Gretsch Electromatic Jack Antonoff Signature Princess CVT review – one of the most unique and fun electric guitars of 2024
$699/£699, gretschguitars.com
Gretsch has been doing some interesting stuff with signature models recently. In 2024 so far we’ve had guitars from indie-rock supergroup boygenius, queer-country hero Orville Peck, and now perhaps the most interesting one of the lot – Taylor Swift consigliere and Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff.
READ MORE: Fender Player II Jazzmaster review – the new king of affordable offsets?
It’s probably fair to say that Antonoff isn’t the sort of guy that naturally fits as a ‘signature guitar’ mould. Bleachers are a big band – big enough that they headlined Madison Square Garden last month – but they’re not selling out arenas every night. And of course the critical mass of pop tunes he’s been involved in – from Taytay to St Vincent, Lana Del Ray to Sabrina Carpenter – make him one of the most influential figures in the modern music world, but he’s not exactly a tastemaker like John Mayer in the guitar world.
So, why is everyone making such a fuss about the – deep breath – Gretsch Electromatic Limited Edition Jack Antonoff Signature Princess CVT Double Cut? Well, because it’s the most interesting and unconventional new Gretsch guitar in years – and one of the straight-up coolest instruments I’ve got my hands on in quite some time.
Image: Adam Gasson
What is the Gretsch Jack Antonoff Signature Princess CVT?
The Princess is an interesting and, it must be said, slightly cringe part of Gretsch’s long history. By the dawn of the 1960s, Gretsch was getting left behind – Strats, Teles, Les Pauls and SGs were the fashion of the day, making Gretsch’s big hollowbody guitars seem stuffy by comparison.
The response was the Corvette – a sleek double-cut solidbody design that arrived in 1961 that was aimed squarely at Gibson’s student Les Paul Jr and Special market. It was initially slab-bodied like the Special, but soon got distinctive SG-aping contoured edges – Rory Gallagher famously used one for slide.
The Princess was based on the Corvette but with an important caveat – it was perhaps the very first electric guitar aimed squarely at the ladies. “Now for the first time, a guitar that is unmistakably hers,” read the Gretsch catalogue, like a Friday afternoon Sterling Cooper pitch. “When she’s out in front of others, she’ll see the admiration in their eyes.”
How did it manage to be ‘Unmistakably hers’? Well, it was available in white or blue with a grape pickguard, gold hardware and a Tone Twister vibrato designed for only the most polite and ladylike wobbles – a Music Man St Vincent this was not.
Image: Adam Gasson
The Princess became a quickly forgotten footnote in guitar history, and would have likely stayed there if not for Antonoff, who started using a 60s model as one of his primary stage guitars in Bleachers – describing it as one of his favourite guitars ever.
For his signature instrument however, rather than a basic reproduction of his guitar, Antonoff wanted to do something altogether more interesting – he wanted to fuse the Princess with his other favourite guitar, a Fender Jazzmaster.
The result is… well, this wonderfully mad thing. So we have the basic look of the Princess, but with huge amounts of Fender DNA bolted on – literally. Instead of a set-neck all-mahogany design, the Antonoff Princess CVT now has a maple neck bolted on to its alder body.
On that body you’ll find a full-blown Jazzmaster vibrato, paired with a Mustang-style bridge sitting just below a pair of custom-wound FideliSonic pickups. Oh and there’s a Jazzmaster rhythm circuit in addition to the usual Gretsch switch layout… and a killswitch. Friends, this thing is wild.
Image: Adam Gasson
Is the Gretsch Jack Antonoff Signature Princess CVT easy to play?
Signature guitars can often be hamstrung by being too specifically catered to the needs of the artist behind them – it’s a fine line to tread between wanting to create something unique and wanting something that other human beings will actually use and enjoy.
Mostly, I’d say that Antonoff has managed to skirt these issues with the Princess. Pulling it out of its box (as with most Chinese-made Gretsch guitars, this one doesn’t have a gigbag or case) the guitar feels light and lively – a trip to the luggage scales reveals it to be a hair under 8lbs (3.54kg to be exact), which is actually pretty decent given all the hardware on board.
The Princess/Corvette body is a really underappreciated classic in my opinion, and that favourable feeling only grows during my first play – the body contours are really ergonomic and do a good job of getting out of the way and letting you really connect with the instrument.
The neck is not exactly the most characterful thing I’ve ever put my hand around, but the generic C-shape, satin-finished plank here is comfortable and accessible. Some will complain about a 7.25” radius to the rosewood board, but I rather like it – I certainly didn’t have any issues with bends choking out, for example. The 22 medium-jumbo frets are pretty well done – it’s not the tidiest job I’ve ever seen at this price point but it’s decent enough. There aren’t any sharp edges to the frets themselves but the bound board does mean quite a sharp angle on the edge itself – I can’t help but pine for the rolled edges of a Player II at this point.
As mentioned above, there’s a lot going on here in terms of controls – a standard Gretsch master tone and volume, three-way switch, a rhythm/lead circuit with its own tone and volume controls, and the ‘mute’ (kill) switch. All of that is squeezed into the gold scratchplate, and it certainly takes a bit of getting used to.
Image: Adam Gasson
While Antonoff has sensibly arranged everything so it’s unlikely to get hit in the heat of battle – the rhythm circuit switch has been moved from the traditional vertical orientation to a horizontal one for example – there are still a lot of things under your fingers here, and it does take some getting used to.
The converse of this is that it’s all under your fingers – this isn’t a big guitar, and with everything laid out roughly where your hand is going to be, there’s a great ability to switch things up tonally on the fly.
The Jazzmaster vibrato is – in my opinion – the best of all the wang bars for sheer musicality and expression, and it’s really fun to have it in such a different-looking instrument. Out of the box the travel is smooth and precise, and it’s very ergonomically located for easy access mid-flight.
One issue I couldn’t quite rectify was the tuning stability however – especially with the unwound strings. While gentle wobbles weren’t a problem, I found it was struggling to get back to pitch when I got more vigorous. I couldn’t find any obvious friction issues at the nut, bridge or saddle that might have caused this, and it didn’t appear to be a truss-rod issue either.
It may be an isolated issue, but I do wonder if it might also be string-tension related – Jazzmaster trems are generally designed for six-in-line, flat-angled Fender headstocks, and this is a three-a-side back-angled example. Worth keeping an eye out when you’re testing it out either way.
Image: Adam Gasson
Does the Gretsch Jack Antonoff Signature Princess CVT sound good?
When you’ve been doing this thing for a long time, you do become somewhat familiar with how certain guitars sound – a Strat will almost always fundamentally sound like a Strat, Les Paul like a Les Paul etc etc.
It’s fun then, to encounter something that is a complete mystery until you plug it in – after all, how many other alder bolt-ons with Gretsch pickups and a Jazzmaster trem have you played?
You can get some clues before ever plugging in however – those FideliSonic pickups look a lot more like P-90s than the usual Gretsch Filter’Tron, and under the hood they are indeed a lot closer to Walt Fuller’s Gibson design than Ray Butts’ inimitable contribution to the guitar pickup canon.
They have the girth and snarl of a P-90 – especially when you add a bit of dirt to the bridge unit – but that Jazzmaster trem isn’t just for show. If you clean things up the highs are suitably pristine and bell-like – these are very versatile units.
Anyone who has played a classic Jazzmaster will know all about the rhythm circuit – and indeed plenty of players (not least Thurston Moore) would rip the whole thing out because they didn’t like the sound it created, and its tendency to get in the way.
Image: Adam Gasson
However, those in the know will also know that the ‘mud’ switch gets a bad rep – you can get some great tones from this circuit, if you know how to use it. I shan’t bore you with the details but as with a Jazzmaster, the switch here isolates the neck pickup and routes it through a circuit that emphasises the bass frequencies and drastically tames the treble.
Once you understand this, you can use it to your advantage – it’s great for syrupy clean tones and lo-fi distorted lines. The clue is also in the name – if you want a bassy, chewy rhythm tone, it’s here at the flick of a switch.
Speaking of switches, there’s one thing we haven’t talked about – the killswitch. It’s quite odd seeing something this heavily associated with, well, heavy guitar styles sitting on such an unabashedly retro guitar, but it speaks to Antonoff’s desire to have a broad palette of sounds to play with at his fingertips. In practice it works well, though it’s not the smoothest I’ve ever heard – there’s a slight but definite crackle as you engage the mute that won’t really matter in a live environment, but could be unseemly on record.
Should I buy the Gretsch Jack Antonoff Signature Princess CVT?
We’ve been spoiled at the budget end of the guitar market in the last decade or so – the guitars you can get for under a grand have never been better, but they’re not always the most exciting. As is the nature of mass-market anything, the cheap thing tends to be the generic thing, meaning that some notable exceptions aside (the wackier ends of the Squier and Vintage catalogues for example), the cheap guitars we come across are broadly well-trodden variations on the classics, or not really cheap at all.
The Antonoff Princess CVT is a complete outlier in that regard – this is a radically different guitar for Gretsch, and a radically different and individualistic guitar full stop. Oh, and it costs less than 700 bucks. What are you waiting for?
Gretsch Jack Antonoff Signature Princess CVT alternatives
The Corvette/Princess design owes a great debt to the Gibson SG, and if you can do without the vibrato and electronics, Epiphone’s SG Special ($449/£439) is a really fun slice of P-90 fun – especially in Faded Pelham Blue. If you want something a little more traditionally Gretsch-y, the Electromatic Pristine LTD Jet ($749/£679) offers a chambered body, Filter’Trons and a Bigsby – and the same Vintage white/gold colourway. You can also get that particular look in the shape of a Jazzmaster courtesy of the well-regarded Squier J Mascis Jazzmaster ($499/£449)
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