Mike Nesmith with Gretsch Viking in a promotional photo
Comprised of actors Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and musicians Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith, they were as John Lennon quoted one of the funniest things he had seen.
As you will see from the main picture, the group were given Gretsch instruments to play, Mike Nesmith often toted a natural 12 string electrotone double cutaway guitar but on occasions would slip in the odd appearance on a Gretsch Viking.
The Viking was introduced as a lower priced version of the famous White Falcon guitar, which by the mid 60's had gone the way of the majority of hollow bodies and become the double cutaway.
My 1974 Gretsch Viking
Available in natural finish or the sunburst offerings, it had sumptuous gold plating on the hardware and originally a skeleton type Bigsby trem with an extending arm which also featured on the White Falcon.
Pickup selection was of the three way switch variety, originally a Gretsch up, middle, down type of switch and later a three way across switch as on the above later guitar.
Essentially the original Viking had few changes until it reached the Baldwin ownership era and it was around 74 that Chet Atkins, still working with Gretsch and a 6120 endorsee asked for the guitar to have a centre block fitted.
The centre block was essentially a chambered construction which located the pickups in side wood compartments to prevent feedback. This allowed the use of open F holes which had not been present on the 6120DC but that changed with the centre block system and these found their way on to the 70's version of the 6120 the 7660.
Innovations on the Gretsch Viking courtesy of Jimmy Webster were a tuning fork bridge, much derided and misunderstood and the 'T-Zone' in which the upper frets past the 12th were slanted slightly to improve intonation.
String spacing was courtesy of a space control bridge although the Supertron pickups had only blades and not individual screws for the strings to go over. The Superton pickups were more powerful than the old Filtertons and they had blades which could be eased up to adjust the string height to blade top height which might be useful on stage.
The neck was very slim and easy to play, with Neo Classical fret markers and a the zero fret.
On the 74, the machine heads were the 'dumpy button' type with closed backs, neck truss rod adjustment was via a Burns type gearbox accessed through a plastic plate and turned with a special key.
My guitar came from a Gretsch re-seller and it was his personal guitar until he could no longer play and I purchased it in 1985. It had a great sound and was very versatile, using it for jazz and modern music of the time.
In the early 80's the Gretsh double cut guitars could be bought quite reasonably, not being in vogue until the new wave romantic scene where groups like Haircut 100 toted the Gretsch thin line guitars.
The Centre Block on this era guitar made the guitar heavy, it was like a standard 6120 and a case to hold!
Having a back injury I could not use it for more than 3 numbers at a time on stage. It was a nicely made guitar from the Baldwin era and a good first Gretsch.
No comments:
Post a Comment