T H E GA S STATION 100 Words Jonathan Horsley / Photography Phil Barker GRETSCH JETS ROUND-UP Blast off to Kicksville with two baritone single-cuts and a neat double-cut that present classic Gretsch tones at pocket-friendly Electromatic prices... TOTAL GUITAR APRIL 2020 TGR330.gear_test.
THE TG TEST 101 M aybe it’s because Gretsch came of age at a time when rock ’n’ roll was the big bang moment for youth culture that it will always be a heritage brand. Maybe it’s simply a case of the classics never going out of style. But for all the revisions it has made to its line-up over the years since the Gretsch plant in Brooklyn, New York was a mid-50s epicentre of cool, there’s something unchanged about its guitars, as though they were unearthed in Grandpa’s attic. Take this month’s Jets.
T H E GA S STATION G5260T JET BARITONE £659 That twang is back in style AT A GLANCE BODY: Mahogany NECK: Maple, bolt-on FINGERBOARD: 102 B aritones might have enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years with metal players looking to put them into the service of high-end, low-end chug but they are nothing new, and were originally designed for less musically-destructive applications.
THE TG TEST G5260 JET BARITONE £569 Let’s get ready to rumble… AT A GLANCE 103 BODY: Mahogany NECK: Maple, bolt-on FINGERBOARD: F or all intents and purposes, the G5260 is pretty much the same guitar as the G5260T. It, too, has the solid mahogany body and the bolt-on maple neck. The scale is a similarly generous 29.75 inches.
G5222 DOUBLE JET Built for the long haul £495 AT A GLANCE BODY: Chambered 104 I f your eyes are watering and fretting hand is in paroxysms of psychosomatic tendonitis at the mere prospect of playing your go-to rock and blues riffs on the wide-open spaces of a 29.75-inch scale guitar, then worry not, the G5222 Double Jet returns us to familiar territory. In fact, after adjusting your style to get the most out of the baritones, the Double Jet feels like a toy.
T H E GA S STATION FINAL VERDICT Will you succumb to your most bass impulses? those equipped on your regular standardtuned six-strings, it turned an instrument that was built for the rhythm section into something capable of taking the lead. Using this with tape echo and experimenting with reverb, it really does become transcendent. That said, there’s something about the simplicity of the G5260. The V-Stoptail is super tidy. If you don’t think you’ll use the Bigsby much, save some money on the G5260.
