Gretsch Falcon Guitar for Beginners: A Complete Guide

Let's get one thing straight before anything else: a Gretsch Falcon guitar isn't a strange choice for a first proper guitar, whatever anyone tells you. It's a bigger commitment than a solid-body, sure, and it plays a little differently, but there's nothing here you can't handle with a bit of patience. Here's the honest, no-nonsense version of getting started.

Is a Falcon a Sensible First "Proper" Guitar?

Honestly? It depends what you're chasing. If you want clean, articulate tones and you're drawn to rockabilly, country or classic rock and roll, a Falcon suits that first instinct better than most starting points. If you're mainly after high-gain distortion and tight palm-muted riffs, a hollow-body isn't the natural fit — the feedback you'll fight at that gain level will teach you frustration before it teaches you technique. Know which camp you're in before you commit.

Getting Used to the Size

It's a big guitar, no way round that. Sitting down, rest it properly on your leg rather than letting it slide, and standing up, a wide, supportive strap makes a genuine difference to comfort over a full session. Weight and balance vary between individual instruments, so if you can try one in person before buying, do — it tells you more than any spec sheet.

Understanding Feedback Before You Turn Up

This is the one thing that catches new hollow-body players out. That big resonant body sounds gorgeous clean, but push the gain and the volume up together and it'll start howling back at you sooner than a solid-body ever would. The fix isn't to fight it with more gain — it's moderate volume, sensible amp positioning, and easing into overdrive rather than diving straight into distortion. Learn where that feedback threshold sits early, and you'll never be caught out by it on stage.

The Basic Gretsch Falcon Guitar Controls, Explained

Depending on the exact model, you'll typically find:

• Individual pickup volumes — balance the neck and bridge pickup against each other.
• A master volume — your overall output level.
• A pickup selector — neck, bridge, or both together.
• A tone control — rolls off treble for a warmer sound; some Gretsch models include a "mud switch" that cuts bass sharply, which is worth trying rather than avoiding out of confusion.

Spend ten minutes just clicking through every combination while playing the same simple riff. You'll learn more about your particular Gretsch Falcon guitar's voice in that ten minutes than in a month of reading spec sheets.

Simple Care That Actually Matters

Keep it away from big swings in temperature and humidity — that large hollow body doesn't love sudden changes any more than an acoustic guitar does. If yours has a lacquer finish, be a bit more careful with stands, straps and cleaning products than you might be with a modern polyurethane finish. And if it has a Bigsby, take your time the first few times you restring — rushing it is how tuning problems start, not how they're avoided.

Where to Point Your Practice

Start with clean or lightly overdriven tones and simple chord work — this is genuinely where the guitar sounds best and where you'll build confidence fastest. A touch of reverb or slapback delay suits the vintage character nicely. Once you're comfortable there, easing into moderate overdrive is a natural next step, always keeping an ear on that feedback threshold we talked about earlier.

Bottom Line

A Gretsch Falcon guitar rewards patience more than raw speed, and there's no shame in taking a few weeks to feel properly at home with one. For a longer look at the range and what separates each model, our overview guide is worth reading next, and common mistakes to avoid will save you a few headaches early on.

Frequently Asked Questions