Gretsch G5191TMS Tim Armstrong Electromatic Hollow Body
92 Guitarist February 2013
Photo graPhy by joby se s s i o ns
GRETSCH G5191TMS TIM ARMSTRONG ELECTROMATIC HOLLOW BODY £1,198
ELECTRICS
Gretsch G5191TMS Tim
Armstrong Electromatic
Hollow Body
£1,198
Here’s one pimped punk classic that could make your day.
But don’t you dare call it pink… by Ed Mitchell
I
t’s been a couple of years
since Gretsch first honoured
Rancid frontman and
guitarist, Tim Armstrong, with
a signature Electromatic Series
model based on his beat-to-hell,
70s Baldwin-era Country Club.
Now, Gretsch has pulled the
trigger on a new version of
Armstrong’s Korean-made
guitar, offered with a choice of
trapeze tailpiece or Bigsby
vibrato for the first time, and a
flat pink primer-style finish
with a fishy sounding name.
Yeah, in the USA, tough lads
that won’t admit they like girly
stuff substitute ‘pink’ for the
decidedly less palatable
sounding ‘man salmon’. Daft,
really. No-one ever gave Elvis
a hard time about his pink ’55
Cadillac Fleetwood 60. In the
context of rock ’n’ roll at least,
pink paint like this is pretty
damn cool, and Armstrong’s
Man Salmon hue isn’t a million
miles from the Shell Pink
sprayed on Strats back in the
day. Anyhow, it’s just a colour.
You either like it or you don’t.
Beneath the finish lies a big
hollowbody constructed from
sheets of five-ply laminated
maple. Peer through the bound
f-holes, and you’ll spy two long
wooden tone bars running
along the inside of the guitar’s
back. There are two identical
bars on the underside of the
Electromatic’s top. These back
and top bars are connected by
a couple of sound posts
positioned under either end of
the bridge area. It’s this robust
construction method that
contributes to the guitar’s
impressive sustain and bright
acoustic tone. It also makes this
hollow instrument feel almost
indestructible. You certainly
never feel you have to handle it
with kid gloves.
The slim-profile, glued-in
one-piece maple neck is teamed
with a 305mm radius rosewood
fingerboard and 22 medium
jumbo frets. The well-cut
graphite top nut is aided and
abetted by a zero fret, a feature
carried over from Tim’s
original Country Club. No
matter how you feel about a
zero fret, in this case it
contributes to a comfortably
low action from the open-chord
positions right the way up the
’board. So, don’t knock it ’til
you’ve tried it.
Moving on, a pair of Black
Top Filter’Tron humbuckers
provide this Electromatic’s
amplified voice via two
volumes, two tones, a master
volume and three-way pickup
selector toggle switch. The gold
finish applied to the Bigsby
vibrato, Adjusto-Matic bridge,
strap retainer knobs and Grover
tuners, adds to the Marmite
vibe of the guitar’s aesthetic.
The absence of a Bigsby option
was the biggest grumble about
Tim’s black Electromatic
signature model. To be fair,
that’s because his old Country
Club has a trapeze tailpiece
holding his strings in place. As
you can deduce from our pretty
pictures, you can now lay out
the extra lolly for a licensed
Bigsby B60G vibrato. It would
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