sofamusician's Music Gear Setup

As a beginner I wanted a guitar that facilitates my learning journey, and makes me excited to play with it. This guitar plays good, sounds good, is versatile, is attractive, and is quite affordable.

When looking for my first guitar, in this price range it is hard to find something that is not a direct copy of models from another brand (as it is the case with Squire or most of the Epiphone models). This "double jet" is part of the Gretsch history, and a relative to the higher-end models that can be seen in the hands of inspiring musicians such as Malcolm Young, Jack White or Jordan Cook.

Pros:

• Good build quality makes it easy to play. Has a comfortable neck, low action, and a double cutaway that facilitates access to all frets. It also stays in tune well. Some reviews report the jack connector to be a bit loose, but that was not an issue with mine (maybe it was fixed in recent models, or I was lucky).

• Good sound. Blacktop Broad'Tron pickups fall in-between P90s and PAFs, which provide good versatility for different genres. These pickups respond to picking dynamics quite well . The characteristic Gretsch configuration of a master volume and one volume control for each pickup allows to blend the bridge and neck pickups to taste, and use the master volume to clean-up your overdrive while keeping the balance between pickups.

• Nice details. The natural wood Finnish, thumbnail fret markers, V-stoptail and screwed strap buttons are distinctive features which I like (although this is subjective).

• Affordable. For under 500 $/€/£ you avoid the worrying that come with more expensive options. Being new to the guitar world I cannot compare to too many guitars, but trying a couple of guitars 2-3 times the price at the shop, I can say I was not missing anything significant.

Cons:

• Neck dive. When standing, the strap button position is not balanced and there is some neck dive. For playing seated (what I’m doing most of the time) it is not a problem at all. Using the right strap is enough to prevent the neck dive when standing up. For me, a wide leather strap, a Y-shaped strap (with one strap for each shoulder), using an anti-slip pad on a regular strap or an acoustic-style lace to the headstock have been useful options to avoid the neck dive.

• Pickup selector and electronics. At some point the pickup selector stopped working properly. Selecting the neck pickup was muting it. A bit of Deposit F5 fader lubricant was enough to fix it. I just had to unscrew the pickup selector and apply the spray there.

• Affordable bag/case is hard to find. There are not many options for a guitar case or bag. The official from Gretsch is expensive (about half the price of the guitar). Fortunately I found a used case at a good price. The only affordable alternative I found was the RockCase RC 10604, which seem to fit based on the internet comments and pictures but I have not checked it myself.