Built For Speed…

This Cherry Red Mahogany Corvette Solidbody weighs just 6.00 lbs. and has a nut width of 1 11/16 inches and a wonderful medium-to-thick neck profile. Thirteen and a quarter inch wide, just under one and a half inch thick, one-piece solid mahogany body with beveled edges. One-piece mahogany neck with a scale length of 24 1/2 inches, a Brazilian rosewood fretboard, 21 original 'thin' frets and clay dot position markers. Black faced headstock with Gretsch "T-roof" logo silk-screened in gold. The serial number "44859" is stamped on the top edge of the headstock. Kluson Deluxe 'double-line' closed-back strip tuners with white plastic oval buttons. One Hi-Lo'Tron single-coil pickup in the bridge position with an output of 3.32k. Two-layer black on white lucite pickguard with twelve screws. Two-layer, bell-shaped, black on white lucite truss-rod cover at body end of neck secured by three screws. Two controls (one volume, one tone) on pickguard. Chrome "Arrow-through-G" knobs with cross-hatch pattern on sides. The pots are dated "615 7604 6205" (ROC, February 1962). Gretsch bar bridge and trapeze tailpiece with horizontal lines on cross-bar. The tuners on this guitar are Kluson 'double-line' - we would normally expect to see Kluson 'single-line' on a 1961/62 guitar - but does anyone really care! This is a near mint example of this Gretsch alternative to Gibson's Les Paul Junior. This is certainly the cleanest example of an all original late 1961 / early 1962 Corvette that we have seen. There is a minute amount of belt buckle scarring on the back (nothing through the finish) and the bare minimum of fading to the cherry finish on the body. There is a small area on the back of the headstock where a rectangular label has been removed. The first few frets show some signs of wear but will certainly sustain many more years of playing… The guitar looks, plays and sounds quite wonderful. Housed in the original Gretsch tan softshell case with green felt lining (9.25).

"In the early 1960s, Gretsch attempted to move into the inexpensive solidbody market primarily controlled by Gibson's Les Paul and SG Junior and Special Models. If the Model 6128 Duo Jet, Model 6129 Silver Jet and Model 6131 Jet Firebird were the upper part of the range, like Gibson's Les Paul Custom and Standard Models, the Corvette Solid-body Double Cutaway guitar covered the bottom part of the spectrum. In 1961 the denizens of these lower reaches were non-contoured, slab-bodied solid-bodies reminiscent of the Les Paul Junior in cherry red and TV finish. 1961 Corvettes were available in two colors: the $148 dark cherry red-stained Model 6132 in Mahogany and the $185 Platinum Grey... At 13 1/2-inches-wide and 1 1/2-inches-deep with a 24 1/2-inch scale on a full-access neck, you'd swear the Corvette was a Les Paul Junior. A plain headstock with a 'Gretsch' decal, unbound, dot-inlaid rosewood fingerboard, one chrome-plated Hi-Lo'Tron pickup, large pickguard to cover the electronics routing, body-accessed truss rod with a square truss rod cover, small, chrome trapeze-type tailpiece, movable ebony bridge and chrome 'G'-indent control knobs are standard on the unobtrusive little slab. The 1961 Corvettes represented a wonderfully affordable option to Gibson's Les Paul Junior. As was too often its habit, however, Gretsch proceeded to maim the model and completely changed the body style of the Corvette in 1962 solely to mimic Gibson's move to the SG body shape. This second version Corvette persisted, without major change, until 1968 or '69 when it was removed from availability. SG-like right down to its scalloped, sculptured cutaways and body edges, the 1962 Model 6132 in Cherry Red features a 3-on-side headstock, usually body-accessed truss rod (later in the year, headstock-accessed) with a bullet-shaped, not square, truss rod cover and a small trapeze tailpiece. The Platinum Grey Model 6133 is no longer offered... In 1965 the 'reverse', 2-plus-4 headstock appears for the first time on all 'vettes" (Jay Scott, The Guitars of the Fred Gretsch Company, pp. 212-213).