to figure it out

I have been working strictly with amps, nothing else, but that wasn't working out.   Last night I had the idea (as yet untried) of using no amps, but eq's with both low and high pass cutoffs and a flat mid response which I'm told is what my reference rig (acoustic image head and raezers edge cab) do.   Apparently nothing beyond 5Khz gets through which may seem like a dull tone, but it's a surprisingly lively rig for jazz.  

I'll also try hurghanico's setup - cool acoustic sound which is what archtops should project.  

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.