Gretsch 6120 (Chet Atkins Model)
In 1950 most guitar companies had a similar selection of models, 5 years later that was no longer the case.
Gretsch had been a relative late-comer to the guitar business but they made up for lost time in the '50s. Perhaps more than their competitors they seemed to understand that the electric guitar was changing music and that they needed to stay on top of those changes.
Jimmie Webster was a player and a man with a lot of ideas about how to create innovative guitars. He developed the White Falcon, mostly as a concept instrument. It drew such praise when displayed that it was incorporated into the lineup. He also actively sought an endorsement by Mr. Guitar himself, Chet Atkins.
The problem was, Chet didn't want to endorse any of the guitars they were building but he was willing to collaborate on a design that Gretsch would put into production. The resulting instrument was the Gretsch Chet Atkins model, AKA the 6120 or the Nashville.
Now, in the broadest of terms one could think of a 6120 as a parallel model to an ES-175 but the guitars shared little in common besides their 16" size. The 6120 was about one inch thinner and with the Bigsby tailpiece there was little doubt that this was not built with the conservative taste of Jazz guitarists in mind.
Then there was the matter of
color, for decades most guitars were either sunburst or natural, the
6120 had a translucent orange finish. Everyone that saw this
guitar knew that it wasn't your father's Gretsch. All of
this was part of a larger effort on the part of Jimmie Webster to bring
more color and pizzazz to Gretsch's lineup. He also created the
White Falcon, basically a Jazz guitar in heavy stage makeup and the
Cadillac Green Country Club. An orange 16" archtop and a pair of 17" archtops with
white or green
finishes were unusual to say the least in an era when gray
double-breasted suits were all the rage.
This all happened right when Rock 'n' Roll was first coming to prominence and for Rockabilly artists a twangy sounding guitar with a colorful finish was just the tool to make their music while looking the part of a Rockabilly artist.
The legacy of this guitar extends to our day both directly and indirectly. From the "Beginnings" page onward we tracked the efforts to make acoustic guitars louder. Then, with the addition of pickups feedback became the common enemy. By the '50s it was common for guitarists to have soundposts installed in their archtops in an effort to control feedback. Starting approximately with the 1959 models, Gretsch started using trestle bracing, a system of trestles that worked with the existing parallel braces and acted as a set of four soundposts. This bracing made it possible to play a guitar at very high volumes without excessive feedback tendencies. I believe that the re-discovery of trestle bracing and its incorporation into new Gretsch models has done as much to breathe new life into the archtop guitar as any development I can imagine.
