Gibson has added a 2x10 tube amp combo to its newly resurrected and redesigned Falcon range. The Dual Falcon 20 is a two-channel amp, loaded with Jensen Blackbird speakers, and like the others in the series it was designed in collaboration with the Mesa/Boogie design team and its founder, Randall Smith.
It shares the same aesthetics, build and features as the Falcon amps unveiled in January, with the cabinet constructed of marine-grade Baltic birch and covered in Cream Bronco vinyl, its Oxblood grille clothe offering a stylish retro contrast and sporting a chrome Gibson badge on the top right-hand corner.
The control panel is clean and mean, polished stainless steel with an orange jewel lamp when the power is on. There are two Normal and Low 1/4” instrument outputs, Volume, Tone and Reverb dials for each channel, and a three-way toggle switch for changing channels via the control panel, or using the footswitch. This configuration allows you to run each channel independently, with its own tone settings, its own output level, and toggle between them with the footswitch.
The onboard spring reverb and tremolo effects are also footswitchable, with the footswitch helpfully colour coding them so you can easily see which is active. The tremolo effect is applied globally to both channels.
While the Falcon series is definitely inspired by classic guitar amp design, and it duly has a tone profile that skews vintage, there are some contemporary upgrades that make this integrate nicely with your 21st-century rig.
Around the back of the amplifier you will find a buffered series effects loop to welcome your pedalboard to the party. There are a pair of four-ohm speaker outputs and a single eight-ohm output, plus a Monitor DI output for sending the output direct.
A nice design touch that betrays the input of Smith and the Boogie R&D brains trust – and makes this Falcon range so usable in a variety of playing scenarios – is the Multi-Watt technology, which is available across both channels, allowing players to each channel or both it at full, half or low power.
At full steam, with stock 6L6 power tubes, it’ll kick out approximately 15-watts, more than enough volume for small gigs, 6-watts at half while the two-watt low power setting will not only accommodate practice sessions when you don’t want to shake the windows, but maybe also for those occasions when you are in the studio and want to place a more delicate microphone for recording in front of the amp.
That pair of 6L6s can be swapped out for 6V6s, and is joined by four 12Ax7 preamp tubes. Like the others in the series, the Dual Falcon 20 is is made by hand at Petaluma, California, and it ships with a fitted slipcover to keep the dust out.
It’s priced £2,449 / $2,199 and is available now. See Gibson for more details.
In other recent Gibson news, the Nashville-based brand just unveiled the latest signature guitar from the Slash Collection, with a standard production run replica of the Guns N' Roses guitarist's "Jessica" Les Paul Standard, which originally a factory second but soon became his go-to stage guitar with GNR and Velvet Revolver.
