PRODUCT REVIEW: Gretsch 2622 Streamliner Hard-Tail
(Muy Tranquilo - Gramatik)
Gear Acquisition Syndrome is one heck of a disease. It's what comes of many hobbies, the intense desire to obtain more of the gear 'required' to further that hobby. For me, that means pedals, amps, picks, cables, and most importantly, guitars.
When people see a room full of guitars, there's one question that typically comes up before anything else, and that's "How many of these things could you possibly need?"
It's a fair question, especially when it comes to electric guitars. In this age of digital solid-state modeling amplifiers, you can make your guitar sound like just about anything you could possibly desire. How many guitars -do- you need then?
Well, in my opinion, you can cover your bases with four to six, depending on how it goes. It goes something like this:
- You need a Les Paul or LP-Type guitar
- You need a Stratocaster or S-Type guitar
- You need a Telecaster or T-Type guitar
- You need a Hollow or Semi-Hollow guitar
- You need an acoustic guitar
Of course, there's another way to look at this:
- You need a guitar with single coil pickups.
- You need a guitar with double coil humbuckers.
- You need a guitar with Filtertron pickups.
- You need a guitar with P90 pickups.
- You need a guitar with lipstick pickups.
- You need an acoustic guitar.
See? It's a slippery slope. In my case, I already had a Strat, and I already had an LP-Type guitar in the form of my PRS SE 245. That covered single and double coil pick-ups. I also already had an acoustic. The next choice was either a Telecaster for lipstick pick-ups or some kind of hollow body. Or something with a Filtertron or P90 in it.
I'd say I got lucky when I stumbled onto my Gretsch Streamliner, but luck really had nothing to do with it. John Mayer was actually to blame, pretty much because of this video:
I heard the studio version of this song through my streaming service and the solo at the end of it blew my mind. I had to know what he was playing that solo on. Then I saw this video and thought, "Oh. My next guitar is totally going to be a semi-hollow. I need to be able to make that noise. I can't NOT have that noise in my life."
Thus, the search for a semi-hollow began. The obvious starting point for that search would have been the Epiphone Casino that Mayer is playing in this video, and I certainly investigated them. Then I widened my scope to include things like ES-335s and similar. Eventually, I found myself running into more and more articles about Gretsch guitars, and how they had recently introduced their Streamliners into the world. The general consensus was that they were stunningly high quality semi-hollows. Indeed, the only real source of disquiet in their reviews surrounded their neck pickups. People frequently muttered about them sounding too muddy, like old Gibsons.
...Well damn!
A few days later, I found myself in my guitar store. Lo, but they had a Streamliner there on the wall, so I took it down, strapped on, jacked in, and started the process of getting to know it.
It took about 30 seconds. I bought it the next day and named it Pearline, or frequently just 'The Pearl'.
Some data points:
Body Wood: Laminated Maple, Double-Bound
Neck Wood: Maple
Fingerboard Wood: Nato
Fingerboard: 12" Radius, 22 Frets, 24.75" Scale Length
Pickups: Gretsch Broad'Tron BT-25 Filtertrons
I -love- this guitar. I loved it from the moment I picked it up and strummed it for the first time. I grew up listening to an acoustic guitar, so there's always been something nice for me about the sound of notes roaming around the inside of a wooden body. Strumming this guitar is noticeably louder than a normal electric simply because the body is...well, it's semi-hollow. That same semi-hollow body adds a completely different kind of fatness and warmth to the sounds that the instrument produces. Team this guitar up with a bit of reverb and some light blues-y overdrive, and you have an absolute monster of a solo machine.
The benefit of it being a semi-hollow comes in the form of feedback. You can crank up the distortion on your amp with this guitar to produce some serious rock and roll if you want and you'll never have to worry about feedback, a common problem with many fully hollow electrics.
If you've been following along with some of my other guitar reviews, you may notice that the neck on this guitar is -really- fat compared to my other instruments. At first, I thought this was going to be a problem, but I have large hands to begin with and the fat neck helps to keep me from accidentally buzzing the high 'E' while I play. Because the neck is so big, there's also tons of room between the frets. This really does hit the sweet spot between a super slender Strat neck and an old fashioned nylon guitar. It's still incredibly accessible to the hand without becoming cumbersome. You can't bend strings quite as easily as you can with a Strat, but when you -do- bend them, you also don't have to move the string as far because of the increased tension. It's absolutely lovely.
If you're in the market for a hollow or semi-hollow guitar and you haven't picked a Gretsch up lately, you absolutely must give one of their 2622 Streamliners a try. They're unbelievably good, especially considering the price.
Q: That guitar is ... huge. What if I want a semi-hollow but I want something smaller?
A: It's true, the 2622 is a monster of a guitar. For those of you interested in this style of guitar without the size, seek out the Streamliner 2655. It's the exact same guitar as the 2622, just a bit smaller.
Gear Acquisition Syndrome is one heck of a disease. It's what comes of many hobbies, the intense desire to obtain more of the gear 'required' to further that hobby. For me, that means pedals, amps, picks, cables, and most importantly, guitars.
When people see a room full of guitars, there's one question that typically comes up before anything else, and that's "How many of these things could you possibly need?"
It's a fair question, especially when it comes to electric guitars. In this age of digital solid-state modeling amplifiers, you can make your guitar sound like just about anything you could possibly desire. How many guitars -do- you need then?
Well, in my opinion, you can cover your bases with four to six, depending on how it goes. It goes something like this:
- You need a Les Paul or LP-Type guitar
- You need a Stratocaster or S-Type guitar
- You need a Telecaster or T-Type guitar
- You need a Hollow or Semi-Hollow guitar
- You need an acoustic guitar
Of course, there's another way to look at this:
- You need a guitar with single coil pickups.
- You need a guitar with double coil humbuckers.
- You need a guitar with Filtertron pickups.
- You need a guitar with P90 pickups.
- You need a guitar with lipstick pickups.
- You need an acoustic guitar.
See? It's a slippery slope. In my case, I already had a Strat, and I already had an LP-Type guitar in the form of my PRS SE 245. That covered single and double coil pick-ups. I also already had an acoustic. The next choice was either a Telecaster for lipstick pick-ups or some kind of hollow body. Or something with a Filtertron or P90 in it.
I'd say I got lucky when I stumbled onto my Gretsch Streamliner, but luck really had nothing to do with it. John Mayer was actually to blame, pretty much because of this video:
I heard the studio version of this song through my streaming service and the solo at the end of it blew my mind. I had to know what he was playing that solo on. Then I saw this video and thought, "Oh. My next guitar is totally going to be a semi-hollow. I need to be able to make that noise. I can't NOT have that noise in my life."
Thus, the search for a semi-hollow began. The obvious starting point for that search would have been the Epiphone Casino that Mayer is playing in this video, and I certainly investigated them. Then I widened my scope to include things like ES-335s and similar. Eventually, I found myself running into more and more articles about Gretsch guitars, and how they had recently introduced their Streamliners into the world. The general consensus was that they were stunningly high quality semi-hollows. Indeed, the only real source of disquiet in their reviews surrounded their neck pickups. People frequently muttered about them sounding too muddy, like old Gibsons.
...Well damn!
A few days later, I found myself in my guitar store. Lo, but they had a Streamliner there on the wall, so I took it down, strapped on, jacked in, and started the process of getting to know it.
It took about 30 seconds. I bought it the next day and named it Pearline, or frequently just 'The Pearl'.
Some data points:
Body Wood: Laminated Maple, Double-Bound
Neck Wood: Maple
Fingerboard Wood: Nato
Fingerboard: 12" Radius, 22 Frets, 24.75" Scale Length
Pickups: Gretsch Broad'Tron BT-25 Filtertrons
I -love- this guitar. I loved it from the moment I picked it up and strummed it for the first time. I grew up listening to an acoustic guitar, so there's always been something nice for me about the sound of notes roaming around the inside of a wooden body. Strumming this guitar is noticeably louder than a normal electric simply because the body is...well, it's semi-hollow. That same semi-hollow body adds a completely different kind of fatness and warmth to the sounds that the instrument produces. Team this guitar up with a bit of reverb and some light blues-y overdrive, and you have an absolute monster of a solo machine.
The benefit of it being a semi-hollow comes in the form of feedback. You can crank up the distortion on your amp with this guitar to produce some serious rock and roll if you want and you'll never have to worry about feedback, a common problem with many fully hollow electrics.
If you've been following along with some of my other guitar reviews, you may notice that the neck on this guitar is -really- fat compared to my other instruments. At first, I thought this was going to be a problem, but I have large hands to begin with and the fat neck helps to keep me from accidentally buzzing the high 'E' while I play. Because the neck is so big, there's also tons of room between the frets. This really does hit the sweet spot between a super slender Strat neck and an old fashioned nylon guitar. It's still incredibly accessible to the hand without becoming cumbersome. You can't bend strings quite as easily as you can with a Strat, but when you -do- bend them, you also don't have to move the string as far because of the increased tension. It's absolutely lovely.
If you're in the market for a hollow or semi-hollow guitar and you haven't picked a Gretsch up lately, you absolutely must give one of their 2622 Streamliners a try. They're unbelievably good, especially considering the price.
Q: That guitar is ... huge. What if I want a semi-hollow but I want something smaller?
A: It's true, the 2622 is a monster of a guitar. For those of you interested in this style of guitar without the size, seek out the Streamliner 2655. It's the exact same guitar as the 2622, just a bit smaller.
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