A guitar designed to capture the spirit of the outlaw country guitarist, featuring innovative Gretsch "ML" bracing, FT-67 Filter'Tron humbucking pickups, and exclusive western-themed artwork.
This launch comes hot off the heels of Peck’s latest album, Stampede: Vol. 1, a collection of duets with the likes of Elton John and Willie Nelson, which was released earlier this month.
Orville Peck burst onto the scene in 2019 with his acclaimed debut album Pony; a record which combined the lulling ambiance of shoegaze with the iconic melodies and vocal prowess of classic American outlaw country music. Since then, Peck has released three more celebrated records - the 2020 EP Show Pony, 2022’s Bronco and the aforementioned Stampede: Vol. 1 - won a host of accolades, and collaborated with the likes of Shania Twain, Lady Gaga and Diplo amongst others.
Orville Peck Unveils His Limited Edition Signature Falcon | Gretsch Guitars
“It’s been a pleasure working with Gretsch on my signature guitar, and I’m super proud of it,” said Orville Peck. “The white Falcon is such a versatile, beautiful guitar, so we wanted to stay true to the original and keep the classic feel, whilst adding some pizzazz. I think whoever picks up the guitar will be able to show a little bit of themselves through it.”
Gretsch Limited-edition Orville Peck Signature Falcon Hollowbody Electric Guitar - Oro Sparkle
The Limited Edition Orville Peck Falcon captures true iconoclast spirit with mid-century swagger. It features a comfortable 2.5"-deep maple body with the innovative Gretsch "ML" bracing that delivers huge hollow body sound with exceptional clarity and acoustic nuance. A 12"-radius streaked ebony fingerboard with rolled edges and 22 medium jumbo frets tops a 25.5"-scale maple neck with a comfortably familiar standard "U"-shaped profile for fluidly easy playing, while Luminlay side dots offer precision fretting in low-light settings. The Limited Edition Orville Peck Falcon is powered by the all-new FT-67 Filter'Tron humbucking pickups, which were designed to capture authentic vintage Gretsch voicing but with a more well-rounded tone for modern playing styles. This powerful pair of pickups provide open and pristine top-end chime, glassy midrange, robust low end, and balanced harmonics for tone that blends seamlessly with other instruments.The guitar features the Bigsby B6GP String-Thru vibrato tailpiece, making it quicker (and easier) to change strings, as well as providing increased vibration transfer for enhanced sustain. Elsewhere, it features exclusive western-themed artwork by Judith Rothman Pierce of RoseCut Clothing on the gold plexi pickguard and aged pearloid Humpblock fingerboard inlays, adding a distinctive style and vibe that manages to be both fresh and classic at the same time.
For more information, please visit gretschguitars.com.
The Rickenbacker 481’s body style was based on the 4001 bass, popularly played by Paul McCartney. Even with that, the guitar was too experimental to reach its full potential.
By the early 1970s, the great interest the lads had sparked in 6- and 12-string Ricks had waned. But thankfully for the company, there was still high demand for yet another Beatles-played instrument: the 4001 bass.
Paul McCartney was gifted a 4001 by Rickenbacker in 1965, which he then used prominently throughout the group’s late-’60s recordings and while leading Wings all through the ’70s. Other rising stars of rock also donned 4000 series models, like Yes’Chris Squire, Pink Floyd’sRoger Waters, the Bee Gees’ Maurice Gibb, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Stu Cook, and more.
And like that, a new star was born.
So, what’s a guitar company to do when its basses are selling better than its guitars? Voilà: The Rickenbacker 480. Introduced in 1972, it took the 4000-series body shape and created a standard 6-string out of it, using a bolt-on neck for the first time in the brand’s history.
The 481’s slanted frets predate the modern multi-scale phenomenon by decades. The eight-degree tilt of the frets is matched by an eight-degree tilt of the nut, pickups, and bridge.
“It was like a yo-yo at Rickenbacker sometimes,” factory manager Dick Burke says in Rickenbacker Guitars: Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo. “We got quiet in the late ’60s, but when the bass started taking off in the ’70s, we got real busy again, so making a 6-string version of that was logical, I guess.”
The gambit worked, for a time. Sales of the 480 were strong enough at first that, in 1973, a deluxe model was introduced—the 481—and it’s one of these deluxe versions that we’re showcasing here.
“The 481 features slant frets—pointing ever-so-slightly toward the body of the guitar—and the eight-degree tilt of the frets is matched by an eight-degree tilt of the nut, pickups, and bridge.”
Take a close look and you’ll notice that the body shape isn’t the only remarkable feature. The 481 was Rickenbacker’s first production run to feature humbucker pickups. Here, you can see each humbucker’s 12 pole pieces dotting through the chrome cover, a variant casing only available from 1975 to 1976. (Interestingly enough, the pickups had first been developed for the 490, a prototype that never made it to public release, which would’ve allowed players to substitute different pickups by swapping loaded pickguards in and out of the body.)
The new pickups were also treated with novel electronics. The standard 3-way pickup-selector switch is here, but so is a second small switch that reverses the pickups’ phase when engaged.
The inventive minds at Rickenbacker didn’t stop there: The 481 features slant frets—pointing ever-so-slightly toward the body of the guitar—and the eight-degree tilt of the frets is matched by an eight-degree tilt of the nut, pickups, and bridge.
Long before the fanned fret phenomenon caught on in the modern, progressive guitar landscape, Rickenbacker had been toying around with the slant-fret concept. Originally available from 1970 forward as a custom order on other models, slant frets were all but standard on the 481 (only a small minority of straight-fret 481s were built).
The 481 was the deluxe version of the 480, which preceded it and marked the first time the company used a bolt-on neck.
Dick Burke, speaking separately to writer Tony Bacon in an interview published on Reverb, only half-recalls the genesis and doesn’t remember them selling particularly well: “Some musicians said that’s the way when you hold the neck in your left hand—your hand is slanted. So, we put the slanted frets in a few guitars. I don’t know how many, maybe a hundred or two—I don’t recall.”
Even proponents of the 481 do not necessarily sing the praises of the slanted fretboard. Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno, a 481 superfan, told Rickenbacker Guitars author Martin Kelly, “I don’t just love the 481, it’s part of me.... The 481’s slanted frets have made my fingers crooked for life, but I don’t care, I’ll take that for it’s given me riff after riff after riff."
Initial 480-series sales were promising, but the models never really took off. Though they were built as late as 1984, the slant-fret experiment of the 481 was called off by 1979. And these slanted models have not, in the minds of most players or collectors, become anywhere near as sought-after as the classic 330s and 360s, or, for that matter, the 4001s.
For that reason, 481s—despite their novelty and their lists of firsts for Rickenbacker—can still be found for relatively cheap. Our Vintage Vault pick, which is being sold by the Leicester, England-based Jordan Guitars Ltd, has an asking price of 3,350 British pounds (or about 4,300 U.S. dollars), which is still well under half the going-rate of early 360s, 660s, and other more famous Ricks. Some lucky buyers have even found 481s on Reverb for less than $2,000, which is unheard of for other vintage models.
With its idiosyncratic charms, the 481 remains more within reach than many other guitars of a similar vintage.
Sources: Martin Kelly’s Rickenbacker Guitars: Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo, Tony Bacon’s"Interview: Dick Burke on the Creation of the Rickenbacker 12-String | Bacon’s Archive" on Reverb, Reverb Price Guide sales data.
