Review : A Used Find - Gretsch Electromatic Silver Jet

For some people, the thought of a guitar, regardless of brand on the headstock, that is made in China remains anathema. While I concur that there is some real poop being made overseas, and while I would agree that China as a country should be dealt with carefully, there are instrument factories doing a great job. One example would be the Squier line built for Fender in China. Those Classic Vibe models are killer. The other brand I want to talk about today is the Gretsch Electromatic line.

While I am fortunate to own some high end Custom Shop Gretsch guitars including a White Falcon and a ‘59 Reissue White Penguin as well as a single cut Jet in black, I also own Electromatics. My first is a doubleneck that was baritone on the top neck and traditional six string on the lower neck. I also own a double cutaway centre block with a custom sapphire paint treatment. The quality is excellent and the Filtertron pickups sound as I would expect them to. I was recently in The Arts Music Store in Newmarket Ontario and saw an Electromatic Silver Jet G5230T single cutaway with Bigsby hanging in the corner wearing a “Used” tag at what I thought was a pretty aggressive price point. I arranged to try it out, and suffice to say, the only thing going back is the loaner gig bag that the store provided for my trial as my intent was just to review it. I admit to very severe GAS, and I confess I was attracted to it for a reason.

I have believed for some time that George Harrison remains an underrated guitarist. Not particularly flamboyant, but diligent in his intent. I remember first hearing “When We Were Fab” from his album “Cloud Nine” and that when I bought so many years ago, the cover showed Mr. Harrison in dark shades playing a Gretsch Silver Jet. Thus when I saw the used one, I wanted to see if this inexpensive Electromatic model had the Gretsch Filtertron sound and feel.

Overview

The G5230T which I will from now on refer to as the Silver Jet is in the mid priced Electromatic line. The guitar is made in China. The body is chambered mahogany with a laminated maple top. The chambering increases the body resonance and drops the weight. It is actually lighter than my Fender SRV Signature Stratocaster! The neck is also mahogany and is a set neck design. The body, neck and headstock all have white binding and the body also has black purfling. The fingerboard is the increasingly common Laurel with classic Gretsch Thumbnail inlays.

The neck scale length is 24.6 inches with 22 medium jumbo frets. Fit and finish is excellent with no fret poke-age through the binding. I have handled much more expensive guitars with much worse fret work. The nut is 1.6875 inches wide and made from synthetic bone. The radius of the fingerboard is 12 inches and the neck shape is a thin “U”. I call it super comfortable for may average hands and average fingers.

There are two pickups, both Gretsch Filtertrons. This makes them humbucking, but they sound brighter than say the humbuckers that you would find on a Gibson. There is a volume control for each pickup and a shared master tone control. The tone control has a treble bleed so if you are playing at lower volume settings and roll off the tone, it doesn’t fall into the mud tank. For those not used to a tone control with treble bleed, it initially sounds like the tone control is not working until you get to zero. It definitely is, but responds differently to guitars without a treble bleed. On the cutaway portion of the lower bout, there is a master volume control. There is a simple three position pickup selector, offering bridge, both and neck. There are no coil taps or phase switching controls. The output jack is on the side of the rear lower bout, as in a Les Paul.

The bridge is an anchored Adjust-o-matic and the tailpiece is a Bigsby B50. This model has a slightly stiffer spring than on my Brian Setzer but is still very usable with a bit of practice. This model uses Gretsch’s signature screw on strap mounts, a really great locking system that doesn’t increase the strap pin length egregiously and is very quick to attach/detach. The light weight has allowed me to get away with a narrower strap with a shoulder pad.

Playability and Sound

The guitar was pretty good to go when I got it home. A minor tweak to the truss rod and a quick action adjustment brought things where I like them and as always, I needed to minorly tweak intonation. The guitar sounds awesome unplugged which is an important criteria for me as I have found that an electric guitar that doesn’t resonate well acoustically never sounds great when plugged into a clean amplifier. I only use fuzz rarely and I am not a player of metal style music so I find this resonance factor matters to me.

The pickups sound very good indeed. Not quite the same as the White Penguin, but we are talking about significantly less money for this Silver Jet. The sustain is nice and doesn’t need compression to hold up. I played it first through a Blackstar Club 40 and it was good. I then tried it through my handwired AC30 and it was magnificent. It is my opinion that Filtertrons and AC30 go together like chocolate sauce on vanilla ice cream. Made for each other!

I was able to play for over an hour with no fatigue and no wrist or finger pain. This is indicative of good weight distribution and a neck build that suits me very well. I suffer from some arthritis in both wrists as I broke them both at the same time in my teens (don’t ask) in a fall.

I like the sound of the pickups through the AC30 a lot, and also like that master volume so I can roll off a bit for clean and roll it on for a subtle but helpful natural overdrive. This AC30 has no reverb tank, so I added some reverb using a Walrus Audio Fathom Reverb pedal in plate mode.

Sample Sound

For this short sample, I plugged the guitar into my REVV D20 and set the Torpedo amp simulation to an AC30. The only pedal active was the Warm Audio Centavo which is a Klon clone. It is not as aggressive an overdrive as some other klones and for humbucker equipped guitars, I like it very much. The REVV DI output went into a UA Apollo and I recorded the guitar into Studio One. As a side note, it’s interesting how much Fender is involved in this. Fender owns Gretsch and they also own Presonus who make the Studio One DAW. My common DAW is Logic Pro, but the machine where the REVV is connected runs Windows and hence I use Studio One.

Once the recording was complete and trimmed to length, I duplicated it on a second track and then panned track one left and track two right. This is an old trick to expand the listening space. Then I added three Universal Audio plugins on a bus track fed by the two guitar tracks. First I used the Studer A800 tape deck in a classic rock style configuration. This is commonly used for a bit of tape preamp OD, although I was not going for this here. It sounds to me like an old Revox tape deck, which I miss from my younger days. Next I used the superb Capitol Chambers Reverb in an atmospheric trails setting, with wet solo disabled and with the mix turned to be more dry than the default setting. Finally I added my favourite Teletronix LA-2A Silver compressor to tighten everything up slightly. My preference is to use plugins subtly, so they are not immediately evident nor have them overpower the main signal. The result sounds like the guitar sounds in the real amplifier, albeit with a nicer soundfield result.

Conclusion

I have played a lot of different Electromatic Gretsches. I have been very impressed almost entirely across the board. The couple that left me with a bad taste had dead strings and were desperately in need of a setup. I put that down to changes in shipping and a lack of quality checking in that particular store. If you are looking for that “Gretsch Sound”, I would recommend trying out some guitars in the Electromatic lineup at your Gretsch dealer. I hope that there is one near you. Thanks for reading, and until next time, peace