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Guitar World
Guitar World
Entertainment
Huw Price

The history of Gretsch electric guitars: how guitarist, demonstrator and designer Jimmie Webster’s innovations of the ’50s and ’60s shape That Great Gretsch Sound to this day

1968 Gretsch Streamliner.

If the record-buying public had warmed to Jimmie Webster’s ‘Touch System’ two-handed tapping technique, then the Gretsch brand that we know today might never have existed. 

Webster was an accomplished guitarist who played for Woody Herman and Count Basie during the 1930s, and who also tuned pianos when he wasn’t travelling the US and appearing on TV to demonstrate Gretsch guitars. 

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