Old Gold
The White Falcon first entered the Gretsch catalogue in 1955 with the model number 6136 – a 431.8mm (17-inch) wide archtop with luxurious, gold-plated hardware set against its Snow White finish. Three years later a Stereo model appeared – the 6137 – with some cunning under-the-hood wiring and a dedicated amplifier and speaker system. But the model we have here is a real rarity because it is a prototype for the Stereo version, caught on an experimental cusp between models. “You can tell by the label ‘6136’, which was the number for the Falcon, and it’s been hand changed to ‘6137’,” Phil Carwardine from Vintage And Modern Guitars tells us. “It got converted to mono sometime in the 60s, because the pot that has been changed from a switch is dated ’66.”
Of the unique wiring that Gretsch employed for the Stereo version, Phil says: “It would have been one pickup out of one amp and one pickup out of the other amp and then you could split the bass strings and the treble strings out of different amps, which I think wasn’t that successful as you can probably imagine. It came with a load of satellite amps and I mean not just two, it was a bit like modern surround sound. It had a woofer, satellites and two big ones and it had a splitter box.”
Indeed, the dedicated amp and speaker setup for the 6137 was a little cumbersome and it’s no surprise that it didn’t catch on with the guitarists of the day. The instrument itself, however, found a few fans: “The most famous fan is Neil Young with his Stereo Falcon. He did that charity gig and it’s just him solo [Farm Aid 2010] playing Ohio and he’s got it set up for stereo and it just sounds incredible.”