My first Gretsch....

[duhvoodooman]

I've been playing in our church's adult praise band for a couple of years now, but we recently had a new guitarist join the band. He's a very experienced guitarist and musician, far more accomplished than I'll ever be. He's also been a worship leader for several years, so has brought a lot to the band beyond just his excellent guitar skills. He's also always willing to answer questions and show me things, which I very much appreciate. And he's a fellow "gear hound" who owns some absolutely killer stuff.

Anyway, he had mentioned to me that he found the sound of many of the Gretsch guitars to be a really good fit with praise music--something that was validated when he brought his gorgeous White Falcon to rehearsal a couple of months back. Anyway, that piqued my interest (always a bad thing, financially!) so I started poking around on Reverb.com to see what was available, Gretsch-wise. Initially, I was looking mostly at the Streamliner models, chiefly the G2622T and G2620T models, because of their very reasonable pricing. But then I came across a next-to-new G5420T Electromatic at a really attractive price. I offered a bit less and it was accepted. I've had the guitar for a couple of weeks now and am very pleased with it. It's the first hollowbody (as opposed to semi-hollowbody) guitar I've owned, and between that and the "blacktop" Filterton pickups, it sounds like nothing else I have. Seems to sound particularly sweet with the "ambient" guitar sound (dotted eighth delay and LOTS of reverb) that is so commonly used in modern praise music. The guitar was set up very well as received--all it needed was a new set of strings--and is very comfortable to play. It's a big guitar, but then again, I'm a big guy, so I haven't found that to be a problem at all. The Bigsby seems to keep the guitar nicely in tune, though I obviously am not doing whammy bar tricks in church! Not that I really know any, anyway...

Here are a few pics of the guitar that I downloaded, cropped & resized from the Reverb.com listing. Better quality photos than I could take! The color is called Aspen Green--kind of a light olive-green/silver metallic finish, very attractive.

http://duhvoodooman.com/miscimages/musical/Gretsch/G5420T_full.jpg http://duhvoodooman.com/miscimages/musical/Gretsch/G5420T_body.jpg

http://duhvoodooman.com/miscimages/musical/Gretsch/G5420T_Bigsby.jpg http://duhvoodooman.com/miscimages/musical/Gretsch/G5420T_headstock.jpg

[Robert]

Dats beauty! Gretch are fine fiddles. I'll have to get one too, one day.

Let's hear it Vood!

[Supernaut]

Congrats on that beauty!

[marnold]

Since you're such a Strat guy I kind of have a hard time wrapping my head around you with a hollowbody :) Do you have any issues with feedback or are the volume levels tame enough that it's not a problem?

[duhvoodooman]

Since you're such a Strat guy I kind of have a hard time wrapping my head around you with a hollowbody
Actually, I'm more of a Fender guy than a Strat guy, per se--after all, I have 5 Tele's to go along with the 6 Strats!


Do you have any issues with feedback or are the volume levels tame enough that it's not a problem?
Not a problem at church, and since I play in a small room at home, I rarely crank it up enough for feedback to be a problem. I did manage to generate some by running the guitar through a Big Muff clone and holding it right in front of my speaker cab, but even then, it was quite controllable. I can see where these would make poor Norwegian death metal guitars, though....

[tjcurtin1]

What a gorgeous instrument with all those lovely curves!

[marnold]

I can see where these would make poor Norwegian death metal guitars, though....

Drat! And I just know that was going to be your next musical direction, especially for the praise band.

Of course, Norwegian death metal he ain't but feedback never stopped ol' sweaty Uncle Teddy. Of course, I seem to remember that he stuffed his guitars with some kind of padding to cut down on feedback.