NGD! Gretsch Honey Dipper

[Hampus]

First impressions will follow.

Pictures taken in the kitchen under poor light conditions.

[piebaldpython***]

Congrats!! How does she sound?

[Tig***]

Mmmmm, very tasty!

[Robert****]

Congrats!

[tjcurtin1]

Looks nice - love the headstock! How do you like her?

[Hampus]

Hey!

First impressions. I actually hadn't played one before I bought it. There were none available locally so I had to order it. I had done quite a bit of research and got stuck on the Honey dipper due to the good reviews and fairly affordable price tag. I was afraid I'd find the sound too twangy or banjolike but it isn't. It's actually surprisingly warm but still very much resonator like. And it's LOUD! The range of tones you get just from moving your picking hand closer to or farther away from the bridge is amazing and there is kind of a natural reverb in it that seems more pronounced when moving up the neck. Since I got it I've done mostly finger picking and slide for which it works great, the action and string tension is high enough for comfortable slide but low enough to fret with ease although it is on the high side for my taste close to the 12th fret. Intonation is perfect, I didn't just trust my ears but checked it with a tuner and it's dead on. The guitar does not lend itself well to strumming chords, the lows are just overpowering everything else.

The over all build quality seems great and it feels very sturdy. The neck is one of the most comfortable I ever tried (not that I tried THAT many), it has a slight V shape and the finish is fantastic silky smooth.

The finish of the body, brushed nickel plated bell brass (pump house roof I think they call it) is also very nice. It would actually have been perfect hadn't it come with a scratch close to the neck under the strings. It's not big but clearly visible and if you look closely the fret board is also scratched below the last fret so it seems like someone working with a tool on the fret boar slipped and scratched the board and then the body. This can't have gone by unnoticed by the one who did it and shouldn't have passed quality control so IMO this guitar shouldn't have left the factory as anything but a B stock. It's not bad enough for me to take it back and wait another two weeks for a new one though so I'll live with it.

That scratch and a small speck of glue on top of the biscuit are the two flaws I've found. Looking around before buying one I did find quite a few B stock specimens, mostly with scratches. So it may be that they have some QC issues at the factory, maybe in combination with the brushed finish being a difficult one to keep scratch free but I don't know yet if that is the case.

I'd very much recommend it to anyone in the market for a resonator.

[stingx]

Damn that looks cool. Congrats on your new Gretsch!

[John_Prall]

Nice. I love mine. I modified with a 12 bar blues pickup, tone and volume.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk