17 October 2014
Washington, D.C., United States
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Brian Setzer donates an exact replica of his original signature orange 1959 Gretsch 6120 "Stray Cat" guitar to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
The Smithsonian Institute issued a press release about this on their website a few days later. This statement can be read here as PDF.
The famous original (once owned by Eddie Cochran) was used during the ’80s heyday of the Stray Cats, when he personalised it by mounting dice (taken from his Monopoly board game) on two of its Tone pots and added stickers depicting a black cat, skull and crossbones, and a pin-up girl. Those touches were duplicated on the replica, which was built in 2006 by Stephen Stern, master builder at Gretsch.
Brian asked for the replica to be built because the original suffered from age and use and became too fragile to be used.