Chet's Other Gretsch Guitars

[captainvideo]

So it's pretty well known that Chet's favorite Gretsch was his '59 6122. He continued to use it up till his Gibson endorsement. But there are still various instanced where he's playing other Gretsch guitars. Would these have been modified like the '59? Long scale and wide nut? Or do you think they would have been stock production models?

Here's Chet playing a double cutaway Gent that he's gone far enough to put his bigsby arm on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oai-6GpkSkc

Here's another clip. It's probably the same Gent. Different bigsby arms but its lacking the mutes like the guitar in the other video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViqTWcLCNhA

[Norm]

Gretsch sent him a lot of guitars for him to play and/or to use in publicity shots and particularly to play on TV.

When he got his now famous 59 he used that for most of his electric guitar recording and it was his preferred road guitar but for television the audience was usually treated to watching him play the latest model the company had to offer. Most of those he gave away primarily because he just didn't have room for them. I'm sure Gretsch was able to write them off as a tax deduction and probably found that more practical than all the fooling around that shipping the demo back to the factory would entail.

There are some TV clips where you see him playing the original CGP or the 59 but most times, for TV it was the newest model of the day.

Some of the demos had wide necks, some did not. The ones he liked were the ones in his guitar room when he died.

[Eddie Estes]

Those are not the same guitars in those clips.

The one from Colonel Boogie has that floating sound tuning fork thing that Jimmy Webster came up with.

You have to look close.

[Phil Waldron]

Regarding that floating sound tuning fork ... I had a Gretsch White Falcon at one time that had that tunng fork on it. Personally it was a disaster ... the guitar was hard to change strings on and it was nearly impossible to keep the dang thing aligned. As for sound enhancement IMHO it did absolutely nothing. It was a neat sales gimick. I finally sold the White Falcon and bought another Country Gentleman which I should have stayed with in the first place. However in retrospect I wish I had that White Falcon (68) now as it's probably worth a lot more than I paid for it ... LOL.

[Norm]

Jimmie Webster had a lot of strange ideas. He was always quick to get a patent on things like that, no doubt hoping to hit a winner that he could make money on.

I think this insane pricing on some guitars is misunderstood. I'm not certain a WF with that gizmo on it would be that 'collectible' since it never achieved anything close to popularity. The guitars that bring in the money are older Atkins signature 6120's 6121's and 6122's. Just like the old Les Paul's and 335's do it for Gibson.