NGD - G5220 Gretsch Electromatic Jet

[vistavision]

A Jade Grey Metallic G5220 Electromatic Jet. Well, kinda NGD since the mods got done in early December. I have a 8yo and 12yo so guitar stuff fell by the wayside for the rest of the month. It’s still new to me!

The “V” tailpiece went away first. I wanted something a little less showbiz. The Blacktop Broad’trons went bye-bye, also. I got a set of Gretsch Filter’tron HS installed. New pickup rings from GuitarFetish and “English-mount” brackets/screws from Philadelphia Luthier Tools. Only stumble was I had originally ordered brackets from GuitarFetish but they didn’t match the Filter’trons OR their own pickup rings. A big head-scratcher from GFS.


It plays and sounds great. Nothing about it that my tech wanted to scream about. Well-cut nut, good frets., and the finish is gorgeous. These are one of the best deals quality-wise under a grand. I was originally going for a Firestick Red but this came up at a good deal. Nice to finally scratch something “Gretsch-y” off my list.

Shoutout to Mike for chatting Filter’trons & variants with me early last year regarding another possible project.

[DavidG]

Very nice indeed, and I completely agree with your assessment on the quality versus value.

Last year I did a very similar mod with my Gretsch g5232t (the double jet with bigsby). That came with the blacktop filtertrons, but I had to put some HS Filtertrons in there.

Quality wise it is not far away from the Japanese jet I also own, and the few I've owned in the past. Huge price difference between the two lines.