AFTER 60 YEARS NEIL IS REUNITED WITH HIS FIRST 6120
Neil bought his first Gretsch 6120 in 1963, in Winnipeg and played it in his first band, The Squires. The unusual flame-maple top on this guitar is extremely rare.
An old story in the life of young musicians, he sold it in 1965, to buy a Gibson 12-string. But the story did not end there. With a lot of research and recognizing the distinctive grain, he was recently able to reacquire it.
His next 6120 is the guitar he played with Buffalo Springfield and still plays today.
Over the years, he has used it with CSNY,
at the first Farm Aid 1985,
with the International Harvesters and Waylon Jennings on Nashville TV,
Photo by Larry Cragg
with the Shocking Pinks and other of his bands.
Both of these 6120s are single-cutaway, post ’57 pre ’62 issues. With 12-pole Filter’Tron humbucking pickups and Bigsby vibratos, they are considered the best of the Gretsch years.
How they work. There are two volume knobs on the lower bout, one for each pickup. The master volume is located by the cutaway. There are two switches. The right switch is a pickup selector: up for the neck pickup, middle for both pickups and down for the bridge pickup, the position Neil almost always uses. The left switch is a tone control. Middle position, where Neil keeps it, is straight through. The other two positions cut the highs.
In 1962 Gretsch changed the 6120 design to a double-cutaway. Neil’s 1967 is an example of this, also with Filter’Trons. This one was sometimes played by Frank “Poncho” Sampedro with Crazy Horse.
A little history of the 6120. Designed in 1953, with the help of Chet Atkins, they are thin-line hollow body guitars and originally came with single-coil DeArmond DynaSonic Pickups. Chet Atkins quit playing his after a few years because, it is said, that he felt the bright orange finish was too rockabilly, moving on to the Gretsch Country Gentleman, with its more subdued brown finish. In my opinion, when they changed to the 12-pole Filter’Tron pickups, in late ’57, the tone was greatly improved.