Gretsch News - archived
March 18th, 2005Gretsch Musical Instruments and Georgia Music Hall of Fame Exhibit
Lands at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
The Gretsch Company has contributed an extensive historical exhibit of musical instruments and company artifacts for display at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. The exhibit, organized with The Georgia Music Hall of Fame, is located in Concourse T of the Delta Terminal and stretches for over 300 feet. It is expected to be on display for several months.
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August 4, 2004
Fred Gretsch Buys the Custom 6120 Victory Guitar & Amp Set at Nashville NAMM for U.S. Eighth Air Force Museum!
Gretsch® 6120 Victory Guitar
by Sara Ray
Master-built by Chris Fleming
About Sara Ray:
Born in Southern California, raised all over the country by a family of surfers, artists and wandering hot rodders. Photographer, Illustrator and self taught painter Sara Ray transforms the cryptic hot rod lifestyle into images both haunting and inspiring.
Sara Ray spent her early years riding in rusted hot rods filled with surfboards covered in sun bleached Rat Fink stickers. Her family made of legendary surfers, movie starlets and WWII veterans owned Barris custom cars before he was famous and started one of the nations first custom surfboard shops in the 1950’s. Listing her influences she includes everything from old German masters and medieval manuscript illuminations, to 1940s Stag magazines, and Sunday morning cartoons. Her paintings in oil glisten with full custom ‘lead sleds’ hot rod zombies and high flying bombers so realistic you can almost smell the burning gasoline.
Working in a cramped one room studio all hours she spends any free time wrenching on her own vintage cars and pursuing her passion for history, interviewing WWII veterans and traveling to various air, military and art museums in the world. Sara Ray currently hides out in Long Beach California. www.sararay.com
Sara Ray on the Gretsch 6120 Victory Guitar:
“I finished this guitar on June 6th, the 60th anniversary of D-Day. The guitar is meant to look like a relic from the war, a trophy that has been sitting for 60 years in a basement, well worn and dusty, forgotten. Like a pilot’s once treasured flight jacket, painted with his missions completed, his plane and his girl back home, now folded up in a box.”
“This guitar is a tribute to the airmen and “flyboys” of WWII. The plane flying across the back is a B-17 “Flying Fortress” A bomber that dominated the skies over Europe. The pinup girl with rivet gun in hand represents the countless American women who joined in all branches of service, helping to end the war. Our girl is posed as if she was painted on the side of a bomber, a reminder of the girl back home. On the front is the American eagle holding the shield of freedom soaring like the airmen did. The winged number eight is the symbol of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, which from 1942 to the end of the war in 1945, the Eighth flew B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators in daylight bombing operations against Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. The eighth was pivotal in ending the war. The Iron Cross represents not only the war trophies brought home but also the thousands of German pilots who lost their lives. To quote the number one living German flying ace Major Günther Rall, whom I’ve had the honor to speak with “of our 20,000 Luftwaffe pilots in WWII only one tenth came home, such a waste.” Airmen were a special breed of men and they were the first to step beyond the barriers at the end of the war and become friends with the former “enemy” pilots. Forever may their songs be heard.” - Sara Ray
Fred Gretsch on his purchase of the Victory Guitar & Amp set:
“Our offices near Savannah Georgia happen to be 2 blocks from the U.S. Eighth Air Force Museum. The U.S. Eighth Air Force was first formed in Savannah in 1942 and went on to be a significant part of our air war effort and later still an integral part of our security umbrella. As a lifetime member of the museum, I knew I had to bring the guitar home to Georgia and display it in the museum.” - Fred Gretsch
Click here to download and print the NAMM handout sheet for the 6120 Victory Guitar and Amp set! (7.7 MB)
This file is in Adobe PDF format. You’ll need to download and install the free Adobe Acrobat Reader (if you don’t already have it) to read and print the file.
August 2, 2004
Dress-up Your Desktop with Gretsch Guitar Wallpaper!
Be the first on your block to download these four glamorous Gretsch guitar desktop images! Click here to view our selection.