![]() Stephen Stern at the company’s Custom Shop told me the Penguin is the Shop’s most popular model. ![]() Since Gretsch’s revival in the late 1980s, the company has made various reissues of the Penguin. There must have been even fewer double-cuts. Ed Ball has done the best research into 50s Gretsches, published in his Ball’s Manual book, and his educated guess is that fewer than 50 single-cut Penguins were made. Then in 1961, there was a change to the new double-cut style that Gretsch was applying across most of its models, hollow or solid. Around ’58, that meant a shift to humbucking Filter’Trons, thumbnail markers, horizontal headstock logo, Space Control bridge, and a control layout of three volume knobs and a selector each for tone and pickups. The few Penguins that Gretsch made mirrored the changes going on elsewhere at Gretsch. That same year, a Les Paul Goldtop listed at $235, a sunburst Strat $274.50. The White Falcon, meanwhile, listed at a cool $650. A June ’56 list pitched the Penguin at the top of Gretsch’s solidbody models at $475, beating the $400 Chet 6121 into second place, ahead of the $350 Round Up, $310 Silver Jet, $300 Jet Fire Bird, and $290 Duo Jet. It was absent from any catalogues I’ve seen, it appeared on only a handful of pricelists and was briefly name-checked in a single brochure. The markers were etched hump-tops, the pickups were single-coil Dynasonics, the gold plastic pickguard featured a little penguin at rest, and the body usually had a banjo-style armrest.Īlmost as soon as it was introduced, the Penguin seemed like a wayward creature wandering a little aimlessly among Gretsch’s more successful models. The control layout consisted of four jewel-inset knobs (three volume, one tone) plus a pickup selector. All the metalwork was gold-plated, including the fancy Grover Imperial tuners, Melita bridge, and a stylish new tailpiece, soon nicknamed the Cadillac because its bold V shape was similar to the car logo. The neck was topped by a large winged headstock, which had gold sparkle decorations borrowed from Gretsch’s established drum department. The Penguin’s single-cut body was 13.5 inches wide and finished in a striking white finish, complete with gold-trim binding. The Falcon was a stunner, and the Gretsch 6134 White Penguin, launched in 1956, followed virtually all the contemporary Falcon’s flamboyant trappings. The Penguin’s partner, the lavish White Falcon, had already set a high benchmark for Gretsch’s hollowbody electrics. And now a further model was in the works: the White Penguin. ![]() The sparkle-finish Silver Jet and the country-flavoured Round Up followed in ’54, and then the Chet Atkins Solid Body and the red-finish Jet Fire Bird in ’55, all with the same general construction style and base feature sets. The pickups were then mounted to the top. To this they added a pressed laminated maple top, which joined the back only where the box was not routed, primarily at the sides and around and under the bridge. For its Duo Jet, Gretsch routed out a mahogany back to provide a sort of sectioned box, which accommodated the electrical bits and hook-up wires. And while it came on like a solid, with the general look of Gibson’s new Les Pauls, it was made differently. Gretsch had produced its first solidbody-style guitar a few years earlier, the Duo Jet. Once the laughter died down, the team began to consider the practicalities. And what’s more, he had a name for it: the White Penguin. With that in mind, Jimmie Webster told the meeting he thought it would be a good idea to produce a matching ‘solidbody’ version of the high-end White Falcon. The previous year had been a big one for Gretsch, with the Chet Atkins 6120 and the White Falcon both launched to considerable acclaim – and along with the hollowbody 6120, the company had introduced a chambered version, the 6121. The firm’s bigwigs, notably Fred Gretsch, Jimmie Webster and Duke Kramer, were talking about new models for 1956. Imagine the meeting at the Gretsch HQ in Brooklyn.
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