Gretsch G5420T Electromatic OS

Mine (a late 2019 model) came with a perfect finish, great workmanship on the body, nice aged bindings with purfling. The blacktops have that Gretsch sound I was looking for. The B60 Bigsby is perfectly balanced. Looks to have full-size pots underneath the control knobs; not premium but work fine.

Maybe I had a Friday model, but setup was not great out of the box. Relief was off, intonation was off, and 13 of the frets had high spots; I like my action highish on this kind of guitar, but still… a full fret levelling and setup needed which I feel shouldn’t be the case in this price range. I have a HB guitar for less than a third of the price with better frets and setup, so it is possible.

The tuners are ok-ish, but look small on such a big guitar and the chrome finish looks cheap. They are proprietary so switching them out probably means drilling. I reamed out the headstock and put in nice set of Kluson grover-style locking tuners which give it a satisfying feel.

The nut is supposedly a graphtec, can’t tell, but anyway it does the job and doesn’t stick.

The tunomatic style bridge, like all of them, rattles resonates and seems to be made of cheese. For now some threadlock to keep it quiet, but it will be upgraded soon.

The input jack is mounted directly to the hollow-body, just asking to get knocked in, so a jack plate off ebay went in. For less than 1 EUR on the BOM, Gretch should really come with this. And the pick guard in silver has to go. A simple black or creme one would be more fitting.

Overall in my opinion this a great basis for a superb rockabilly guitar, but it needs some TLC to be really useable.