News that Gretsch was working on a  double-coil humbucking pickup spurred Gibson to speed up their own development of a humbucker, and Gibson beat Gretsch to the market in 1957. However, Gretsch one-upped Gibson a year later when the Country Club appeared with not only new humbuckers, but with split coils for stereo capability.

Guitarist Jimmie Webster introduced the “Project-o-sonic” Country Club in a flyer that proclaimed “The biggest guitar news since electrification”.

The two Filter’Tron pickups had only three polepieces, with one set of polepieces under the bass strings and the other under the treble strings. With a click of the three-way “closing switch”, the player got “Stereophonic Bi-Aural sound disbursement”, with the treble strings going to one amplifier and the bass strings to another. The system required a special cord and jack box, plus an extra amplifier, and it was only well-suited for players whose style effectively split the guitar into a three-stringed treble instrument and a three-stringed bass instrument.

While basic Country Clubs continued to sell well, the stereo version did not last five years.