My guitar collection - G&L

 
 

How can you improve on the Stratocaster? Again leave it up to Leo’s final company G&L to at least make a viable attempt in the Legacy. The Stratocaster is well known to be a single-coil guitar where the 2 in-between positions of the 5-position pickup selector would enable you to combine either neck and middle or bridge and middle pickups such that hum would be canceled. But how would you fit a humbucker in the space of a single-coil so the other positions are noise canceling too? To achieve that, you stack the 2 coils! Initially introduced as the Legacy Plus in 1993 but renamed shortly thereafter, the Legacy Special has 2 G&L Dual-Blade (TWB-2A) pickups in the middle and neck position and 1 G&L Power-Blade (TWB-2) pickup in the bridge position to follow this idea. Now hum is canceled in all 5 positions! And of course, the volume control is paired with the PTB circuit. The body has a Cherryburst finish, which would indicate the body is made of alder. The hard-rock maple neck has an East Indian rosewood fingerboard. Furthermore is has Sperzel Locking tuning machines and chrome Dual-Fulcrum Vibrato (DFV) with Graph-Tech nut to reduce string binding and achieve tuning stability. For more information, visit:

http://glguitars.com/product/legacy-special/.

 

Legacy Special

The story behind this guitar

Year:

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The guitar that turned me on to buy G&L guitars! After my Les Paul, the second guitar I bought in the US. And since the LP has long departed, the guitar longest in my possession after the AW-25. Purchased at The Zobrist, a name you might have read a number of times on these pages. I actually came in to get a Clear Orange ASAT Classic, but (un)fortunately, that one already had been sold. But complementing a Les Paul with a Stratocaster model sounded as sensible at the time. So I walked home with this beauty in the standard G&L molded hardshell case that comes with most models by default. Not a bad case; not at all. But after many other guitars were purchased that came with a tolex or tweed hardshell case, an upgrade was called for. Now she is housed in the official G&L tweed hardshell case.


This guitar is old enough that it still has the 3-bolt neck attachment; G&L switched over to a 4-bolt neck plate attachment shortly after. With all the newcomers that arrived later on, this guitar got little play for a couple of years. Until the moment in 2007 when I recalled something Zobrist proprietor Ron Stoehr had told me almost a decade earlier on how he had set up a Legacy for a recording session, and instead of the 9‘s it came with, slapped on a set of 11’s. Whoa, all of a sudden this puppy came alive. The sonic contrast between a maple or rosewood board came to the fore too. A well deserved welcome back for this wonderful guitar!

The story behind this guitar

1996

G048279

MAY 23 1996

MAY 11 1996

D’Addario EXL115 Nickel Wound Blues/Jazz Rock (11-49)