The Deco hollowbody masters dive deep into the baritone zone.
D’Angelico Guitars has announced the release of two baritone models. The Deluxe Atlantic Baritone and Deluxe SS Baritone were designed to offer exceptional comfort and vivid, articulate tone—unmistakably different from most baritone offerings. Custom pickups from Seymour Duncan capture every nuance in the low-end, while premium features such as Grover Locking Tuners and Jescar fretwire result in professional grade performance and feel.
The Deluxe SS Baritone is a wholly unique semi-hollow. Pairing its punchy, undersized body shape with two Seymour Duncan D'Angelico Great Dane P90s, the Deluxe SS Baritone stirs together seemingly disparate elements into something all new. A fifteen-inch-wide semi-hollow body offers airy woodiness on top of thick, pronounced midrange—providing enough power to lead a heavy ensemble and enough elegant clarity for emotive clean tones. A 26.75" scale length strikes the balance between prioritizing player comfort and achieving vivid tone. Now available in Satin Trans Wine and Satin Honey.
Gibson’s archives give up lost treasure.
Delicious smooth-to-silky P-90 sounds. Awesome chunky neck. Pretty, unusual-for-Gibson body profile.
Holy cow, it’s expensive.
$4,999
Gibson Theodore
gibson.com
Gibson has had a lot of time to evolve as a guitar company. But that doesn’t make the breadth of personalities among their instruments any less astonishing. A Firebird, an ES-150, an ES-330, a Les Paul Standard, and an SG Jr. can each inspire very different paths for a given musical idea—or different ideas altogether. Each has its own musicality, attitude, and energy.
So, while it may not look the part at first, the Gibson Theodore, which existed only as a sketch by Ted McCarty from March 1957, is a perfect—or perfectly oddball—fit for the Gibson family. Slim, slender, scimitar-headstocked, and built around a pair of very lively P-90s, Theodore looks and feels like it longs to rock first and foremost. But it also has more feline and economical lines than many of its Gibson brethren. And like a goldtop or SG Special, the Theodore dwells just as happily in smoky jazz settings and mellow, meandering chord melody zones as rocking domains. This blend of attributes and capabilities make Theodore very versatile. It’s also an intriguing peek at the many design directions Ted McCarty was considering for Gibson while at a zenith of his creativity.
Tulip Mania
Striking as Theodore looks, it wasn’t the only guitar at the time to embrace a tulip-shaped double-cutaway design. And one has to wonder if Gibson didn’t reconsider Theodore as a production instrument upon seeing Rickenbacker’s similarly tulip-shaped Model 400 from the previous year. McCarty’s tulip shape is slimmer and more uniform than Rickenbacker’s. But while Theodore might estrange Gibson fans that prefer the company’s more overtly muscular shapes, there’s still much of the adventure and daring that went into the Explorer and Flying V at work here. And though Theodore didn’t fit the future-forward ethos of the Explorer and V, the way it spans 1930s Deco and the fancy organic shapes of Ibanez, Alembic, and Doug Irwin guitars from the ’70s make it a fascinating mash up of 20th century design modes.
There are practical upsides to the configuration as well. The body is alder, just as McCarty’s original sketch called for (it also has a walnut center strip that is implied in the sketch but not listed as a manufacturing specification). Alder construction makes Theodore lighter than a mahogany Melody Maker or SG. And though McCarty’s sketch specified that the body should be flat, it also includes a cross-section diagram of the lower bout that calls for a comfortable contour where guitar and ribs meet, suggesting that the Stratocaster’s ergonomic refinements had put guitar builders on notice. So, though the Theodore isn’t as form-fitting as a Stratocaster, it sits more comfortably against the human body than many slab-bodies guitars of the period.
Hooked up to two old black-panel Fenders, the bridge pickup made as perfect a rock ’n’ roll growl as I could imagine.
Chunky Style, All Butter
The Theodore’s neck is a 2-piece mahogany slab cut in what Gibson calls a chunky C-profile. It’s a fistful, but it’s awesome. And what it may sacrifice in slim-and-shreddy slinkiness it makes up for with inviting, lean-into-it heft that compels you to linger on single notes and extract every microtone, vibrato nuance, and bit of sustain. That approach is rewarded to no end by the excellent P-90s, which are bold, loud, and relatively noise free. Hooked up to two old black-panel Fenders, the bridge pickup made as perfect a rock ’n’ roll growl as I could imagine.
Rocking tones aside, players should not hesitate to use these P-90s at lower volume. Cutting the guitar volume back by just a few notches here and there yields some of the most soulful and dynamic sounds from the guitar. These tones excel for mellower lead passages, jangle rhythms, and jazzy chord ballads. Even at these slightly attenuated volumes the top end output remains very alive and energetic, and you can easily coax excited, just-dirty sounds from your amplifier if you add intensity to your pick attack.
The Verdict
The Theodore is a beautiful playing machine. The P-90s are delicious on the rocking and mellow sides of the spectrum, and they are sensitive—responding in cool ways to picking dynamics when wide open and at cleaner, lower volumes. The substantial neck is fantastic. And though the body profile will doubtless elicit strong opinions, I really warmed to the shape for its elegant economy of line. The short horn on the lap side may make it a less-than-ideal instrument for extended seated sessions as the short horn can slip off your lap in certain positions. But hanging on a strap it feels light, sturdy, responsive, and ready to do damage.
As for the cost: Well, five grand is a lot—a lot—for a guitar that, technically, is short on bells and whistles. On the other hand, the Theodore is immaculately built and sounds heavenly. Given its low production numbers and niche appeal, Theodore is almost certainly bound to be a very rare bird. Hold on to it for a while and you may be repaid with much more than hours of sweet tones and praise from fans of eccentric electrics.
Gibson Theodore Demo | First Look
Ted McCarty's archives reveal a long-lost treasure.More First Look videos: https://bit.ly/FIrstLookSubscribe to PG's Channel: https://bit.ly/SubscribePGYouTube...Idiosyncratic pickups pull this slimline Gretsch along unexpected tone trajectories.
Unique, idiosyncratic pickups. Tidy construction. Top-notch playability.
Some tuning instability with Bigsby use. Some players will miss classic P-90 trebles.
$649
Gretsch G2622T-P90 Streamliner
gretschguitars.com
Gretsch’s new Streamliner guitars—like the 1960s Streamliners before them—are great instruments living in the shadows of the company’s most iconic shapes. Where guitars like the 6120, Country Gentleman, White Falcon, and others are either quite thick, very wide, or both, the Streamliner is slim and relatively light—in the fashion of the Epiphone Casino, Gibson ES-335, Fender Coronado, Rickenbacker 300-series, and various Voxes, Hofners, and Hagstroms that ruled the ’60s. They are exceptionally comfortable, engaging, and ultra-fun to play, particularly when fitted with a Bigsby, like the Gretsch G2622T-P90 Streamliner reviewed here.
This latest Streamliner Center Block incarnation, however, is also among the first to feature Gretsch’s FideliSonic 90 pickups, an option that gives the guitar a surprisingly mellow but meaty, articulate, and distinctive voice that deviates from archetypical P-90 semi-hollow sounds and offers unexpected tone colors.
Gretsch G2622T-P90 Streamliner Review by premierguitar
All guitars are Gretsch G2622T-P90 Streamliner.
Of Singing Staples and Streamlineage
Gretsch’s bigger bodied classics can feel like a handful over the course of protracted practice and performance. The Streamliner almost never induces fatigue anxiety, though. It’s light for a center-blocked, Bigsby-equipped instrument, and the body contours feel great whether you sling the guitar low or hike your strap up for a full Merseybeat cradle. The balance is generally good, especially when playing seated, though it can be prone to neck-dive if you use a slippery strap. It’s got really handsome lines, too, that are simultaneously evocative of a Country Gentleman and an Epiphone Casino. More critically, in my view, it also bears a strong family resemblance to the Gretsch Monkees, a ’60s Streamliner antecedent that I covet rabidly.
There’s a lot of distinctly Gretsch personality here, too—primarily in the baby Country Gent’ shape you see plainly in the horns, but also in the arrow knobs, master volume, and teardrop pickguard. The latter design element, while handsome, is perhaps the only thing that didn’t work with some aspects of my playing style. Prone as I am to heavy arpeggio playing, I would often hit my pick against the pickguard on first-string upstrokes, making a clacking sound that resonates clearly through the pickups. On the other hand, I could conjure cool rhythmic accents during leads and spanky rhythm parts using the pickguard for percussive accents and extra-musical sound effects.
I’m generally pretty knocked out by how good the affordable Gretsches from the Streamliner line look and feel. The Streamliner Center Block P90 reveals that Gretsch’s Indonesian factory is still putting love into these instruments. Playability is superb. The 12"-radius fretboard makes string bending a breeze. And the walnut-to-root-beer brownstone finish showcases the grain of the arched mahogany top and back gracefully. (Sadly, there is no option for the cherry finish and white pickguard that would make this Streamliner a dead-ringer for a Gretsch Monkees. Drat.)
"Some of the bridge pickup’s mellower tonality might also be down to the distance from the pickup to the bridge."
Broad-Shouldered Slimline
The FideliSonics are a genuinely unusual take on staple-style P-90s that stretch preconceptions about the type. Though they are designed for less overall output than a standard P-90, they have much of a P-90s muscle and mass, and they will make an amplifier growl delectably without breaking a sweat. But the FideliSonics seem a lot less toppy than the P-90s in, say, a Casino or ES-330. Instead, they exhibit a strong low-mid emphasis and a hi-fi quality that leaves room for dynamics and picking details. Some of the bridge pickup’s mellower tonality might also be down to the distance from the pickup to the bridge. Pickup placement has shifted a lot over the decades on Gretsches. The bridge pickup placement on the White Falcon, for instance, has varied by significant measures over its lifetime. The bridge pickup on the Streamliner Center Block P90 is nudged toward the neck enough to almost split the difference between a bridge and a middle-position pickup in a 3-pickup array. Doubtless, this blunts some of the top-end attack you might otherwise hear and expect from these pickups.
But there is no questioning the horsepower they put at your disposal. Paired with a black-panel Tremolux, the Gretsch coaxes throaty overdrive at amplifier volumes as low as 2. With just a bit of reverb, this sound is intoxicating and huge. There might not be quite enough top-end headroom for some jangle-oriented players, or soloists that rely on biting treble. But before you pass definitive judgement on the available top end, it’s worth checking out how the Gretsch sounds with really aggressive amplifier treble settings. I used the bridge FideliSonic with the Tremolux’s treble at 10 and it sounded an awful lot like a sweet spot to me!
As with any hollow or semi-hollow, feedback can be an issue. And I had a pretty short leash when it came to using fuzz or aggressive boost or overdrive (particularly with all of that amp treble). Thankfully, the Gretsch’s trademark master volume is always close at hand—and, incidentally, a very cool way to add feedback into a song when you get the knack. Generally, though, it’s good to tame your guitar volume before you engage any particularly vicious fuzz.
The Verdict
I spent a lot of time with the Gretsch Streamliner Center Block P90 amid a mid-winter playing rut. Few guitars were feeling great, or right, or fun. But the Streamliner Center Block P90 was always a gas, and with its Bigsby, classic Gretsch master volume control, and a set of idiosyncratic and dynamic pickups, it prompted inspirational and invigorating shifts in technique and voice. The Streamliner Center Block P90 doesn’t need much help to sound great through a decent amp—just a little reverb and 10" or 12" speakers can make this guitar sound enormous, rocking, and alive. There are drawbacks inherent to the design. Feedback is always a risk and you don’t have to get too unhinged with the Bigsby before tuning stability becomes an issue. But the warm fullness of these pickups and the guitar’s fascinating combination of liveliness and mass adds up to countless surprises that make the $649 price tag a pretty nice deal.
