Aspen Green Gretsch 5420T

I needed a hollowbody guitar for playing some jazz standards so it was a justified need.  I didn't want to pay more than I have to for one so when this became available on Craigslist on March 19th, I sent out the email response at around 7am.  By 2pm, I had it in my possession, a very nice instrument that surpassed expectations.  How much can you really tell about a guitar during a quick 10-minute test drive, right?  The initial impressions were enough to take it home but I continued to be surprised for several days with some of the tones I can get from this Gretsch.

There are several important attributes of this guitar starting with the Aspen Green gloss finish -- which is most unique among all my other green guitars.  Very light and subtle shade is shows best with the color temperature of daylight hours.  At night, under fluorescent lighting, it almost looks plain gray.  The Bigsby tremolo means it also functions as a decent surf guitar.  But the most important feature in my mind is what Gretsch refers to a Blacktop Filter'tron humbucking pickups -- which seems to have the range from jazz to 60s-style rock solos.  I discovered this when I put plugged it into my standard effects/amp rig normally setup for Strats and Teles.  I suppose the hollowbody gives it that really warm 60s punch that solidbodies don't.

I do have one thing I need to get used to on this axe and that is the set of volume controls.  There seems to be a strong non-linearity of the volume pots where most of the gain is in the first 1/3 of the knob rotation angle.  Usually doesn't bother me since when I play, the volume and tone are near max anyway.  I like the ability to manually mix the pot signal levels of each Blacktop as well.

The guitar did not come with a case so I ordered one from Amazon.  I normally keep all my electrics out to give it a natural relic feel over time but this Gretsch is about as fragile as my acoustics.  The model G6241FT case fits perfectly.