Members aerorockjax Posted June 29, 2005 Members Share Posted June 29, 2005 I was at GC today in Jacksonville, Fl and fisrt thing that caught my eye were the grestches. I saw the $499 Gretsch Electromatic (low end) duojets. I gave it a good test drive. It sure looks really cool and not too far away from a real gretsch duojet. Comfortable weight(not heavy). The pickups sounded decent but not as great as i hoped. Heres what sucked bigtime with this guitar, I couldn't get the damn thing in tune and kept going out more after a drop of playing. It was a real pain. The tuners have really cheesy feel which may be partially to blame but my bet is the nut is poorly cut. It has roller bridge. The intonantion was a bit off but thats an easy fix. I spent good time with the guitar troubleshooting cause i really wanted to like this duojet. The nut did look ok from inspection (without taking strings off though). Streching didn't help, strings weren't really old, but perhaps strings were improperly installed but it shouldn't have been this bad. Ignoring the tuning issue(which is hard to do) the bigsby feel was smooth and feel of neck and playablility feel were ok good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bgmacaw Posted June 30, 2005 Members Share Posted June 30, 2005 My Electromatic SparkleJet had the same sort of problems when it was new. A new set of strings, a few tweaks to the nut and other standard setup things fixed it right up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members docjeff Posted June 30, 2005 Members Share Posted June 30, 2005 You have to be able to separate setup issues from more serious structural problems. It's difficult to do until you get the guitar home and have a chance to work it over. When you buy from Guitar Center, you just don't get the service that a really good shop would provide. A decent smaller, independent retailer would probably be willing to set the guitar up for you so you could try it under optimal conditions. A lot of people pass on perfectly good--if not potentially great--guitars simply because they have crappy strings and the truss rod needs a tweak. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members harold heckuba Posted June 30, 2005 Members Share Posted June 30, 2005 DocJeff is right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members gnugear Posted June 30, 2005 Members Share Posted June 30, 2005 just got mine today and it plays pretty well out of the box. Some buzzing on the low E and G strings that I need to addressed, but other than that, I'm really happy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Blackbelt1 Posted June 30, 2005 Members Share Posted June 30, 2005 aerorockjax,I think I've played that same guitar in the same store! I liked it a lot; I noticed it didn't hold tune very well but I attributed it to some crappy strings and lack of a decent setup.~Blackbelt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ExtraGum Posted June 30, 2005 Members Share Posted June 30, 2005 It's hard to shell out $499 for the MIC Gretsches when we just saw the last batch of (also overpriced) Electromatics blown out just this past year at the same Guitar Centers... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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