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I had a G5420, it needed a hell of a lot of work to get it to play well, and even the it didn't get close to my Annie. A lot of Gretsch-o-philes hate me saying this. I'm huge Gretsch fan, but they Electromatics are not good enough quality for the money.
Buy a G2420, and upgrade the pickups with some used Filtertrons. You're be golden. Thats a much smarter move.
Ot better still, save up and buy a Pro Line used. You can get them for £1300 if you take your time. Worth every penny, and more.
Good luck
Marlin
It's true the hardware can be iffy, two of the tuners on mine went very sloppy after a couple of years. A dicky selector switch is/was common, but an easy fix with cleaner & fine wet & dry swiped through the contacts. It fishes out the top f-hole no probs. The bridges could rattle lots.
Compton bridges work very well with the Bigsby, and sound loads better too. Different metals available, I had s/s on mine.
A bone or tusq nut helps loads with Bigsby tuning stability too, I tried both out.
For pickups personally TVJs are a bit rich for me, but Mojo does excellent ones and I like my Fletcher ones just as well and they're 55 a pop. My two current builds are getting them. Demo linky
My guitar in itself was excellent, after a minor fret-level the action could go silly low, it played very cleanly indeed. Gigged it no worries.
There can be slightly Friday afternoon ones so best try before buying. But the same is true of Prolines, though less common as you'd expect.
I've had a Brian Setzer Black Phoenix, 9.5" radius and longer scale length. Was a damn fine guitar. Miss that one a lot too!
The prices have gone up, but as mentioned above, you can pick up a mint one secondhand a good price.
The projet electromatics are even cheaper again.
None of them have been terrible, but a couple have had some slightly rough points in the finish - dodgy binding round the difficult corners of the f-holes - and also where neck/fretboard comes over the body some have looked a little rough round the edges. A couple of them have also had intermittent pickup selectors. Playing wise, the one I really like kept tune well and was well intonated up the neck, others have been a bit more of a struggle and there was one in particular that just *wouldn't* stay in tune.
If you can, play the different body shapes through an amp - I've learned a couple of things I wouldn't have expected. Firstly, the 5422 sounds much better - punchier, tighter, more dynamic, through an AC30 which is what I use most. Secondly, the 5420 shape is much more comfortable to wear standing up than I assumed, but the low end is more wooly/soft/pillowy, (whatever adjective makes sense to you).
So I definitely think it's worth trying a few and seeing if any jump out at you. In my experience you try a few seemingly identical guitars, and when you pick up the one that's just right you know pretty quickly that the search is over.
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al