Revisiting the Atkins Super Axe and the attempt to change it to the Roy Clark model. From what I found out, in 1978 Roy Clark was using the Gretsch Super Axe as his main guitar. He began talking to Duke Kramer at Gretsch and Duke wanted to make a Roy Clark model. So Roy wanted a slight V-shape neck, Filter'Trons with split coils to get a single coil sound also. He was thinking about a slotted classical style headstock. He wanted the bass cutaway deeper and the treble cutaway rounded. He still wanted the compressor and phaser, but re-design the physical appearance of the knobs. (they left the plastic plate off). He also had them put a strip of binding on each side of the face of the fretboard. The color was blue.
They only made 2 prototypes. Here's the one Roy didn't choose, it now belongs to Dean Turner (notice it has a White Falcon style Gretsch headstock):
Here's 2 photos of Roy playing his prototype. (notice the headstock in the second photo had "Gretsch" marked out for publication):
These photos aren't the best quality, but it gives us some more insight to why Chet wasn't very happy with Gretsch towards the end of his endorsement with them in the late 70's. It also makes you wonder what the Super Axe would have sounded like with Filter'Trons instead of the Gibson style humbuckers.