My guitar collection - G&L
To complete the set of Broadcasters, here an all Black one with a “Black Krome” Kahler™ 2320 flat mount fine-tuner vibrato and a 7½” radius ebony fingerboard. It is one of only 57 Broadcasters with such a vibrato unit. In all, so far 19 of them are registered as Rarebirds on the Guitars by Leo (GbL) website. As a true Broadcaster, it has a soft maple body, 2 Jumbo Magnetic Field Design (MFD) pickups, single-ply plastic pickguard, black powder-coated aluminum control panel with the Broadcaster wiring harness consisting of a 3-position pickup selector, volume control, and tone control, hard-rock maple neck, Leo Fender string lock mechanism behind the nut, and black G&L branded closed tuning machines. Check the GbL Registry for the list of known Serial Numbers.
Broadcaster w/Kahler & ebony fingerboard
The story behind this guitar
Year:
Serial number:
Neck date:
Body date:
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This well-worn Broadcaster had been a long time candidate. Between April 2015 and March 2020 it had been offered 5 times on auction sites, mainly Reverb, every time by a different owner. It shows a [19]85 date stamp spilling out from underneath the inspection sticker in the neck pocket in violation of pointer 17 on how to detect a “fake Broadcaster”. Is it hence a replica? Or does the presence of the Kahler unit also explain the date stamp? Possibly. Even with these trepidations in mind, the good folks at Redwood Music Mart in Eureka, CA gave me enough of an enticement to be willing to take on the risk. But I should not have worried. Gabe Dellevigne vouched this Broadcaster is legit. Incidentally, the same would be true for any other Broadcaster w/Kahler and ASAT w/Kahler provided either has the old style 2320 unit. This serial number and the date stamps also jibe with Dale’s sales log. Redwood Music Mart‘s Ken Rudd offered to put on any set of strings to my liking before shipping the guitar. Both the Kahler and the string lock mechanism have their idiosyncrasies, but Kenn clearly knows what he is doing because it arrived perfectly set up. Sound wise it is all as expected. These Jumbo MFD pickups and the simple controls will just not allow you to go wrong.
However, the coolest Broadcaster w/Kahler and ebony board is S/N BC01055 currently owned by Jeff Gruwell of the band Blue Moonshine and is for sure out of reach. It has a #5 neck and once was in the possession of Dale Hyatt himself. But no harm done; I no longer have to entertain Jeff’s constant pleading for my ASAT w/Kahler and #5 neck.
The story behind this guitar
1986
BC00936
JAN 21 1986
1-24-86
