Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

About a year and a half ago, I bought the budget Gretsch, the 5120. I liked it a lot, the one thing that I found weird was that the pickups sounded more like Gibson styled pickups than Gretsch, but it didn't bother me much, Being a fan of that thick humbucker sound, but knew that someday I would upgrade.

A year and a half later, I went through with it, did all the work myself (with help from my drummer and my sister's boyfriend).

Started off with this...

Notice the affectionately named "Gretschbucker"



And as of last week, it now looks like this...



The look is very similar of course, what changed drastically is the sound!

The bridge pickup sounds much more dynamic and responsive to picking technique, a bit brighter, and to use one of "those" words, it sounds more "Open".

The neck sounds nice and smooth, and not as muddy as the stock one. This one doesn't sound as good when overdriven, it gets a bit too woofy and muddy to my taste, but it does fit nicely in a lot of the tunes we play.


A few clips to get the point across... don't mind the ****** camera audio though!








End result = TVJones => Great company, great product!

Gigged with it twice already, love it!

Nice work Nick. TV Jones makes a very nice product.

Tweaking your sound both at the amplifier and with individual volume knobs also makes quite a difference in your tone.

Why not re-record Mr. Bojangles for us so that we can compare it with your Gretschbucker version.

Now you something that amounts to a real Gretsch. TV Jones' pickups make a world of difference on that guitar. The stock pickups are pretty dire-generic humbuckers that sound ******. Most guys mod those guitars by changing pickups.

Good stuff Nick. Glad to see you are enjoying this new section.

Two gigs last week with this guitar all night (usually I switch it up halfway through just for fun, but I kept the Gretsch all night).

One more tomorrow, one next Friday (plenty of pics should arise) and a benefit gig on the Tuesday after that!

Still hoping to hear Mr. Bojangles with the TV Jones classics.

admin wrote:Still hoping to hear Mr. Bojangles with the TV Jones classics.

I'll see what I can do sometime this week.

Here is my 6120 with 2 supertron protypes that tv jones made for me. When I called him to ask about these pickups they weren't even in the line yet. So he said I have several coils on my bench that were for billy gibbons and brian setzer to try out, would you like me to make you a set? Of course I said yes. When the pickups arrived they are signed and dated and said prototype on the bottom. I also had him make me up a custom harness to go with the pickups. The result was one of the most beautiful sounding 6120s I have ever heard. A buddy of mine goes to a Brian Setzer concert, center row, guess what, there he is playing those pickups. Now I got the idea when watching chet atkins playing his 1959 country gentleman. I saw he had 2 supertron gretsch pickups in the video. So that kind of swayed my decison to put these in. Here are some pictures.