Richard Fortus’ Gretsch G6636-RF White Falconīoth pickups together provide an exuberantly hollow honk, which we imagine would be the very thing to allow a certain top-hatted lead guitarist to express himself pentatonically while feeling supported in both the treble and bass registers. The neck pickup is detailed, and while more than capable of delivering a soaring lead tone – yes, on a Gretsch – it also shines with fat, ringing chords and we even get some tasty 7th and 9th arpeggios in there without things turning to mush. It’s the Gretsch sound with a touch of Gibson 335 and it absolutely rocks. The richness and complexity we’d expect from a shorter-scale instrument are all there but balanced with a quick response. The agony of choice bites hard but, after a moment’s gentle perving, we begin with the shorter-scale Black Falcon straight into a cooking tube amp – just as nature intended.
We select our longest strap and begin testing. The only other control is a selector switch located deep on the lower bout. All the knobs are ruby encrusted, as we’d hope.
The controls are arrayed with practicality in mind, with volume on the lower cutaway and tone on the lower bout. There’s a pair of Fortus’s Filter’Trons, voiced to compliment the thunder of a Slash-powered Les Paul loaded with PAFs. The fretboard inlays are limited to pearl thumbnails on the bass edge and a subtle white double coachline, while the silver Grover tuners are a lot less shouty than the gold art deco Imperials usually found on this headstock.īy Gretsch standards, the hardware is spartan. More classic 1950s than Baldwin-era Gretsch, they are positively brooding with deep tortoiseshell binding and scratchplates that suits both white and black models and coincidentally ensure that the position markers are actually visible (which isn’t a given when stage lights hit sparkly binding). The Black Falcon, meanwhile, comes with a hard tailpiece and a bend-friendly 24.6-inch scale length.Įven to a dispassionate observer these are beautiful guitars. We take a moment to cool down after that erogenous revelation and bask in the knowledge that the White Falcon is full-fat, with a 25.5-inch scale and a Bigsby B6 as per Fortus’s explicit instructions. In a modern rock exploration of natural dualities, each of the Fortus Falcon models has a distinct personality dictated by that most sexy of specifications: scale length. While those instruments have mostly been single-cuts, the signature guitars come in the arguably more versatile – and punk AF – double-cut configuration. Though his first Gretsch guitar was a 1966 Tennesean, the siren call of the Falcon has ensured that at least one of them is on the GNR rack at all times. Not a man to do things by halves, Fortus commands two versions of his signature model. Richard Fortus’ Gretsch G6636T-RF Black Falcon That said, there is no mistaking the headstocks of the handsome guitars we have here – their shape alone would suffice even without the winged vertical logo that can only mean one thing: Gretsch Falcons. READ MORE: Cornerstone Gladio SC review: The most pedalboard-friendly Dumble pedal around?.As such, the multi-faceted rock lord is often seen with an instrument that looks and sounds awesome but whose origins remain an enigma to non-connoisseurs. Fortus spent his childhood at NAMM shows surrounded by shiny six-strings and those formative years blessed him with an eye for detail, quality and the deeply cool. Guns N’ Roses axeman Richard Fortus has superb taste in guitars.
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