'Nitron Daze'

1955 Gretsch 6129 Silver Jet.

This featherweight 13 1/4-inch-wide guitar weighs just 6.60 lbs. and has a nice, fat nut width of over 1 11/16 inches and a scale length of 24 1/2 inches. Chambered mahogany body, pressed arched top with silver sparkle plastic laminate, one-piece mahogany neck with a wonderful fat profile. Bound Brazilian rosewood fretboard with 22 medium-thin frets and inlaid pearloid block position markers. Headstock with inlaid pearl Gretsch "T-roof" logo. Four-ply binding (white/black/white/black) on the top of the guitar. Individual Grover StaTite open-back tuners with oval metal buttons. Two single-coil DeArmond Dynasonic pickups with outputs of 3.44k and 3.39k. Silver lucite pickguard with Gretsch "T-roof" logo engraved in black from the underside. Four controls (two volume and one tone on the lower treble bout and one master volume control on the treble horn), plus a three-way pickup selector switch on upper bass bout. The pots are stamped "615 1498 414" (IRC, April 1954). "Plain Arrow" Chrome knobs with cross-hatch pattern on sides and 'plain arrow' on top. Black Melita Synchro-Sonic bridge with chrome saddles on ebony base and chrome cut-out "G-hole flat" tailpiece. This is one of the earliest Silver Jets, with the serial number "15064" printed on a label inside the control cavity with the model number "6129." The serial number is also engraved on the outside of the control cavity cover. The plastic 'rings' (between the pickups and the body) have been replaced due to the quite common 'disintegration' of the original tortoiseshell material. Apart from a few very minor surface marks on the back and edges and a small area of discoloration on the silver sparkle top just by the bass-side of the neck pickup, this is an exceptionally clean and totally original example. The neck has been re-fretted (with the original gauge fret-wire) so expertly that it is almost impossible to tell. A superb example of a beautiful piece of guitar history. Housed in the original two-tone gray hardshell case with maroon plush lining (9.00).

Gretsch serial numbers for 1955 began with "13000" and ended in the "16000" range. The original cost of this guitar was a huge $230…

"In 1953 Gretsch launched its first solidbody, the single-cutaway Duo Jet. In fact, the guitar was a semi-solid with routed channels and pockets inside, but the visual effect was certainly of a solidbody instrument. In its early years the new Duo Jet had, unusually, a body front covered in a black plastic material, as used on some Gretsch drums. It also had Gretsch's unique two-piece strap buttons (an early take on the idea of locking strap buttons) and the Melita Synchro-Sonic Bridge" (Tony Bacon, Electric Guitars: The Illustrated Encyclopedia, pp. 163-165).

"1954's 6128 Duo Jet and the Model 6129 Silver Jet were fraternal twins… The 6128's shiny sibling the Model 6129 Silver Jet bears precisely the same characteristics as its black brother with the obvious exception, of course, of its silver sparkle Nitron drum material top. Preeminently collectible on today's vintage guitar market, the Silver Jet occasionally appears with a factory-original, fixed-arm Bigsby B-3 aluminium vibrato tailpiece combined, not with a Bigsby bridge, but a chrome-plated Melita. Bigsby tailpieces were not standard on any Jet-series guitar (they were stock on the model 6121 Chet Atkins Solidbody) but could be custom-ordered at the player's request and at extra charge; this rarely occurred, however. Despite the fact that Gretsch had been making drums since the late-19th Century and offered a wide variety of sparkle, pearl and metallic finishes on them, no single cutaway Model 6129, or any other model number, with a sparkle top other than silver sparkle has been uncovered… Earliest pickguards for 1954 are white plastic without "Gretsch" inscribed on it… Duo Jets and Silver Jets for 1955 looked exactly the same as their 1954 counter parts with the exception of the aforementioned pickguard change: the white, unengraved, uncut 'guard is more globular, rounder than before, is clear Lucite painted silver from the underside, pantograph-engraved on a radius with a black "Gretsch" block letter logo, and is cut to fit around the DeArmond pickups' metal mounting rings." (Jay Scott, Gretsch: The Guitars of the Fred Gretsch Company, pp. 92-93).