The pickups in this guitar are humbuckers with a really great high end. That's pretty rare because humbucking pickups tend to sound kind of muddy. They have their uses, but they are also pretty limited. The ones on the Gretsch, however, retain that high-end, and that gives you a "twangy" sound that you hear on a lot of old records that jumps out at you. You might not have noticed it, but if that element was gone, you would think the whole recording sounded fake.
So anyway, I try out the guitar for just about the whole time we were there and I think, "This is the most incredible sounding guitar I've ever heard." Brei, Josh, and I finally head to Dallas, but I tell my girlfriend Dani all about the 6120 when I come back home that night. The next day (Sunday) I drag her back to Guitar Center with me because I just *have* to play this thing again, and I want her to hear it (well, to see it too... Like I said, it's pretty cool). We stay there for maybe another hour this time as well and I play everything I can think of on it while she watches the other pitiful girlfriends get dragged around the store by their boyfriends.
But I hardly notice anything going on around me except if Dani points it out. Nothing sounds like this guitar. I even tried out a couple other Gretsches that have similar set-ups (i.e., hollow bodies, same pickups, etc.), but they just don't sound as good (and this includes one that I always liked the looks of and had previously considered higher on my "wish list" than this one). Of course, I really can't afford the 6120, so we leave without it, even though it's on sale.
Well, on the Thursday after this I went exploring in Dallas again with a girl I met on MySpace. Arlington was on my way home yet again, so I stopped in to play the guitar again (and just hoped that it would still be there). It was there, and it still sounded awesome. I finally leave and head home to tell Dani about it again before I fall asleep.
That weekend Dani and I were supposed to go camping, but all I kept thinking about was that this guitar was probably going to sell by the time we got back. At the very least, it almost certainly wouldn't be on sale anymore... (again) not that I could afford it anyway. As the fates would have it, however, it starts raining really hard on Friday night and storms straight through to Saturday. The trip is obviously off (either that or we're really going to rough it), so I ask Dani if we can hit Guitar Center yet again Saturday. She says okay.
Early
Saturday morning, I'm up and almost sick thinking that the Gretsch won't
be there anymore or that the sale's over (yeah, I know I *still* couldn't
afford it). I'm checking my email in the other room while Dani's
getting ready in the bedroom. She asks me to come in there.
When I come in the room, she's sitting on the bed with the 6120.
This is one moment in my life where I was completely speechless.
It turns out that she went out to Arlington on Friday afternoon after work and picked it up while I was at school up in Denton (and, later, over at Brei's). She admits that if she was *really* mean (and she can be downright evil sometimes), what she would have done was to let us go to Guitar Center without saying anything to me about having this hidden in her closet. We would have gotten there and this one would have been gone. After all, the other model (a White Falcon) they had on sale there was gone the day after it started (i.e., it was there on Sat., but was sold by the time we went out there on Sunday). She said she thought it would have been fun to let me think it was sold (which, technically, it was) and that I had missed my chance.
My girlfriend is awful and/or awesome.
