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G&L Club Part 7

#17,261
FantasticFour said:
I dunno. As a European customer, ordering from G&L (no fancy options) cost me twice the price of my Fender Am St, which may indeed be terribly common and boring, but still very good value for the price in my position.
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I suppose it's a matter of which brand's local dealer is greedier.
I'm situated to the south of Europe, and my SB-1 with swamp ash body, quartersawn neck, and graph-tech nut cost me 1500€.
The local Fender dealer offers a Mexican made left-handed player series Jazz for 985€, no lefty American in stock, but the Professional line P and J cost over 1800€.
 
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#17,262
Larry Mal said:
Here we go:

View attachment 3914999

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Beautiful neck on there.

Getting it set up today... it came with a set of flatwounds, which was nice, but that's not what I plan to keep on there. Still, I put the flatwounds on there just to test it out.

They won't stay on long, I have some shielding supplies coming this weekend, in the G&L tradition there isn't a lick of shielding anywhere in the whole guitar.

Also, I feel I'll be needing a shim in this bass.

Nice thick neck on it, though... and it sure is beautiful. I'll get it all set up the next couple weeks, put some round wound strings on there and see how I like it.
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Is that the one that was on reverb recently? Love that neck. If that's the same one I put an offer on it but the seller didn't accept. Either way, very nice.
 
#17,265
FantasticFour said:
NEW?? I'd be all over that, definitely.
I paid well above the 2000€ mark for each of my new G&Ls. I bought an AmSt from the last batch before the Pros for 1100€.
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Indeed, it was a new options order. Also with a bunch of other specifications, which didn't cost me extra unlike the other 3 options.
Part of why it doesn't cost a hefty sum is that shipping takes a while. My bass was ordered in December 2017, posted on socials in March 2018, but it had a glossy finish instead of the ordered matte. I picked it up at the local store in July the same year.

If you look at Rocket Music's current stock of G&L in the states, a comparative lefty LB-100 in stock is 1381€. So whatever profit they make on it, my local distributor has 119€ further margin to accommodate shipping and VAT.

As said, it's simply a matter of greedy dealers. Fender here, G&L where you are.
Thanks to COVID-19, I'm currently dealing with that issue in a different avocation.
 
#17,266
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Had me a NBD recently. Pharaoh Gold Firemist is super sexy. The CLF neck profile is outstanding, easily the best feeling G&L five string neck I've ever played. The control plate/knobs/switch tips are retro cool. Plus I was able to talk them into adding single coil mode so it's got all the tonez. Even though it's essentially an "appearance package" for the L-2500, it feels and plays like a small evolution. At least compared to my '01 L-2500 it does. It's earned a spot on the stage and the basement wall. Good stuff!
 
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#17,268
mikeyvr6 said:
View attachment 3915783 View attachment 3915784 View attachment 3915785 View attachment 3915788 Had me a NBD recently. Pharaoh Gold Firemist is super sexy. The CLF neck profile is outstanding, easily the best feeling G&L five string neck I've ever played. The control plate/knobs/switch tips are retro cool. Plus I was able to talk them into adding single coil mode so it's got all the tonez. Even though it's essentially an "appearance package" for the L-2500, it feels and plays like a small evolution. At least compared to my '01 L-2500 it does. It's earned a spot on the stage and the basement wall. Good stuff!
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That L-2500 with the old skool hs is killer.
 
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#17,269
mikeyvr6 said:
View attachment 3915783 View attachment 3915784 View attachment 3915785 View attachment 3915788 Had me a NBD recently. Pharaoh Gold Firemist is super sexy. The CLF neck profile is outstanding, easily the best feeling G&L five string neck I've ever played. The control plate/knobs/switch tips are retro cool. Plus I was able to talk them into adding single coil mode so it's got all the tonez. Even though it's essentially an "appearance package" for the L-2500, it feels and plays like a small evolution. At least compared to my '01 L-2500 it does. It's earned a spot on the stage and the basement wall. Good stuff!
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Sa-weet!!!
 
#17,272
I don't know that I have a dedicated picture of my SB-1, but here it is front and center in my little sunburst family:

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And the reason I bought the L1500 that I talked about above was because I could not imagine much in the neighborhood of the P-bass type guitar that would do anything better than the SB-1, and I have a G&L JB, also, so all my bases are covered.

Time to go extreme with the L1500, I figured!
 
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#17,273
Sadly, though, I bought the SB-1 as a replacement for my L-1000, which is an early 80's model that I got in '93 or so:

WHMftKP.jpg


That's my son playing with it. It had been horribly mistreated before I got it, and later vandalized but it still is always my favorite. I'll never part with it, but the truss rod wore out.

This Christmas I hope to get it to G&L for a new neck (they do that) and I might get it to my guitar finishing guy finally and get it redone in black.
 
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#17,274
Larry Mal said:
Sadly, though, I bought the SB-1 as a replacement for my L-1000, which is an early 80's model that I got in '93 or so:

View attachment 3919114

That's my son playing with it. It had been horribly mistreated before I got it, and later vandalized but it still is always my favorite. I'll never part with it, but the truss rod wore out.

This Christmas I hope to get it to G&L for a new neck (they do that) and I might get it to my guitar finishing guy finally and get it redone in black.
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That's a cute l'il fella!:thumbsup: And so's your son!:roflmao:
 
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#17,275
Larry Mal said:
Sadly, though, I bought the SB-1 as a replacement for my L-1000, which is an early 80's model that I got in '93 or so:

View attachment 3919114

That's my son playing with it. It had been horribly mistreated before I got it, and later vandalized but it still is always my favorite. I'll never part with it, but the truss rod wore out.

This Christmas I hope to get it to G&L for a new neck (they do that) and I might get it to my guitar finishing guy finally and get it redone in black.
Click to expand...
Always wanted an L-1000. A buddy's L-1000 was the bass that first turned me on to G&L back in the 80's.
 
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#17,276
I didn't know anything about them. I was at work one day- I was a chef- and one of the bussers came in and said that his friend wanted to sell a bass and did I want to buy it for $60. So I said I did, then asked what it was, and he said he didn't know, but thought that there was a G in it. So I'm thinking Gibson, G&L... it turned out to be the L1000.

I immediately fell in love with the thing, and like I say I'd had a couple of other basses at this point but I just got rid of them. The L1000 was amazing.

It was always in very rough shape, and in a bizarre story the guy who sold it to me later broke into my house and vandalized it when he was drunk. I confronted him at the gym and he apologized and paid for some repairs.

But I never cared all that much what it looked like, I just cared about the sound and how it played.

I'll get a new G&L made neck for it, and maybe it's time to consider having the body refinished also. Get it ready for the next decades.
 
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#17,278
vbass_2000 said:
Always wanted an L-1000. A buddy's L-1000 was the bass that first turned me on to G&L back in the 80's.
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TDR1138 said:
That's a beautiful bass (and kiddo), and crazy story around it. Just curious, what do you mean that the truss rod wore out? Is it broken? The nut stripped? Maxed out/no more room to adjust?
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One day I was giving it a setup and I put more pressure on the truss rod to straighten the neck, nothing too extreme, or so I thought. I set it aside and came back later and noticed that the truss rod had bulged up and split the fingerboard between the net and the first fret.

And also the action was if anything higher. So, I quickly undid the strings and all the tension on the truss rod, and started doing some research. I guess this kind of thing isn't uncommon with old G&Ls, I later took the bass to my luthier and he said that there was no real cost effective way to fix it.

If I don't put much pressure on the truss rod, the split disappears and you can't see it, but I have to live with high action and a neck that doesn't play very well.

So I posted on a Facebook group dedicated to G&Ls asking about a three bolt neck of some kind, and someone told me that G&L will make a brand new neck for you as close to the specs of the original one that they can make. Probably more than close enough for me, this neck has a nice, wide nut on it that I like a lot, I'm sure they can do that for me.

I inquired with them, and you send in the whole bass so they can fit the neck to the body, and they'll make you a new neck for $500. I think they use graphite reinforcement on the necks or something so that this wouldn't happen again down the road, although really the neck lasted almost forty years and that's not too bad. I won't be around to know if the new neck will last forty years, or if I am, I won't care!
 
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#17,280
Larry Mal said:
I inquired with them, and you send in the whole bass so they can fit the neck to the body, and they'll make you a new neck for $500. I think they use graphite reinforcement on the necks or something so that this wouldn't happen again down the road, although really the neck lasted almost forty years and that's not too bad. I won't be around to know if the new neck will last forty years, or if I am, I won't care!
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That new neck will last longer than your own. ;)
 

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