JPF Home Page Forums Musician Gear and Techniques Guitars and Guitarist Forum Second Childhood Gretsch

Back in the 60's my favorite go to guitar was a Gretsch Astro Jet. I sold it when I left music for marine engineering.... A couple days ago I found out a company is making a replica that even matches the solid mahogany body. Listened to the demos and ...... It arrives Friday

I'm a gretsch fan from way back, would love a hot rod or a country gentleman.

Check out this site Mac http://www.eastwoodguitars.com/

They have a number of Gretsch clones and from what I checked out they have a good build reputation... Also I asked a question about the Astrojet and got an answer back from, I believe, the owner within hours.

Looks nice. I have been getting their emails for a long time but have never bought one. I have seen a couple of good reviews in guitar magazines for Eastwood.

How do the knobs and switches work on that model?

They work like most Gretsch guitars, the knobs are for volume and the switches are bass/normal/brite tones. On the Astrojet you had bridge/both/neck controls ... but on the Eastwood model I understand the middle also has a coil tap pull added.

Yeah, something about eastwood never sat right with me aesthetically, it's like the difference between gibson and epiphone, though I like some epiphones, I don't really seek them out......with the exception of two models....the casino and the j-160.

I tend to agree which is why I have a Gretsch Duo-jet but Gretsch doesn't make a Astrojet and a mid 60's gretsch astro jet goes for $20k+ they are rare.

Ohhhh, don't get me rollin' on guitar prices............I was checking some guitars today that were averaging 30k.........ridiculous.........beautiful rigs though.

I wonder which humbucker technique they use for their pickups? Gretsch and Gibson invented and received patents for two completely different humbucking techniques around the same time (I think the patents were awarded within months of each other). The Gretsch technique, which they call Filtertron, has more of a single coil sound. The Gibson technique has a darker sound and is the technique used by most everyone else.

It is not a Gretsch without that Filtertron sound, unless you are using Gretsch single coil pickups, such as Dynasonics.

By the way, I've got a Country Club with Filtertrons.

From the videos I listened to I would say they are using Gretsch style humbuckers.

It's really hard to nail down the pickups used on an astrojet because a lot of them were special ordered. My original astrojet was ordered with the bar supertrons yet others came with filtertrons. This one looks like it's using the Filtertron style. I have filtertrons on my duojet and will probably keep the ones that come with the guitar but swaping them out for tvjones supertrons is an option down the road.

A quick FYI - It arrived today and yep...sounds like a Gretsch astrojet

Just realized the above was kind of vague. It sounds like an astrojet with Filtronic pick-ups (iconic Gretsch sound). The Supertons had the typical gretsch sound but with a super solid deep bass sound available.