Gretsch 6120 SSLVO Brian Setzer

2005 model...with all the standard features..just like you see in the catalogues..i shan't list them all here...its been covered by others..

this guitar sounds fantastic....first day i had it, i played a solo jazz/easy listening gig with it...thru my tweed vibrolux and an echo pedal...what a great sound...so alive...it breathes...the notes seem to pop out..and then linger nicely....there is air in the sound.....these pickups are amazing...i am working on a surf album now, using this guitar, mostly...looooove the bigsby...

mine plays exceptionally well...i got the action down very low with no problems...and the bridge isnt even down all the way...way to go fender.!!....the older 90's pre-fender gretsch reissues had bad neck/bridge angles..avoid them....!!...the strings would pop out of the saddles...not on this one...i use regular 10's on it...might switich to a wound 3rd but i'm kinda lazy....the neck on mine is very straight....i slightly tightened the rod, after i got it....i'm fussy as hell about the neck on a guitar...and this one was easy as pie to set up.....i love this guitar for the 9 1/2 neck radius....this makes it play more like a telecaster...much easier to play to me than the standard 12 gretsch radius...i mean, it is a BIg difference....the neck is the main reason i went for this model.....i tried one out new in a store...loved it...and then scouted for months for a good deal on a used one....had to drive 50 miles each way to pick it up but so glad i did...i took off the dice knobs and put on real knobs.,.,.i wish the neck was just a little fatter....but it feels very comfortable...the larger size frets are a big plus...i know setzer is a little guy, so maybe he likes the necks small.,,..i have had all the old gretschs ..i mean ALL of them...and i never had one that played or sounded this good...the lacquer finish is worth the price.,....this may cost more, but it is worth it...if you;re gonna buy a grea\tch, dont go 3/4 of the way..go all the way...or dont go...

all the switches and pots seem good and solid to me...its a very solid guitar....i took off the horrid strap locks...and put on gretsch strap buttons....i hated those straplocks.....i dont much like the tuners either but they work really well...i would prefer the traditional gretsch tuners but i can live with these ugly things..,i use it with no backup...no problem...

i bought mine used....

if i could own just one hollowbody...this would be it....and you know what,,...this is my only hollowbody..and i do own one..!!!..oh happy me.....i also own 2 teles and two rickenbacker 12 strings...thats all i need...this gretsch gives you all you need in a hollowbody...it can do straight jazz...straight rock...whatever..and it sounds superb for any style...i dont see any guitar out there that is close to this model....50's orange gretschs are undoubtedly the coolest looking guitars ever made but man, they were so hit or miss in quality and performance...fender and setzer have come up with one that bypasses all the bad points and accentuates all the good points of 50's 6120's......this guitar is not hype...its the best 6120 ever made...

All good.You get what you pay for....Look at the Gretsch site

Suits my eclectic jazz folk classical surf fingerstyle playing.Play it through a variety of valve amps...Pretty sexy sound. I love it.

Pretty sexy action and finish.

Its awesome

Hopefully won't need to....

Been playing a long time.Taken over from the strat at present for electricity gigs and jams.I'm gonna buy another one for a backup

Brian Setzer Gretsch 6120 SSLVO Vintage Maple Orange (Gloss Nitrocellulose) lacquer purchased 9/06...a late 05' model...16" full hollowbody with a 2 piece rock maple neck and a pinned adjustable bridge. Other notable features include: 2 TV Jones Custom filtertron pick-ups, a bound ebonized rosewood fretboard, 59' tressle bracing, a Bigsby B6CB vibrato tailpiece, and sperzel locking tuners. Simply a nicely equpped great looking guitar.

This is where this guitar seperates itsself from all others! It is very versatile and can be used for many different styles, but I mostly play rock and rockabilly with it. I currently play through a Fender Hot Rod Deville (2x12) amp, with a boss overdrive pedal, and switch between a Deluxe Memory Man Analog echo pedal, and my good old Roland RE-301..space echo unit. I am a big Setzer/Rockabilly fan in general, and this guitar does it best! The TV Jones pickups are VERY clean and quiet, and simply sound beautiful; and the 59' tressle bracing gives the guitar a solid feel with great sustain and controllable feedback! Whether your looking for that vintage country twang, jazz/big band, 50's doo-wop, or overdriven rock...this thing delivers with an attitude!!!

Went to GC not looking for a guitar, but ended up leaving with it! LOL. It was brand new, well priced, and just looked amazing! Then I picked it up and plugged it in, and WOW!!! Gretsch really did a nice job with this model. The action was perfect, no flaws, and sounded great. I had to have a few switches tightened and the bigsby lubricated, but it was no biggie and GC was cool about everything. Best neck I have played on a guitar!

I am sure that this guitar will hold up in years to come. The hardware is solid, the build is perfect, and the lacquer will age nicely. It also has Schaller Strap locks, which is a must on a guitar like this! The guitar feels very solid and I def. can depend on it! No backup needed...trust me...

I have only had the guitar for a month or so, however, my experience with Gretsch has been great. No worries!

I have been playing for about 10 years, and own other nice equipment ie.. ( Fender, Gibson, Gretsch 6122 CC Jr( My other gem), Tacoma, etc...) but this guitar is truly in a class of its own. The complete package. I love too many things about this guitar to list! I am amazed by its versatility and sustain, and like others have said, it just has a sound that is like no other! Simply the best I have heard! Stolen or lost is not an option..lol..If you can, please treat yourself to an SSLVO..you won't regret it!

Gretsch 6120SSLVO Brian Setzer model, bought new in 2005. Maple body & neck in vintage orange laq. Ebony fingerboard, TV Jones filterons classics, Bigsby vibrato. Locking tuners. The workmanship is as good or better than any custom shop fender or Gibson I've owned in the past. Three way tone switch.

I play this guitar through a 62 Blonde Bassman with a 15" JBL in the cabinet. I run the guitar to a A/B box then one line goes to a 62" blonde reverb unit and then into the normal channel and the other line goes to a maxon 808 tube screamer then into the bass channel for my lead sound. This works better than any amp set-up I've used over the last 30 years. The normal channel was less gain and better headroom so the clean will stay clean to a very loud setting, and the lead sound breaks up wonderfully and the tube screamer helps for higher gain settings. The guitar sounds good for most anything including rockabilly.

Workmanship is perfect!

no comment I've only had it a week.

One of the best guitars I have ever bought, the filtertrons are amazing and versatile. I love this guitar!

'04 Made in Japan. Specs are on Gretsch website, locking tuners work well, TV Jones Classics, Bigsby, trestle bracing, etc. Includes case. Top quality parts throughout. Love the red position markers! Some of the other reviews will tell you more about the features. Heck, if you're going to spend over $2K on an axe you're going to know ALL about it.

This is where this guitar kills. I use this guitar for everything, mainly into a DRRI with a touch of slapback. Love Setzer stuff, modern swing, rockabilly, etc. and the sounds are there. Nothing else like it. I also play a lot of jazz chord melody using just the neck pickup into the Deluxe Reverb and it sounds rich and full with a clarity not heard from the traditional humbuckers normally used in the genre. Hard to describe in words but the "colors" from extended chords ring with a delicious separation I haven't heard anywhere else. Just fantastic, close your eyes and savor, one of the best sounds I've ever heard come from a guitar period and I've been playing 43 years. The guitar rocks yet has a serious side if you look for it. If I could rate the sound past a 10 I would.

I bought the guitar the instant I saw it, it was brand new, never been played. Got it from GC so I knew I had 30 days to "look it over". Not only was it flawless, I had to laugh how good it was! Not blowing smoke y'all, this guitar is really a level above what one usually sees. Let a friend play (he's a really good player) and the first thing he said was, "what a neck!". Saying it has a great feeling neck is an understatment.

Have only had the guitar for a few months and don't think you can really speak to reliability/durability unless you've had it for a longer while but by starting out with the best components everywhere on the guitar you can assume that it will be good. It feels very solid and stable and I ain't worried about it.

I've never had a problem with Fender, and yes, have had some dealing with them in the warranty department before. They took care of me professionally and promptly.

I've been playing for 43 years and own a dozen or so guitars, six amps, PA, tons of pedals and modeling and recording devices, your basic gear whore. Have had and do have some expensive top end models but the Gretsch SSLVO has a sound like no other. For me, and I don't say this lightly, it also has the BEST sound I've heard. Just beautiful.

if you really want a detailed breakdown of this guitar, gretsch has a great one on their website, so i'll just cover a couple of high points. take a vintage 6120 and fix everything on it... you've got the sslvo. sperzels, graphite nut, tv jones classic filter'trons, the works. mine is an '05 model.

like nothing else out there. bright and twangy, but still capable of great crunch. i play mostly southern rock (drive-by truckers, wilco, etc,) and this thing just begs to be played. the tv jones pups are noise free.
i've tried it through several different amps and it seems to prefer smaller fenders (deluxe reverbs, blues jr.s) than anything else. again this guitar sounds unlike anything else. not quite a les paul, not quite a tele.

perfect out of the box. i work at guitar center so i play A LOT of guitars, and this one had the best out of the box setup ever. i looked it over a hundred times before i bought it and couldn't find any flaws.

thanks to the '59 trestle bracing this thing feels like a rock. it will definitely be my main gigging guitar, with my 5129 now taking a back seat.
and thank god it came with schaller strap locks already installed. you'd have to be asking for trouble to not install them on a guitar this nice.

i'll say this first: fender has been the best thing to happen to gretsch quality-wise. customer support-wise... well, let's just say they're fender and leave it at that.

i've been playing for 18 years and have owned at least one model of everything in that time. this is the finest guitar that has ever picked me ;) if something happened to it i would definitly replace it (after i stopped crying). this is the guitar i have wanted my whole life but could only recently afford. the took the greatest guitar of all time, modernized it, and made a winner!

2004 FMIC, Terada built, 3 layer laminate, Kerfing, TV Jones, 9.45 radius, large fretwire,

Great. If you are a pro player you may want to look into this guitar. A refreshing break from the strat/tele or Gibson PAF sound. The Filtertrons lay sonically halfway between a good Tele bridge and an underwound PAF. You can get lots of twang and spank but still have a bit of humbucker girth. Filtertrons are really the only humbucker made that has real clarity. Think string windings and finger noise, etc. The guitar is quite playable because most of the silly quirks that make Gretschs relatively unpopular have been addressed. A pinned bridge so none of the old slip and slide. Large fret wire so bending is a breeze. 9.45 radius so jumping on here from a vintage Fender radius is no problem. The Bigsby stays in tune. I never use the tremolo on my strats but I love the Bigbsy as it is so subtle and musical. You can play anything on this guitar. The only limitation is that the neck joins the body at the fourteenth fret so pentatonic noodling beyond G above the 12th fret requires some broomstick fingers. One negative is the bridge. It appears to be a Gotoh with universl cutouts. I replaced it first with a Gibson ABR which improved it quite a bit, then stuck on a bar bridge and hit paydirt. I will take tone over exact intontation eight days a week. However, even with the Bar bridge on the pinned base the intonation was pretty much right on the money. The trestle bracing does give the guitar more of a 335 solid feel. Indeed for such a large body guitar it puts out very little acoustic tone. As a result it can be cranked pretty loud on stage without any issues of uncontrollable feedback. The controllable feedback is a blast.

This is a Japanese guitar from the Terada factory. The Japanese have been making the most consistently great sounding factory built guitars since the mid 80's. Japanese guitars are high end guitars these days. My only beef with Japanese guitars is usually the hardware. (But a mid 80's Tokai Springy Sound strat used a bridge/block as good as a 50's Fender 20 years before Callaham started to make clone bridges.) Here, the only problem is the bridge as the pots, knobs and switches are all top notch.

Probably the best built Gretsch ever. With the lacquer finish and steady use it will certainly age nicely. All the post FMIC Gretschs are really well put together. I have played the poly version of this guitar and to Gretsch's credit the poly finish is extremely thin, and the post FMIC Setzers with the poly are just as good if you like poly. I simply prefer lacquer and am more than happy to pay more for it. Those who share my preference need no explanation for why.

N/A I always fix my own guitars.

Posted this review simply because I think this is a truly great new guitar. A great stage filling guitar that can cover a lot of bases yet that has its own unique sound and feel. I never owned a Gretsh before this one. Other guitars 1957, 1959 Strats, 1967 Tele, 58 LP Junior, 69 SG, Tokai Les Paul and Tokai strats. Amps: Vox AC30, Top-hat Club Royale, home built aluminum JTM45, Princeton reverb, 1955 Super, and various Valco made combos. Pedals: Ibanez AD-9, TIM boost, Ross clone compressor.