Gretsch G5034TFT Rancher electro-acoustic guitar demo

Bigsby-equipped electro-acoustic demo& Undoubtedly one of the &of this year&NAMM gear-fest, judging by the amount of social media interest it generated, this Gretsch Rancher is clearly designed to get you noticed. It might seem like a pretty daft idea, but perhaps surprisingly it involved a serious amount of hard work to get it right... "It really did start with, &let&put a Bigsby on an acoustic!&says Gretsch&Adam Bowden-Smith. "But what followed was about a year and a half of extensive R&D to get the guitar top correctly braced so it was strong enough to make the Bigsby usable without the whole thing collapsing!" There¬ a shortage of pickups for acoustic guitars, but Gretsch was having none of them. Instead, the firm developed the Fideli&humbucker specifically for this guitar (although due to the prolonged R&D time, Fender got to use it first on several more conventional guitars, including the Cabronita). "The &in the name gives the clue," adds Adam. "We wanted the pickups to have clarity and a clear response, with minimal distortion (i.e. low output), suited to acoustic guitars. They do necessitate using nickel or steel strings, of course." Here, Guitarist editor Jamie Dickson gives the Rancher&electric and acoustic tones a spin for your listening pleasure.