Gretsch had battled with Gibson and Epiphone in the pre-WWII acoustic arena with such flashy features as cat’s eye soundholes on archtops and a triangular soundhole on flat-tops. In the postwar years, Gretsch continued to attract attention with aesthetic touches, especially finish colors, illustrated by a Duo Jet style solidbody with a bright red top. Gretsch intoduced it in 1955 as the Jet Fire Bird.

The red-topped Gretsch did not affect Gretsch’s sales as much as it did competitors’ guitars. Within three years, Gibson changed the finish on the Les Paul Junior from sunburst to a red stain, and the Les Paul Standard changed from gold to a red sunburst. At the same time, Fender added a red layer to it’s regular sunburst and introduced a standard palette of custom finish colors. Unlike Gibson and Fender, however, Gretsch heightened the impact of it’s color options by treating each as a different model.

The Jet Fire Bird, though it followed all the spec changes of the black Duo Jet, kept it’s own identity through to it’s ultimate demise in 1971.