Peter Tork's Gretsch?

[mambo4]

I bought my wife a Monkees DVD for Xmas, and watchign them made me curious aboiut the nifty gretsch bass Peter Tork appears to play.
anybody know what kind of bass that is, and how good of an instrument they are?

[mr sprocket]

He played a Monkee model based on the Country Gentleman model 6072. The 6073 is available again on the site.
http://www.gretschguitars.com/gear/i...&cat2=&q=&st=1

[mambo4]

thanks for replying!
That bass looks pretty dang cool. The site has little info on what the features are...those two switches on the bout have me curious. anybody know anything about these basses?

All I have ever played are P- and J-basses, so I got no clue...

Perhaps this needs moved to the Basses forum

[mr sprocket]

One is a toggle pickup selector. The other is a three way tone selector.

Position 1. Medium Level, High Frequency Roll Off
Position 2. Switch Out of the Circuit, Pickup is Wide Open (That Great Gretsch Sound!)
Position 3. Slight Level, High Frequency Roll Off

[all_grown_up]

Originally Posted by mambo4

I bought my wife a Monkees DVD for Xmas, and watchign them made me curious aboiut the nifty gretsch bass Peter Tork appears to play.
anybody know what kind of bass that is, and how good of an instrument they are?

They look great. But if you look back at pictures of bands from the sixties, how often do you see a Gretsch bass. Not very. That is because they really weren't very good. I have a early sixties double cutaway bass version of the country gentleman. Looks great. I put it down after 5 minutes and never played it again. It was like trying to play a log. There is an early picture of John Entwhistle of the Who playing one. But only early Who. I can certainly understand why there weren't any more pictures. I have a sixties, hollow body Gibson EB 2. You see many more pictures of them. Thats becuase relatively speaking they were better instruments. It is possible that the modern version of the Gretsch basses are better.

[mr sprocket]

If you read some of the reviews of the early Gretsch basses you see why the models never sold that well. The Monkees had an endorsement deal for Monkee models which were basically versions of the Country Gentleman.

[The Golden Boy]

I played a Gretsch bass a couple of months ago... that thing had a massive neck- it also had a telescopic endpin so you could use it like a standup bass. It was actually pretty cool. I don't know if it was actually something I could use, but it was cool.