The two pickups – not the anniversary – were the “double” element of Gretsch’s Double Anniversary model of 1958.

Along with a single-pickup version, it marked the company’s 75th anniversary and then continued as a regular production model.

Initially fitted with Gretsch’s Filter’Tron humbucking pickups, the Anniversary was curiously downgraded in 1960 to the weaker Hi-Lo’Trons. Further evidence that someone at Gretsch had lost the celebratory spirit game in 1961, when the Chet Atkins Hollow Body (Model 6120) – essentially the same guitar as the Anniversary but with a different finish – went to a double-cutaway body, along with other high-end models, while the Anniversary models stayed with the single-cutaway body.

At the same time, in a dubious gesture to offset the Anniversary’s second-class status, Gretsch offered the Double Anniversary with stereo for several years (1961-63) and gave it a bound fingerboard.

In the 1970s, Gretsch took away the model’s identity by discontinuing the Smoke Green finish and eliminating the nameplate on the peghead, and in 1974, the 16-year long Anniversary celebration finally came to an end.