Chester The Gretsch

So I bought a new guitar & not just any old guitar! I bought a Gretch 6120 Chet Atkins Special which is pretty much my childhood dream guitar. I always wanted a hollow body like a Gibson or a Gretsch but the 6120 was my favorite out of everything that I can remember. Originally because it was orange, but as I did research in to the guitar (which was quite an ordeal in 1992 it involved guitar magazines and listening to my moms old 8tracks of Mr. Atkins himself.) I discovered the sound was just so perfect in so many ways.  I remember this one time we made a road trip into e-town which happened once or twice a year. Being that we were from the north we headed straight to West Edmonton Mall. In that mall was a Mr. Entertainment near the ice rink.  This was my first real music store adventure (prior t0 that I would buy my strings and picks at the local Radio Shack) I bought a chord book, a book of “alternative rock” song tab (which i still have today) and a set of guitar strings for my Harmony. They had an original Gretsch 6120 in the case and stood and stared at it for 10min before my mom insisted that we leave. I remember looking at that vintage price tag of $10,000+ and as a kid growing up in the middle of nowhere Alberta that pretty much was the same as saying it was $100,000,000, the difficulty was they weren’t made new anymore because Gretsch was basically run into the ground and the original blueprints and prototypes were lost in a fire the year I was born, so there was only vintage to be had.

Lament.

But alas after cat-scanning, x-raying, and doing other fancy stuff to a bunch of the old 6120s lent to Gretsch from people like Randy Bachman they managed to remake the long lost blueprints of some all time legendary guitars. From that we get this glorious reissue!! it is so pretty, and it is a complete dream to play! Open chords sound genius, and I have to say this guitar matched up with the crate (thank you again Tracey you rock) is a marriage made in heaven. I love it. Shan & I ad-hoc jammed it up a bit on Saturday after breakfast and well pure genius!!

Thanks M for taking photos of me :)

Tomorrow we have the next awesome jam of jams in my kitchen so we should get some great cuts I think from that.