This is enticing news for anybody who has struggled to keep their ball ends latched onto Bigsby pins when they’re re-stringing. Player-oriented features include a pinned bridge, locking tuners, a Graph Tech Tusq XL nut, medium-jumbo frets, shallower bodies, a dressed-away heel shape, no-load tone control, a treble-bleed circuit on the master volume and String-Thru Bigsbys. The tagline for the High Sensitive Filter’Tron-equipped Players Edition line-up is “Every Song, Every Night”, with the aim of providing a stable, gig-friendly instrument straight out of the box (something that couldn’t always be claimed of Gretsches of old). In 2016, Gretsch began organising the Professional Collection into three categories – Vintage Select reissues, Players Edition models with modern featuresets, and the Signature Series.

Gretsch also added thumbnail inlays, a treble bleed on the master volume and a bridge that’s secured by drilling two small holes into the top that accommodate the bridge posts protruding from the base of the bridge. The pickup rings are now vintage-style moulded surrounds, but the Black Top Filter’Tron pickups are suspended from the rings like Gibson humbuckers and there are two screws on the bass side to adjust the angle relative to the strings as well as pickup height. Our review model has chrome hardware and open-geared tuners. The headstock was changed to the smaller, late-50s outline, with aged binding added. The current iteration was launched during the summer of 2016, with a sleeker look and the Electromatic logo moved from the headstock to the pickguard. The Electromatic name has deep roots in Gretsch history, but has been used as a series designation since 2004. Early-50s-style clear plastic knobs are fitted, along with Grover-style die-cast tuners. The original Tim Shaw designed Broad’Tron pickups have been updated to create the Broad’Tron BT-2S, with reconfigured windings to improve clarity while increasing output and punch. A new range of colours was introduced, along with aged multi-ply binding, tortoiseshell pickguards, hump block inlays for the hollow bodies and larger f-holes.

The Streamliner series was launched in 2016 and upgraded at the beginning of 2019. Although all three lines have been around for a while, there have been some recent changes.

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