The Chetboard

Hi everyone i am looking in to buying a gretsch i can not afforded more then a elctromatic I am looking at these two models the g5420 an the g5191bk i would put a link but I don't know how. a i was hoping for some feed back on the sound of the pick ups and even the body shape. i can't really try them because i am a lefty . the the g5420 seem close to the g6120 in body size thanks for any imput

I have 3 Gretsch guitars. I have the orange 5120 that you are asking about. I have a blueburst 6120 and a 6122-1959. The CG guitar is out of your budget but is a clear jump over the other two.

The 5120 and the 6120 have the same size neck and I cant tell a difference between. The 6120 has gold trim and bound F holes. So What? The 6120 has much brighter sounding pickups much more like the true Gretsch sound. The pickups of the 5120 have a muddy sound. I found I got the best sound from them on a Beheringer 99.00 amp and not so good sound out of my Delta blues.

Other than the pickup sound I had a very hard time justifying the 2000 difference in price.

I did have RMC synth access built into my blue Gretsch. I also did the same with my CG and plan on selling the blue 6120 at CAAS this summer. Joe Glasser in Nashville did the installation and it looks factory installed.

I think bang for the buck the 5120 is one of the best guitars on the market.

This has been covered many times over on the Gretschpages. As Bill says, the 5120 is a well built guitar, the main difference being the pickups. These are, however, easy to replace with better ones. TV Jones carries pickups adapted to various pickup cavities if you find it necessary to replace the original ones.

The new 54xx series have black top filtertron pickups. Somewhat of an improvement, it appears. I don't own one.

thanks Richard I should asked about this i really wanted to know if the black tops that come in the 5420 have a nice clean tone. also billmoit and vider mention the 5120. is there much difference from 5120 and the 5420 the body spec arn't listed thanks