Gretsch

• 1. Introduction

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  Gretsch was born from a shop at 128 Middleton Street in Brooklyn, New York, where a 27-year-old German immigrant named Friedrich Gretsch set up to make banjos, tambourines, and drums. The year was 1883, and Friedrich had arrived in the United States only shortly before. He was building instruments for marching bands, not the electric guitars the name would later be known for. He died in 1895 at the age of 39, and the company passed to his wife and his fifteen-year-old son, Fred. How did a Brooklyn drum maker become the guitar in George Harrison's hands on the Ed Sullivan Show? Why does a pickup invented out of frustration with hum still carry a strange apostrophe in its name? And how did this family business slip away, fall into one of the largest bankruptcies on record, and find its way home again? The answers run through a humbucker, a country guitarist, and four generations of the Gretsch family.

• 2. The Brooklyn Empire

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  Fred Gretsch took a small instrument shop and turned it into a cluster of buildings. After incorporating the business, he added Gretsch Building #1 at 109 South 5th Street in 1903, then Gretsch Building #2 at 104-114 South 4th Street in 1910. In 1916 came a new ten-story tower, Gretsch Building #4 at 60 Broadway. The company eventually owned or operated six properties in the immediate area, including a warehouse on Dunham Place. That same year of 1916, Fred Gretsch Sr. moved operations into the larger facility, the move that let Gretsch grow into a prominent American instrument maker. The first Gretsch-branded guitar appeared in 1928. At the time it was just one of 3,000 instruments in the Gretsch catalog, and the firm was still primarily a drum company. Gretsch Building #4 stayed in the family's hands for a long time. The Gretsch family would own it until 1999.

• 3. A Family At War

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  World War II reshaped who ran the company. Fred Gretsch Sr. retired in 1942 and handed the family business to his son, Fred Gretsch Jr. Soon after taking over, Fred Jr. left to serve as a Navy commander. That put the firm in the hands of his younger brother, William Walter "Bill" Gretsch. Bill Gretsch died in 1948, and Fred Jr. returned to run the company once more. In the post-war years, Fred Jr. pushed Gretsch toward electric guitars. He worked alongside two Gretsch employees, Christopher 'Duke' Kramer and Jimmie Webster, and together with the guitarist Chet Atkins they set out to overhaul the look and sound of Gretsch electrics. The name Duke Kramer is worth remembering. Decades later, when the company nearly vanished, he would be called back to keep it alive.

• 4. The Filter'Tron

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  Single-coil pickups before 1957 carried a flaw built into their design: they hummed. That hum frustrated Chet Atkins, who began a collaboration with Gretsch in 1954 to build electric guitars carrying his endorsement. The partnership produced the Gretsch 6120 hollowbody and, later, the Country Gentleman. To fight the hum, Atkins worked with the American inventor and engineer Ray Butts. Their solution connected two single-coil pickups in series and out of phase, a "humbucking" design. This may have been the first humbucker pickup ever made. The claim was lost to Gibson Guitars, who filed a patent for their own humbucker design first. Butts' version became the Gretsch Filter'Tron, used on Gretsch guitars starting in 1957. It remains highly regarded for its unique sound. The Filter'Tron was only part of a wider transformation happening on the bodies of the guitars themselves.

• 5. Sparkle And Cars

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  Jimmie Webster looked at the sparkle finishes Gretsch already used on its drums and suggested putting them on guitars. The idea, floated in 1954, produced the Gretsch Sparkle Jet. Webster also drew on the American cars of the era, borrowing their finishes for the guitars. By the mid-1950s the company had introduced a string of models. There was the 6120 "Nashville," and the 6128 Duo Jet, a chambered "solid body" played by Bo Diddley. Two more arrived: the Country Club and the White Falcon. Gretsch sold guitars with Chet Atkins' name printed on the pickguard. That endorsement, combined with players like Eddie Cochran and Duane Eddy reaching for Gretsch guitars, helped drive sales upward. The biggest jump in popularity was still ahead, and it would arrive on live television.

• 6. The Harrison Effect

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  George Harrison played a Gretsch Country Gentleman during The Beatles' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Gretsch sales soared overnight. Harrison's association with the brand had begun in the band's early years, and his choice of guitar carried Gretsch into the mid-1960s on a wave of new popularity. By then Gretsch instruments had already enjoyed market prominence through the 1950s. The Beatles broadened that reach to a new generation watching at home. Yet for all this momentum, the man at the top of the company faced a problem money could not solve. Fred Gretsch could not find a successor.

• 7. Lost And Found

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  Fred Gretsch sold the company in 1967 to Baldwin Pianos, never having found a suitable heir. Gretsch became a subsidiary of that firm. In mid-1969, Baldwin moved Gretsch instrument manufacturing out of Brooklyn to a plant in DeQueen, Arkansas. Then in 1983, Baldwin's holding company and several subsidiaries were forced into bankruptcy. At the time it was the largest bankruptcy ever, carrying a total debt of over 9 billion dollars. In 1984, former Baldwin CEO Richard Harrison bought the Baldwin music divisions and brought back former Gretsch employee Duke Kramer to run the Gretsch division. The family returned the following year. In 1985, Fred W. Gretsch, great-grandson of Friedrich and nephew of Fred Gretsch Jr., became president. The first guitars under his leadership came in 1988, a series of Traveling Wilburys commemorative guitars that bore little resemblance to earlier Gretsch models. In 1989, the company restarted large-scale production based on classic Gretsch designs.

• 8. New Owners, Old Names

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  The Bigsby Electric Guitars brand was sold to Gretsch in 1999, then sold on to Fender twenty years later in 2019. The relationship with Fender ran deeper than a single brand. In late 2002, Gretsch and the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation reached an agreement that gave Fender control over the marketing, production, and distribution of guitars. The Gretsch family kept ownership of the company itself. Today Gretsch focuses on electric and acoustic guitars and drums, and its catalog still carries the names forged in the 1950s and 1960s. The 6120 still bears Chet Atkins' name, the 6128 Duo Jet endures, and the 6136 White Falcon remains. The Synchromatic Sparkle Jet later found a new champion in Matt Bellamy of Muse, proof that finishes borrowed from drums and American cars still catch the light on a modern stage.