Gretsch G2220 Junior Jet II

[Dan_Q]

I fell in love with the looks of one of these in my local PMT a couple of weekends ago- it was a beautiful olive green colour 😎 nice to hear they play and sound as good as they look

 

[Frank Blank]

5 minutes ago, Dan_Q said:

I fell in love with the looks of one of these in my local PMT a couple of weekends ago- it was a beautiful olive green colour 😎 nice to hear they play and sound as good as they look.

They really do!

[juan77]

Hi everyone.
Could someone please help me with some measurements of the junior jet II neck?
I planning to build a short scale bass with the juniors´s neck specs...
I would like to know the width of the neck at the nut, at the 12th fret and at the end ...
thank you very much!!

[Obrienp]

I recently bought one of these G2220 online, taking a bit of a punt, sight unseen but it came in at a tadge over £300 new, so worth the risk. I’ve since noticed the same box shifter has put the price up by £65! Having hit 65 I have started to struggle with my long scale basses on fast stuff: short fingers and arthritis slowing me down and I thought it was time for a shorty.
 

I am generally pleased with the G2220: very good value for the money. Finish is pretty good and most of the hardware is fine. The bridge being the main exception: just too dinky. I was amazed at the power of the pickups. They are much hotter than, for instance, the Seymour Duncan quarter pounders I have in a P/J. I was expecting the sound pallet to be pretty limited to the sort of 60s humbucker mud and thump but there is a lot more available. With the standard strings it reminds me quite a lot of the sounds you get out of an Ibanez SR.

I actually wanted something a bit more old school and I was finding the standard strings clanky and too slack, so decided to put some flat wounds on it. Try finding short scale flats in the UK for a decent price at the moment! Nobody seems to have La Bella 45-105 in stock. I have been warned against Rotosound short scale (intonation issues). In the end I took a punt on a set of Jim Dunlop flats. I’ve never tried them before but they seem OK.

While changing the strings, I also put on a Fender high mass bridge that I had lying about from a previous project. The original bridge has a standard modern Fender 5 hole fitting, so there are plenty of replacement options out there. It has made a positive difference to the sound and I suspect it will hold the intonation better. While I was doing the string change, I discovered that a couple of the machine heads were very loose, which wasn’t helping tuning stability. Tightening the collet nuts and retaining screws has sorted it for now but I suspect the holes were drilled too large. At some point I may need to replace the tuners with Gotohs or similar.

I would be interested to hear from other owners how the electrics have worked out long term. Is it worth replacing the cheap pots with CTS for instance?

[Bleat]

I upgraded the Gretsch I had to CTS pots and 3 way switch to a Switchcraft. From what I remember it produced a subtle but audible improvement on an already great sounding bass. I would say it's a worthwhile upgrade. I also upgraded the machine heads to Schaller M4's.