I have 2. One has the painted F holes, vinyl pad, single mute, and the neck heel at the 14th fret. The other (which I prefer) has real F holes, no mute, no vinyl pad, and the neck heel at the 17th fret. It's actually a totally different guitar, and IMHO, the better of the two.

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Sho-Bud ProII
"there's been an awful murder, down on music row!"

quote:

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If Jack Nicholson played guitar, it'd be a Gretsch.

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Yep! Jack sure knows how to wield an axe, don't he?

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Remington D-10 8+7, Sierra Crown D-10 gearless 8+8, Sierra Session S-14 gearless 8+5, '76 Emmons D-10 8+4, Peavey Session 400 LTD

Here's the deal. I've not played it for a long time because the binding was cracked. Well it finally started coming off on the neck! I just took it to a local luthier and he said he could fix the binding without replacing it by melting some of the same material and filling in the cracks etc. He's an excellent guitar maker so I hope this will come out ok. I was thinking about selling it to fund some other music equip. since I don't play it. But who knows - if he fixes this problem well - I might change my mind.

Also the gold plating on the tuners, bigsby and filtertron and supertron is flaking slightly . I was told that the out-gassing of the binding material in the closed case is the root cause of this. Not sure. It's not been abuse that I can tell because the finish and neck are excellent! Just sad that it's deteriorating - so I'll try and bring it back to life a little.

I got it used for $200 about 10 years ago - so anything I do will make it better. It's actually in pretty great shape. And I've loved these guitars since I was a kid.

chrisk

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Chris Kennison
Ft. Collins, Colorado
"There is no spoon"
www.book-em-danno.com

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I got it used for $200 about 10 years ago.

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He's got a real collector's item, refinished, refretted, and still worth a ton!

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Vintage Guitar mag. is fun. They had a great article a few months back that basically said if you'd invested $10,000 in vintage guitars in 1998 instead of Mutual Funds, you'd still have all your money plus about 26% profit!!! Sorta makes you cry don't it?

chris

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Chris Kennison
Ft. Collins, Colorado
"There is no spoon"
www.book-em-danno.com

Which brings me to my point; I played it all weekend and can't figure out what the heck all the controls are for??
It has some scratchy pots etc. so perhaps some of the functions are not working.

It's got three toggles and three knobs and I'm not sure if they are working as they are supposed to.

It looks almost exactly like this one http://www.thebeatalls.com/Beatalls%20Web%20Pics/Gretsch%20Gent%20close%20up%20page.htm

The tuning keys are not the 'stepped' grover type, they're big fat oval metal ones (gold is worn off a little)

controls;
switch 1 - upper, left of neck outboard - 3 position, seems to switch between pickups
left = bridge sound, middle=blended sound, right=neck sound(full and louder)
switch 2 - upper, left of neck inboard - 3 posistion, middle position is a normal tone, move it either way and it takes all the highs out and give a really muted and muddy tone - seems to be the same which ever way you move it
switch 3 - lower, below Bigsby by vol. and tone knobs, 3 position, in middle everything is off!, in one of the other positions it seems to just turn on the pickups, and there seems to be a slight difference between the sounds selected by switch 1 depending on the position of this one, but very slight

knobs;
knob 1 - upper, right of neck - seems to be a master vol.
knob 2,3 - lower body, vol. and tone I think, but they don't do much

So - since you seem to be the resident expert on CG's - can you enlighten me??
thanks,
Chris

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Chris Kennison
Ft. Collins, Colorado
"There is no spoon"
www.book-em-danno.com

The switch by the Bigsby is a standby switch, to turn the guitar off between sets. I have no idea why they used a 3 position switch instead of a 2 position one. One of the other switches is, as you wrote, a pickup selector switch. Front, rear or both. The other switch is as far as I can tell a tone switch. I cannot tell any difference in tone between the outer 2 positions, but the middle one does make a difference. Again, I don't understand why they used a 3 position switch for this.

There are 2 volume controls, one for each pickup, and a master volume. By using the volume controls you can blend the pickups, and then use the master to control the overall volume. That's all I know. Personally I leave all the controls wide open and control things externally.

There is a book about Gretsch guitars that undoubtedly has all the information about which guitars have which features and which switches and knobs do what. I've seen the book, but all I did was look at all the pretty pictures and drool.