The Cowboy's Dream Guitar!

This 13 1/4-inch-wide semi-solid body guitar weighs just 7.30 lbs. and has a nice, fat nut width of just under 1 11/16 inches and a scale length of 24 1/2 inches. Chambered mahogany body with a "G" branded into the front and with studded leather tooled with Western motifs around the sides, mahogany neck, and bound rosewood fretboard with 22 frets and inlaid pearl hump-top block position markers. Headstock with inlaid pearl Gretsch "T-roof" logo and pearl horseshoe inlay. Individual Grover StaTite tuners with oval metal buttons. Two DeArmond single-coil pickups, with an outputs of 3.10k, and 3.09k. Tortoiseshell pickguard with engraved steer's head. Four controls (master tone and two individual volume controls on lower treble bout, one master volume control on cutaway bout) and one three-way selector switch on upper bass bout. Metal knobs with cross-hatch pattern on sides and arrow on top. Melita Synchro-Sonic bridge and G-hole flat tailpiece with Western-style belt buckle covering the string anchors. All hardware gold-plated. Apart from some extremely minor belt-buckle wear on the back of the body, this is an exceptionally clean and original example. Housed in its original white leather "cowboy" case trimmed with "western-style" embossed brown leather, interior with red plush lining and Gretsch ribbon intact. The guitar also has the the following original (1955) ‘tags’…Gretsch inspection tag; Gretsch Guarantee Registration Card; Melita Bridge Directions for use; Gretsch instruction booklet; Gretsch Gold hang tag; Gretsch Guitar polishing cloth instructions; Gretsch Guitar polishing cloth plastic bag; Gretsch Guarantee in original Gretsch envelope.

Aimed at the rising number of country players, Gretsch adorned the Round Up with unrelenting Western decoration. "The Round Up had a steer's head logo on the headstock and pickguard. There were various Western motifs (mostly steer's heads and cacti) engraved into the block fingerboard markers. A belt buckle with a homely wagon-train scene was attached to the tailpiece. There was even a big G (for Gretsch) actually branded into the front of the 'Western' orange-finish body, which had metal-studded leather stuck around its sides embossed with yet more cacti and steer's heads. And to hang all this from the shoulders of the adoring new owner, the guitar came with a leather strap encrusted with rhinestones and decked out the obligatory steers and cacti. Subtle it was not. Gretsch optimistically described the Round Up as having 'masculine beauty'" (Tony Bacon and Paul Day, The Gretsch Book, p. 22).