The Theory

So I've owned my G5120 for over 2 years now, and have just started thinking about ways to make it sound more better. The guitar as-is, has been the best guitar I've ever owned, ands I love the whole Gretsch sound as far as the rockabilly thing, as well as for it's ability to sound great as a high-gain guitar as well, but after a couple years of playing it religeously, I've decided to stop being a pansy, and make it sound more like the 6120's I've always loved (easy to desire, as mine is in the orange finish).

Technically, I already started altering it, as my wife had decided to take the strap off my Gretsch before putting it in the case, and in the process, pulled the screws out of the body, rather than just the removable thumb-screw part, so I decided to put straplocks on, Dunlop Dual-Design to be exact. I know this may seem ridiculous, but I actually have had Dunlops on almost every bass I've had, and they work great on this guitar.

So first off, those crappy stock tuners. I hate myself for having not changed them already. I've been tossing around ideas of what to put on there, and for the longest time I was looking for Grovers that would fit in the existing holes. This would be fairly cheap, but the best tuners I ever had on a guitar were Sperzel locking tuners. I'm actually a bass player who occassionally plays guitar, and my guitarist has put locking tuners on almost every guitar he's owned and has me sold on them, plus the Les Paul Studio I had before this Gretsch had Sperzels on it when I bought the it (used). Another factor is the Brian Setzer 6120's, and The Reverand Horton Heat model have them, and those are some of my favorite high-end Gretsch models. So I will be going with Sperzels on my Gretsch.

The other big decission is the pickups. Now the big reason I've put off modifying this guitar, was because the pickups I was going to put on here were TV Jones Classic filter'trons. These are great pickups, and I love them on the higher end Gretsch models, but at $120 a pickup, I start negating the budget aspect of this guitar. This left me to wondering about some cheaper alternantives. A friend of mine told me about GFS pickups when we were talking about baritone guitars, and when I went to check them out, I found filtertron style pickups for around $35. From the local guitar gurus, I've heard nothing but good things about these pickups (and some of them sell TV Jones), so I will either be going with GFS Surf 90's, or Nashvilles.

The other aspect is the tone switch that's on the 6120's. Now I don't want to drill a hole in the body to add a switch, so I'm thinking of replacing the master tone knob, with a 3 position rotary switch that would function in a similar fashion.