Published: July 09, 2008 09:54 pm      

Stolen strings

Historic guitar returned to family

Greenup — An instrument from the pages of electric guitar history found its way back into the right hands Wednesday as Greenup County sheriff’s deputies gave the world’s only Gretsch Silver Jet testbed back to its rightful owners.

“It’s hard to explain. This guitar is something I’ve seen since I was a little kid,” said Randy Butts, whose father, the late Ray Butts, worked with Gretsch as well as many influential artists to create a sound that helped define rock ‘n’ roll.

“I was just a little kid and I remember it hung up in the basement. I just wondered, with it looking the way it did and everything, why anyone would steal it in the first place,” said Butts, a Realtor from Gallatin, Tenn.

Butts is credited with the development of several of Gretsch’s groundbreaking components including the brand’s stereo humbucker pickups, which eliminated the inherent hum of early electrified instruments, as well as the highly coveted Echosonic amplifiers that have become the foundation of modern rockabilly guitar sounds.

The glittery silver guitar recovered in Greenup years after it was stolen from the Buttses’ home in Nashville is featured in The Gretsch Book. The relatively bare-bone semihollowbody guitar was given to Butts by Fred Gretsch “to enable him to carry out experimental work on pickups and circuitry.”

Butts said he thought he and his sister, Katha House, would never see the guitar again.

“Not after the first 90 days. When we didn’t find it in a pawn shop or anything, we didn’t think it would ever turn up,” he said, adding the first thing he did when the guitar’s identity was confirmed was call his sister.

House, a commercial pilot from Shelton, Conn., was anxious to thank Greenup County sheriff’s deputies Larry Pancake and Darrell McCarty when she and her brother arrived in Greenup on Wednesday afternoon to take the guitar home.

“God, I wish Dad was alive,” House said. “As I said before, this is the one that broke his heart because he didn’t understand why anybody would want it.”

House said she has no idea how the stolen guitar got from Nashville to Greenup. She said they offered the man who had the guitar $500, more than he paid for the instrument and an out-of-print book detailing the guitar’s history, and were disappointed when he started asking for more money.

“I was as fair as I could be,” House said, explaining the local man’s attitude seemed to change when he realized the guitar was historically significant.

The guitar’s dollar value, she said, is hard to determine.

“Anything is only worth what someone will pay for it,” House said, noting many collectors and celebrity guitarists alike would likely be willing to pay a high price to add the “testbed” guitar to their collection. An expert estimate of the guitar’s value “started at $20,000, and where it stops nobody knows.”

Pancake said the local man who had the guitar and claimed he bought it from a friend who got it at a yard sale did not take action or file claims of ownership for the stolen six string. The deputy, a musician himself, said most of the original parts are intact, although the knobs have been replaced by dice and a circuit board that was once in place of the instrument’s pick-guard remains unaccounted for.

Pancake, whose own interest in the guitar stems from an appreciation of the sound crafted by Elvis Presley’s guitarist Scotty More, said he regrets “the only man who could really fix that guitar is gone.”

House said the one-of-a-kind guitar will be donated to the Georgia Museum of Music to be housed in its section dedicated to Gretsch products.

Joe Carducci, marketing manager for Gretsch Guitarsm said Ray Butts, was “absolutely” vital to the company’s development through his design of components, including the dual-core Filter’Tron pickup. Carducci said the Silver Jet design continues to be built by Gretsch and that a new Billy Zoom tribute model of the instrument was released this year.

TIM PRESTON can be reached at tpreston@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2651.