I'll be honest, I'm not a huge fan of the 5120. I can't help but compare it to my 6118T with TV Classics and it isn't fair. I know this. I can't help it though. That's why, even though I have mod ideas galore for the guitar because of its price and similarity to the upper end models, I haven't persued it seriously.
And recently a buddy of mine bought one and a mini Marshall Zakk Wylde stack. He deployed and left all of that with me to watch (and I wouldn't turn that down any day) and I messed around with his amp and my annie, but I never really paid too much attention to his 5120. It just hung there on the wall next to my annie as a little reminder to myself about how another Gretsch would look in the house (good!).
But my friend came back and took back all of his stuff, bought another guitar and is starting to learn to play. Between the Gretsch and the LTD AX-50, he's got a wide spectrum of sounds covered guitarwise and his amp is actually pretty good (especially considering the price).
Well, on Friday we went to his house for lunch so he could let the dog out and I got a hold of his AX which BADLY needed tuning, so much so I put it down. It's a cool guitar, the satin silver finish on the neck makes for very quick movements and the neck is actually pretty chunky without being fat, something I wasn't really expecting from a guitar that seems so close to shred status. But I can't tune by ear and didn't want to put time into trying to do so when I know his Gretsch has been untouched since he took it back. So I pulled it out of the case and plugged it in and turned on the dirty channel and turned up the volume. He had been saying he couldn't get a metal sound, the amp wasn't doing what he wanted it to do (I remember being frustrated thinking about the sound in my head and how it is NOT matching the sound coming out of the amp) so I was trying to adjust it to help him.
The 5120 kept the pace with the AX, a very metal guitar. I mean, it's dedicated to the genre (I'd like to see anyone try to say otherwise just looking at its shape). The fact that the Gretsch did everything just as well really says something about versatility because I was able to switch to blues, jazz, country, rock, rockabilly, and metal all with a couple flips of switches, pushes of buttons and tweaks of knobs (on the amp).
The best part was the feedback. It did feedback but I had it up kind of loud and was sitting right in front of it. The odds of the pickups picking up their own sound from the speakers was ridiculously high considering where I was and how loud it was. The feedback caused notes to sustain for an eternity, surprisingly without going into the WHHHEEEEEEEEE phase. It just helped the note along and I'm not kidding, I could have held the note forever so long was I was willing to add some vibrato to it.
Which I was.
My mission stopped being adjusting the amp, it sounded plenty metal to me, and start pushing this guitar. I started playing wicked thrash on it and while the pickups weren't tight and some notes were lost probably from my sloppy playing, they did sound good.
I had a blast. The neck, which seemed so cumbersome to me before what with it not having a V contour was actually pretty comfortable and I had a lot of fun.
I remarked to the guy that he's got a really great set up and should maybe consider getting over his idea that Gretsch can't do metal based solely on his looks. I mean, I played the hell out of that thing and it took it all in stride.
Great stuff.
So I walked away with a new appreciation and less hesitation of the possibility of getting a 5120. They're great guitars.
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