c.1939 Gretsch Flat-Top
No serial number. One of the best sounding blues fingerpickers we've had through the shop in a while, this OM-sized flat-top has all the mid-range pop you'd want, with big, full, round trebles, and a dry and present fundamental. It's built with a solid Red spruce top and mahogany sides and back, and features wide-X top bracing and transverse tone-bars. If you've ever wanted a guitar that marries the tone of ladder and X bracing -- this is it.
The mahogany neck has a full-feeling soft V profile, a long 25.8" scale length and 1-3/4" nut. Bound ebonized maple fingerboard with pearl dot inlays, triple-bound body and soundhole, Brazilian rosewood pyramid bridge, plastic headstock overlay, and cool double-bound tortoise-celluloid pickguard. The guitar is completely original but for 1960's replacement tuners, and it's in remarkably good condition. No cracks, no internal repairs, unworn frets, gorgeous original finish with a bit of buckle rash on the back. The neck has been nicely reset, and the guitar plays well. Set up by Folkway.
We've never encountered this model Gretsch flat-top before, and can't tell you what model it is with any real certainty. Michael Wright makes mention of a Kay-built Grand Concert Size Spanish Guitar No. 20, in his "Guitar Stories Vol. 2" (Vintage Guitar Books, 2000,pg. 126), with a description that matches this guitar well. It is almost certainly Kay built, and the trim, headstock logo, and neck carve are quite distinctive of the late 1930's.
With chipboard case
The mahogany neck has a full-feeling soft V profile, a long 25.8" scale length and 1-3/4" nut. Bound ebonized maple fingerboard with pearl dot inlays, triple-bound body and soundhole, Brazilian rosewood pyramid bridge, plastic headstock overlay, and cool double-bound tortoise-celluloid pickguard. The guitar is completely original but for 1960's replacement tuners, and it's in remarkably good condition. No cracks, no internal repairs, unworn frets, gorgeous original finish with a bit of buckle rash on the back. The neck has been nicely reset, and the guitar plays well. Set up by Folkway.
We've never encountered this model Gretsch flat-top before, and can't tell you what model it is with any real certainty. Michael Wright makes mention of a Kay-built Grand Concert Size Spanish Guitar No. 20, in his "Guitar Stories Vol. 2" (Vintage Guitar Books, 2000,pg. 126), with a description that matches this guitar well. It is almost certainly Kay built, and the trim, headstock logo, and neck carve are quite distinctive of the late 1930's.
With chipboard case