Found my way back home . . . and a question, please

Hi,

So some of you really old timers here may remember me -- I partnered with Brad Traweek years ago to build out the first incarnation of guitarsbyleo.com back in February and March of 1998, but stuff changed and I sort of moved on. It's a pattern of mine that I've only come to understand in the fullness of time, but I guess that's what getting old is for. But I digress . . .

At one time I had a hookup with Dale Hyatt and bought many a guitar from his showroom behind his office for myself and friends, and i had maybe a dozen personal Leo-era G&L's at my peak, and some of them -- most of them, actually -- were really, really fine guitars. My tastes changed and my interests changed and after a while I found myself down to a NOS Broadcaster that still had the plastic on the pickguard, but I was living in New Orleans when Katrina happened and that was the end of that.

I started out admiring the mechanical improvements in the G&L's as compared to vintage Fender guitars, but at some point I fell under the spell of a raw sounding telecaster and a sweet old strat and then I got into semi-hollow and hollowbody guitars and G&L's just felt 'wrong' to me. I liked the way an old school vintage guitar felt in my hands, I liked the way the nitro warms up against my body, I like the way that a big neck and a light body and funky hardware and kinda microphonic alnico pickups come together to make a nasty, raw, snarling but sweet guitar. I guess I got to the point where i questioned every 'improvement' that Leo and the team made, and I began to think that the old ones really were better than his new guitars.

So fast forward 10-15 years and I was on Reverb the other day and spied a 1990 maple-board Skyhawk Sig for a great price. I sort of have a soft spot for the that model cause my first G&L was an '86 'hawk and on an impulse I bought the damn thing. It arrived and needed a really good setup but I still remembered how and I got the thing playing pretty good. Biggest surprise was the sound -- I have had the same Princeton Reverb since '81 and man, this guitar sounds absolutely amazing in every position for any kind of music.

The neck is still thinner than I prefer and the neck shape isn't as friendly to me as a well-shaped vintage Fender, but man, I believe again. I set the thing up almost with my eyes closed using a phillips screwdriver, a couple of feeler gauges and a set of allen wrenches just like George Fullerton showed me how to do years ago on my first Skyhawk, and I marveled all over again at how simple it is to dial in a G&L if you know what to do. What a great design, so easy to set up, and it's clear to me that the guys that designed this guitar had spent a lifetime thinking about what an optimal solid body guitar should be and then set out to build 'em.

The one thing about this guitar that bothers me is that the frets are pretty much played out, and the guitar needs to be refretted. I'm sort of confused in that one of the ways I rationalized buying it was that it's a late leo-era guitar in really good shape and I thought I'd throw it in the back of my guitar closet and forget about it for a few years, sort of like how I have some stocks that will likely always be worth more tomorrow than they are today. But the conundrum is that it's so good I want to play it, and to play it it will need to be re-fretted.

So here's my question -- finally, my ADHD brothers! -- who knows how to refret a Leo era G&L like it came from the factory? Are there any repair guys y'all know about who could make the neck factory fresh? I want it to feel like an old G&L did when it was new, and I don't think that just anyone could do that without knowing the guitars really well.

Any advice would be welcome, and thanks for keeping the old hang going -- it's hard to believe that this has been here for close to 17 years now.

Best,

~j

Tim, you want to field this one?

Welcome home Jeff. By the way, G&L is now making some very tasty AlNiCo loaded axes. You may find what you want in one of them.

Welcome home , better late than never , for fret repair Mark Kieser is the best in my book ..... he has refreeted my mint Jonc Broadcaster with maple board to medium jumbo frets , refretted my Cavalier ebony board to stainless steel med jumbo , refretted my 1997 S500 with SS , refretted my 86 Rampage with med jumbo SS ...... they look factory when he is done , the maple board Broadcaster looks mint untouched just like I sent it to him only with medium jumbo's instead of the low/wides ..... Every guitar looks perfect

you won't be disappointed and he works out of my local G&L dealer http://www.centervillemusic.com/Pages/repairpage.html

Last edited by Fumble fingers on Sat Jan 03, 2015 5:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Tim, you want to field this one?

Welcome home Jeff. By the way, G&L is now making some very tasty AlNiCo loaded axes. You may find what you want in one of them.

Thanks, appreciate it.

I'm not really interested in a new G&L (or guitar of any kind), just came across this old Skyhawk and bought it for sentimental reasons.

And then I discovered what a great guitar it is . . .

Best,

~j

Mark Kieser is the best in my book ..... he has refreeted my mint Broadcaster with maple board to medium jumbo frets , refretted my Cavalier to stainless steel med jumbo , refretted my 1997 S500 with SS , refretted my 86 Rampage with med jumbo SS ...... they look factory when he is done , the maple board Broadcaster looks mint untouched just like I sent it to him only with medium jumbo's instead of the low/wides ..... Every guitar looks perfect

you won't be disappointed and he works out of my local G&L dealer http://www.centervillemusic.com/Pages/repairpage.html

Thanks, I'll drop Mark an email.

Anyone know what size fretwire G&L used in the factory back then?

Best,

~j

Mark Kieser is the best in my book ..... he has refreeted my mint Broadcaster with maple board to medium jumbo frets , refretted my Cavalier to stainless steel med jumbo , refretted my 1997 S500 with SS , refretted my 86 Rampage with med jumbo SS ...... they look factory when he is done , the maple board Broadcaster looks mint untouched just like I sent it to him only with medium jumbo's instead of the low/wides ..... Every guitar looks perfect

you won't be disappointed and he works out of my local G&L dealer http://www.centervillemusic.com/Pages/repairpage.html

Thanks, I'll drop Mark an email.

Anyone know what size fretwire G&L used in the factory back then?

Best,

~j

Hello Jeff, it's been a long time since you've been around here. Welcome back.

Your 1990 Skyhawk probably has the low-wide frets. G&L switched from the low-wide frets to the Medium Jumbo Dunlop 6100 frets some time in 1992, see: viewtopic.php?p=30810#p30810.

Hope this helps.

[still here and supporting this site since Brad handed it off to Dave McLaren in 2000]

Good to have ya around Jeff,

My sig Skyhawk has become my Number 1 , they're awesome : )



This on has Dale's name in the cavity , not sure of the it's history.
I'd love to hear some Dale stories when you have time.

elwood

Last edited by Elwood on Sat Jan 03, 2015 5:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Mark can do any fret wire size you want and stainless only adds about 10.00 ..... the Broadcaster is the only one I didn't go stainless on

Welcome back, Jeff. I'd love to hear what George Fullerton taught you about setups!

Ken

Hello Jeff, it's been a long time since you've been around here. Welcome back.

Your 1990 Skyhawk probably has the low-wide frets. G&L switched from the low-wide frets to the Medium Jumbo Dunlop 6100 frets some time in 1992, see: viewtopic.php?p=30810#p30810.

Hope this helps.

[still here and supporting this site since Brad handed it off to Dave McLaren in 2000]

Wow, you deserve some sort of medal, Craig -- moderating this domain for 14 years is like 64,000 years in internet time.

And thanks for the welcome!

The Skyhawk has those old school low/wides -- the best measurement I can get from the tallest fret is .113 x .035, and the lowest measurement I get is in the cowboy chord area where it's .110 x .023, which is pretty close to being unplayable. I had an Epi Riviera refretted with wire that measured .046 tall and that's about what I like, but after spending the last few minutes looking at fretwire sizes I'm wondering if G&L used used a wire that is extinct cause I don't see anything close to that width and depth when I check here: http://www.lutherie.net/fret.chart.html

Then again, maybe they used Dunlop 6120's at .114 x .051 and just dressed the heck out of them -- that would explain the low/wide shape.

In any case I'd like to hear from anyone else who knows someone who knows how to do a Leo-era factory fret job, I'm loving this guitar and it's a player.

Best,

~j

Welcome back, Jeff. I'd love to hear what George Fullerton taught you about setups!

Ken

In my younger days I used to play hard core psychobilly with some guys and my Skyhawk wouldn't stay in tune when I really got on the trem. I got to know Dale a little - he used to run an ad in a local So Cal music mag called "Bam" inviting people to what he called the "factory showroom", and one day when I showed up to ask him to look at it he got George.

They took me to George's workbench and he proceeded to walk through the set-up steps in the old manual that is still on-line here. It was pretty cool, I'd been messing with the guitar and he brought it right back to perfect in about 15 minutes.

What I appreciated about it wasn't that he set up my guitar -- that was cool -- but what was even cooler was that he taught me how to do it in a really matter of fact sort of way. No shims or mojo or fancy set-up tricks, just follow the steps, measure carefully, and pay careful attention -- and wham, there it is.

Ok, the really cool part was that Dale hung out while he did it and I got them talking about old times, and it was funny. Told 'em that I'd recently found a pristine White amp and steel at a swap meet in Pasadena, and asked why they didn't keep making 'em as they both sounded amazing. They looked at each other, and finally George blurted out "nobody would sell 'em, Forrest White was an <censored word>". Turns out he was talking about the old Fender sales force, of which Dale was part of, and I guess Forrest was a buttoned-down guy who wasn't well liked by the fast and loose sales guys.

Dale was a trip, one day he told me a story about selling Broadcasters -- the Fender version -- out of the back of a panel van that he'd drive to gigs all around California. Said he used to go as far north as Fresno, I think, and I remember him saying that he used to do good business out at the American Legion Stadium in El Monte, around the corner from where I grew up. Funny thing, he told me the story in the context of why G&L's were built so well, said that he sold a guitar to a picker in some dive and the switch failed in the first half hour, said he managed to fix it on the spot with tools he in the van but it was tense for a minute . . .

So anyway, the answer is "follow the manual" and "pay attention" and the guitar will take care of itself.

Best,

~j