Edith has endowed ze Kölleckschün with a brand that had not yet graced it, what a lovely surprise:
"The G5440LS Electromatic Hollow Body Long-Scale Bass is a stylishly seismic new Gretsch bass guitar armed with two powerful new “Black Top” Filter’Tron™ bass pickups that endow it with an electrifying deep-end voice and identity.
Its single-cutaway hollow and bound body resonates with full bass tone and balance, and features sound-post bracing and elegant bound f holes. Other features include a maple neck, bound rosewood fingerboard with 22 medium jumbo frets and hump-block pearloid inlays, three-position pickup switch, classic “G” arrow control knobs, rosewood-based four-saddle Adjusto-Matic™ bridge and “G”-cutout tailpiece. Available in Black and Orange."
Mine is an orange one like this (and looks even better than on this pic!)
It's long scale and utterly sustain block-less which I like. Previously, the short scale size of many other Gretsches has held me back and I found the long-scale Falcon a bit too overdecorated/ZZ-Top'ish for my taste. It's Korean-made and the workmanship is flawless. Love the sound which is even more semi-acoustic than a Gibson Les Paul Sig and puts a Ric 4005 and the Gibson semi-acoustics with all the way thru (back to top) sustain blocks to shame. Neck pup is full and phat, bridge pup brings mid-bite without being thin.
Marco of the Session Music Store in Frankfurt who gave Edith the tip for this one (initially, she wanted to buy a Sandberg, Marco talked her out of it: "Uwe hates anything Fender looking ..."
, in fact I wouldn't have minded a Sandberg at all, variety is the spice of life) plays mine in this vid (the colors are all wrong though, the orange of the bass is a lot more wood-tone and is translucent), but talks mostly about it ("don't slap with it, it's a crime)". The plonky sounds at the beginning are owed to overdampening by Marco, but towards the end of the vid at 3.44 he gets out the pick and that is then how it pretty much sounds when the neck pup is either off or dialed (mostly) down.