Gretsch G6636T Players Edition Falcon Center Block: The Borrowed Bird

None of the five names on the spreadsheet for this guitar have ever played one. Chuck Berry, Larry Carlton, Eric Clapton, Dave Grohl, and Noel Gallagher form a generic “semi-hollow legend” list that gets recycled across half of Gretsch’s catalog regardless of model, and for the G6636T Players Edition Falcon Center Block, none of it sticks. The real story here is smaller, stranger, and honestly more interesting: a South Carolina husband-and-wife duo who picked up a borrowed Black Falcon backstage at a festival, fell in love with it on the spot, and made it their only electric guitar.

The Falcon That Shrank on Purpose

The Gretsch Falcon has been Gretsch’s flagship showpiece since 1954, when it debuted at NAMM as a deliberately over-the-top “guitar of the future” — gold sparkle binding, mother-of-pearl inlays, a cavernous 17″-wide fully hollow body. That original White Falcon spirit lives on today in the Professional Collection’s full hollow-body models. The G6636T Players Edition Falcon Center Block takes a different approach entirely: a smaller 16″ double-cutaway body built around a chambered spruce center block rather than true open hollow construction.

The result is a guitar that trades some of the original Falcon’s cavernous resonance for practical, stage-ready benefits — a comfortably lighter instrument, meaningfully better feedback resistance at volume, and a body depth of around 1.75″ versus the 2.75″–3″ depth of a traditional full hollow Falcon. It’s part of Gretsch’s broader Players Edition philosophy: take an iconic silhouette and rebuild the internals for touring musicians who need total reliability over vintage-exact construction. Despite what promotional photos sometimes suggest, the Center Block Falcon’s overall body width is identical across its Black, White, and gold sparkle color variants — the size difference is entirely a Center Block-versus-full-hollow distinction, not a color-specific one.

This isn’t Gretsch’s first attempt at solving the “beautiful but unruly” problem that comes with a 17″-wide hollow guitar. The Falcon’s reputation was built in an era before anyone worried much about stage volume or feedback, when a $600 showpiece guitar from 1955 was more likely to sit in a dealer’s window than plug into a cranked amplifier. Six decades later, the touring musician’s needs are different, and the Center Block platform — already proven on Gretsch’s smaller Jet and Broadkaster models — gave the company a way to keep the Falcon’s unmistakable silhouette and gold-sparkle glamour while making it genuinely viable for a modern loud stage.

The Falcon Family: Which One Are You Actually Looking At?

Falcon-branded guitars span a wide range of construction and price, and it’s easy to end up comparing the wrong two models. At the top of the range sit the fully hollow G6136T Players Edition Falcon and the historically faithful G6136T-59 Vintage Select, both built around true open hollow bodies with all the resonance and feedback sensitivity that implies. The G6136T-140 Double Platinum anniversary edition pushes further into vintage-correct territory with a solid Adirondack spruce top. Artist-specific signature Falcons complicate things further: Michael Guy Chislett’s G6136T-MGC is a fully hollow instrument built around his own vintage-inspired spec, entirely separate from the Center Block platform covered in this article. The G6636T Players Edition Falcon Center Block sits in its own lane below all of these — smaller body, chambered spruce center block, and a build philosophy focused on stage reliability rather than maximum vintage authenticity. If you see “Falcon” in a listing, always check whether the word “hollow body” or “center block” appears alongside it before assuming you know what you’re buying.

Full Specifications

Construction and Tone: A Falcon That Fights Feedback

The chambered spruce center block is the defining engineering decision here, and it changes the guitar’s entire relationship to volume. A traditional fully hollow Falcon is a beautiful, resonant instrument that also fights you the moment you push a loud amp or heavy overdrive into feedback territory. The Center Block construction runs a solid chambered spine down the middle of the body, anchoring the bridge and reducing the top’s tendency to resonate uncontrollably — the same design logic Gibson popularized with the ES-335 decades earlier, applied here to Gretsch’s most glamorous body shape.

The dual High Sensitive Filter’Tron pickups deliver the articulate, present midrange Gretsch built its reputation on, and forum consensus among owners is that the Falcon’s tone sits as one of the more neutral, versatile options across Gretsch’s model range — equally credible for classic country twang, psychedelic rock atmospherics, and even worship-band clean tones, according to player reports. The “no load” tone pot and treble bleed circuit found across the Players Edition line keep the top end intact even when you roll the volume back, a small but meaningful detail for players who ride their volume knob for dynamics rather than relying on pedals.

Famous Players: A List Built for the Wrong Falcon

The stock spreadsheet list for Gretsch semi-hollow guitars — Chuck Berry, Larry Carlton, Eric Clapton, Dave Grohl, Noel Gallagher — is a generic template built around Gibson ES-335-family associations, and it collapses almost entirely on contact with this specific Falcon.

Not Applicable

Chuck Berry‘s signature semi-hollow instrument was a Gibson ES-350T, not a Gretsch. Larry Carlton earned the nickname “Mr. 335” for a reason — his entire identity runs through the Gibson ES-335. Eric Clapton‘s career is built almost entirely on Fender and Gibson instruments, with no meaningful Gretsch Falcon connection on record. Noel Gallagher‘s genuine Gretsch-family connection runs through his customized Epiphone Riviera and Casino from the Britpop era, not a Gretsch Falcon.

Genuine, But the Wrong Falcon

Dave Grohl is a real, well-documented Gretsch Falcon player — but the guitar in question is a fully hollow vintage-style 1990 White Falcon, previously owned by Foo Fighters bandmate Pat Smear and seen throughout the “Monkey Wrench” video and The Colour and the Shape-era touring. It’s a completely different construction from the chambered Center Block model covered here, and Grohl has no documented connection to this specific SKU.

The Real Story: Shovels & Rope

Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst have been making music together as Shovels & Rope since 2008, building a career on rootsy, bluesy Americana and alt-country that doesn’t confine itself to a traditional two-piece arrangement. The husband-and-wife duo trade off vocal, guitar, percussion, bass, and synth duties throughout their live shows, essentially orchestrating a full-band sound with only two sets of hands and feet between them. Trent originally fronted a Denver band called Tinker’s Punishment before relocating to Charleston, South Carolina, where he later collaborated with Butch Walker and released solo material before teaming up permanently with Hearst.

Premier Guitar’s own Rig Rundown with Michael Trent confirms the genuine headline connection: Trent picked up a borrowed Gretsch Black Falcon while playing Eddie Vedder’s Ohana Festival, fell for it immediately, and it became the band’s only electric guitar on the road. As Trent explained to Premier Guitar, he’s not a guitar snob — he generally plays whatever he can get his hands on, and this particular borrowed Falcon simply won him over on the spot. Because it’s the only electric guitar in Shovels & Rope’s live rig, its failure would mean falling back to an acoustic mid-set, which says something about how much trust the band places in a single instrument. Trent loads it with heavy .013-gauge strings in standard tuning — a notably heavier gauge than most players choose for a semi-hollow guitar — and Hearst takes her own turns playing it during the band’s rotating-instrument sets. It’s a small, specific, verifiable story that says more about the guitar’s real-world appeal than a recycled list of legends ever could.

Worth flagging for anyone browsing Gretsch’s Falcon signature models: Hillsong United guitarist and producer Michael Guy Chislett has his own dedicated Gretsch signature instrument, the G6136T-MGC Michael Guy Chislett Signature Falcon. That’s a fully hollow-body guitar with a solid Sitka spruce top and TV Jones pickups — a different tier and construction entirely from the Center Block model covered here, easy to confuse given the shared “Falcon signature” branding.

Tone Recipes

Americana/alt-country warmth (Trent-style): both pickups blended, heavier string gauge if your fingers can take it, into a low-wattage tweed combo pushed to a light breakup for that rootsy, slightly gritty clean tone.

Psychedelic/atmospheric wash: neck pickup, tone rolled back to around 4, paired with a Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer set low for gentle compression and a modulation pedal for shimmer.

Country twang and chicken-pickin’: bridge pickup, into a clean Fender Deluxe Reverb-style amp with light spring reverb, letting the Filter’Tron’s natural bite carry the attack.

Big clean rhythm for worship or ambient rock: both pickups combined, master volume backed off slightly to take advantage of the treble bleed circuit, generous hall reverb and a slow modulation for width.

How the G6636T Compares

Against the Gretsch G6136T Players Edition Falcon, the flagship fully hollow model covered elsewhere in this guide, the G6636T trades some of that guitar’s cavernous resonance and sustain for a lighter body, better feedback control, and a friendlier, more compact double-cutaway shape — a genuinely different playing experience despite the shared Falcon branding. Against the Gretsch G6128T Duo Jet, the comparison is about body type entirely: the Duo Jet is a chambered solidbody built for punch and attack, while the Falcon Center Block is a true semi-hollow built for openness and shimmer, even with its feedback-taming center block. Against a Gibson ES-335-style semi-hollow, the Falcon wins on sheer visual drama and Bigsby-driven vibrato expression, while the ES-335 family wins on raw sustain and mainstream studio familiarity.

Buying Guide

• Don’t confuse it with the full hollow Falcon: the G6636T Center Block and the G6136T full hollow-body Falcon share a name and a silhouette but play and sound noticeably differently — try both if you can before committing.
• Color variants: Black, White, and gold sparkle finishes are available; body dimensions are identical across all three despite how they may look in promotional photography.
• String gauge flexibility: the Center Block’s improved feedback resistance and stable Bigsby setup make it a good candidate for heavier string gauges if you want more low-end body, as demonstrated by Michael Trent’s .013 setup.
• Consider it as a one-guitar solution: Shovels & Rope’s use case — a single electric guitar that has to cover an entire live set across multiple genres — is a useful real-world test of this model’s versatility, and a reasonable framing if you’re shopping for one do-everything electric rather than a specialist.
• Used market: as a Professional Collection instrument, this guitar holds its value well; used examples in good condition rarely sell too far below new pricing.

Practical Ownership Notes

The Grover Imperial locking tuners and string-thru Bigsby setup on this model are specifically designed to minimize the tuning instability that older Gretsch Bigsby guitars are sometimes known for — a real practical advantage for touring musicians. As with any chambered or hollow-bodied Gretsch, treat it with the same humidity care you’d give an acoustic guitar during storage and transport. The “no load” tone control has a genuinely different feel near its fully-open position compared to a standard tone pot — don’t mistake this for a wiring fault if you’re used to a conventional tone circuit. Given the guitar’s relatively high street price, budget for a proper professional setup if buying new, particularly around Bigsby nut lubrication and bridge seating, which affects tuning stability more than almost any other adjustment on this instrument.

FAQ