Gretsch Limited G6136T-140 140th Double Platinum Anniversary Falcon

The Guitar of the Future

The Gretsch Falcon's existence is the happiest accident in the history of American guitar design. You see, Gretsch's marketing guru in the fifties, Jimmie Webster, loved cars (he also loved two-handed tapping, which he popularized decades before Eddie Van Halen was even a gleam in his father's eye). In those times, car manufacturers would build ridiculous, ostentatious prototypes that had more in common with jet planes than actual automobiles and send them to trade shows as a marketing stunt. Jimmy saw the publicity these one-off cars generated, so he took a page out of Pontiac's book and dreamed up a guitar that would get people talking. What about a white hollowbody with gold hardware that used the sparkly pearloid material used to finish Gretsch's drumsets for binding?

The folks at Gretsch called their little marketing stunt the White Falcon, and it made people FREAK OUT when they debuted it at the NAMM show in 1954. You have to remember that in 1954, almost every production model guitar sported a tasteful, simple finish like sunburst or black. No one had ever seen such a blinged-out guitar before, and orders started pouring in left and right. Fred Gretsch Jr. and Jimmie Webster had no choice: they had struck gold with their prototype, and now they had to figure out how to put their craziest design ever into production.

When they worked the kinks out of the manufacturing process, they billed the White Falcon as "the finest guitar we know how to make," and it retailed for the princely sum of $600. At the time, it was the second-most expensive guitar money could buy behind the Gibson Super 400. The hefty price tag didn't deter players from pulling the trigger, and the White Falcon became a runaway hit. Ever since, they've been a fixture of American guitar culture, used by everyone from alt-rocker Billy Duffy of The Cult to rockabilly revivalist Brian Setzer (and who can forget Stephen Stills and Neil Young playing dueling solos on twin Falcons with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young?). In later years, Gretsch would introduce a variant with a black finish, the aptly-named Black Falcon.

It's funny: Jimmie Webster called the Falcon "the guitar of the future" back in 1954, and here we are in the future, still drooling over his little one-off trade show guitar. It's proof that great design is timeless, and we are proud to showcase it in its 140th Anniversary Edition incarnation. As a result of the Gretsch's out-of-this-world build quality, these guitars have incredible unplugged resonance that is only magnified by their High-Sensitive Filter'Tron pickups. If you play jazz, country, rockabilly, rock, folk, alternative, punk, and anything in between, these fabulous Falcons will handle business with aplomb.

We believe that these fantastic Falcons carry on the proud tradition of excellence begun by Jimmie Webster in 1954. Somehow, six decades after their debut, they're still the guitar of the future. We invite you to experience the timeless magic of a Gretsch by plugging one in. We know it will inspire you for a long, long time.

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