I purchased this guitar to impress my girlfriend at the time, Marie (I know it is a lame but true excuse). I was going to be spending the Christmas holidays with Marie and her family in France and wanted to take a new guitar with me. At that time Chris Isaak was one of Marie’s favorite artists so I thought that this would give me an excellent opportunity to buy a tremolo equipped guitar so I could play his song “Wicked Game” for her. After trying several tremolo equipped Strats and a few of the larger sized Gretsch hollowbody guitars, I decided on this 57 Silver Jet RI. The guitar felt great, looked fantastic with its electroluminescent silver top and more importantly sounded incredible with its DeArmondDynaSonic pickups. After it successfully passed my “Wicked Game” sound test, I spent the next hour at the register haggling for a good price. This guitar instantly reminded me of my Gretsch “Country Gentleman” days during my college years. I had foolishly sold that Gretsch and was thrilled to add another Gretsch Bigsby equipped guitar back to my collection.

While the guitar made the trip to Paris with no issues, the case was not so lucky and took a bad beating. In addition to scuff and tear marks, the case was missing one latch and another was twisted. I did not even realize that it was my guitar and my heart sunk when I saw the condition of the case as I feared it also reflected the guitars condition. I am amazed that the guitar was not damaged at all after being subjected to such rough handling. It was a great trip and although my girlfriend was not as impressed with yet another new guitar as I was, she did enjoy listening to me play a few Chris Isaak and Beatles tunes.

The original Gretsch Jet guitars were all virtually identical, other than color. The DuoJet was black, the FireBird was a deep red, and the Silver Jet was capped in the now famous “silver sparkle” plastic drum material. The DuoJet and Silver Jet were first released in 1954 and because their mahogany bodies were extensively routed, (making them, in effect semi-hollow) they were considerably lighter and more resonanant than the other Gretsch models at that time.

In 1993, Gretsch introduced the 1957 Reissue Silver Jet and Duo Jet. Both of these were fairly faithful reproductions, with the exception of a Space Control bridge replacing the '50s Melita and the V-cutout Bigsby, which didn't debut until 1959 or '60 and was not standard on '50s-era Jets.

The price of these reissues, is in my opinion, on the high side and looking back I probably should have considered trying to find an original instead. However, I am very happy with this guitar and it is one I favor for clean strumming type situations.