Back in my day everybody played Gretsch. Are the new ones any good?
If you're picky, only the Japanese made ones, less picky, Korean made ones are okay too. One of the last bases I would play on stage was the Chinese-made short scale solid body bass. None of them were okay out of the box. I would have to at least file off the fret edges. Some guy is online complaining that the pickups are falsely advertised has humbuckers, because they're not. That explains why they made noise when they shouldn't have...
I was a (very, very minor) Gretsch artist, would go to their shows and everything, demo products, help people, etc... I had to work while Duane Eddy and Billy Zoom and Tom Petersson would sign autographs and be rockstars 😁😁😁
Gretsches were much better when they were being made in the early 1990s in Japan under a different name, it might have been "Electromatic" or "National," I don't remember.
Their old "smile guy" and marketing dude, Joe Carducci, told me that it was by chance that a doctor did an MRI of an original Gretsch. The results were used to help them improve the vintage sound by copying the densities of each layer of the plywoods used.
Gretsch owns Bigsby too, although they are separate divisions so that they can make more money selling the Bigsby to Fender who is making Gretsch guitars.
