My Little Valentine

In February 2005, I was surfing the internet one morning and noticed a new eBay vendor had 4 G&L Tributes up for sale. All four guitars were considered "New - Old Stock." Usually that's an indication that a guitar has never left the store, but it's typically over a year old. I also noted that the bidding was going to end THAT morning, and the opening bid price was only $255. (In 2005, these guitars retailed between $450 to $500.) Furthermore, only three of the guitars had bids. So, I placed a bid on the last one available, a metallic blue model. A couple of hours later, all four opening bids of $255 won and I was one of them!

Now, let me explain something vitally important to this story. Angie's birthday is February 13th and February 14th is Valentine's Day. The day I won the guitar was February 10th; and, at that time, I had not purchased anything for Angie's birthday, not to mention Valentine's Day. I called Angie at work and told her not to worry about getting me anything for Valentine's Day. I explained that I had won something on eBay. Immediately, and condescendingly I might add, she asked, "Did you bid on another guitar?" I bit my lip and said "Yes." Angie knows I have a problem. Now you know it too. It's called GAS....Guitar Acquisition Syndrome. I have to give credit to Scott Bonner for the diagnosis. He's the first one to explain to me what I had.

I present the beauty that I won today. Here's a little history about G&L Guitars. Leo Fender started making Fender electric guitars between the 40's and 50's. His first mass-produced guitar was the Broadcaster, which was later renamed Telecaster. Around 1954, Fender produced the first Stratocaster. Both the Telecaster (Tele) and Stratocaster (Strat) are still extremely popular today. However, in 1965, Leo Fender sold his company to CBS. Yes, that's right, the television network. Afterwards, Leo worked for Music Man, a rival company, during the 70's. In the late 70's, he and George Fullerton, who had worked with him at Fender, founded G&L Musical Instruments. Guess what kind of guitars they built? Tele's and Strat's. However, because they were a new company, G&L made slight changes to the guitars and used different names. The Tele version was called an ASAT, which is a reference to an Air Force term, "anti-satellite." The Strat version is called a Legacy. In 1991, Leo Fender passed away but G&L still produces some of the best electric guitars out there.

In 2003, G&L reached an agreement with a Korean guitar manufacturer to produce copies of their original instruments. These imported guitars were named G&L Tributes. Although they were manufactured in Korea, American-made pickups were used. So, they are very good quality guitars for a good price.

My Legacy features three single-coil pickups with a 5-position blade switch. This is identical to most Strats. The difference, though, is how they wired the pickups. The neck pickup, which is the fifth position on the blade switch, has a "fat" sound. What that means is the sound is very full and similar to a humbucker pickup. It also has a Dual-Fulcrum Vibrato, which allows the guitarist to change the length of the strings, ever so slightly, to produce a tremolo effect. One of my favorite things about this guitar is the neck. Usually on imports, they cut corners on things you don't see. But check out the back of this guitar's neck. That's one pretty piece of wood!

Well, to close the story, I did buy Angie a nice birthday gift and Valentine's Day present. But I received the best gift...my little Valentine.