USED Gretsch 6119 Mid 60's Chet Atkins Tenessean Walnut w/OHSC
Vintage 6 String Hollowbody featuring a slim 16" wide body with simulated f-holes, 2 piece maple neck and rosewood fingerboard.
"Put yourself in the place of the World's greatest guitarist's. With the Gretsch Chet Atkins series, you're in the best of company." ...from the Gretsch 1965 Catalog
This Classic Tenessean is known for it's Slim 16" Electrotone Hollow body of 2" thickness with simulated F-Holes.
The original 6119 Tenessean from 1958 featured a Single Filtertron Pickup in the Bridge and an impressive Red finish, although there were some in Classic Gretsch Orange.
Then it moved to this current design.
Originally with Hi-Lo Tron pickups, this Tenessean has had the pickups replaced with higher output Gretsch Filtertron pickups - a popular thing done to these and the Anniversary models that also featured Hi-Lo tron pickups.
Read about this Used guitar...
This has a bit of an interesting back story to it.
The most recent owner purchased this in the United States and when he bought it, there was a large American Eagle - similar to a US Govt Crest - on the headstock.
Unique, yes but not that odd considering people have put more bizarre designs on headstocks but...
The guitar had, at one point, been "Modded" to be an 11 String (!?!)
So, there were 5 extra holes for tuning pegs and the nut had been slotted for said 11 strings. I think that can be considered odd. 10 string I get, but 11?
The Eagle Crest was covering most of the Gretsch Logo but was fairly easy to remove.
Some of the holes, that had been plugged up, took out various bits of the Gretsch Logo too. My guess is that the previous owner had the hols plugged up and used the Eagle crest to try to cover the plugs (and had been painted over a bit)
The other odd thing... normally these wouldn't have had a Gretsch Horseshoe inlay and, instead, have had a Gretsch badge. There was clearly an imprint of an original Horseshoe inlay AND evidence of a badge.
Master repairman Ted Woodford has fixed these mods, and brought this guitar back to normal.
He inlayed a new Horseshoe and fixed the Original Gretsch Logo. Did a great job!
Re-finnished the headstock and added a veneer/re-finnished back of headstock.
You can still slightly see evidence of thos added holes but it's much better than it was.
Ted documents most of repairs like this on his youtube channel - you can view the repairs that he did to this guitar during the process of doing the repair.
So...
Other than the headstock repair.
This is in Very Good / excellent condition - the body and, especially, the binding is in excellent condition. It's actually rare to find one from the mid 60's where the binding is fully intact/hasn't dried out or started to crumble.
The original Hi-Lo tron pickups have been replaced with Vintage period correct Filtertron pickups so have the pickup surrounds - with gold Gretsch surrounds.
The bigsby is original but the arm is not, it's from a gold bigsby.
The original tuners have been with, you guessed it... Gold Imperial Grover tuners again period correct.
The pickguard, original would have been a grey/silver has been changed to the Gretsch gold guard you would associate with a 6120 or White Falcon.
It's kind of a mix of replaced gold hardware and original.
Looks to be the origional frets - they have worn down to quite small almost Gibson Micro fret size. Still, it's very playable but depending on your style and string gauge choice, you may want to look into having it re-fretted.
The bridge has been 'pinned' to the body too.
Original case has done it's job as a hardshell case and has the wearing to show for it.
Out of the box, this is a killer vintage player Gretsch. Doesn't need anything except for attention to the frets - but that would depend on your playing style/string choice, etc.
