Loss of a Founding Father
Intro:If you frequent this particular discussion page, you very likely have grown fond of the electric guitars and basses that sport the G&L moniker on the headstock. Maybe you like them because they produce the sounds your ears like to hear more than any others on the market you can afford? Perhaps it has more to do with the feel of the instruments? Or maybe it is the aesthetics? It might be that you want something different than what most others choose to play? It could be the value for the cost? Maybe the innovative features? It might even be the linkage to the legendary Leo Fender? Everyone has their reasons but one thing you should know about the G&L brand of guitar or bass that you enjoy is that it, without question, would not exist at all if it were not for the contributions of many other individuals that enabled Leo to create them and bring them to market.
Humble Beginnings:
One such individual was Dale Lee Hyatt who was born in the tail end of 1925 in a small rural Midwestern town in Kansas. He came of age during the Great Depression. He spent much of his youth working on his Grandparent’s farm and at the age of sixteen started working with his father and uncle at a local foundry. After graduating a semester early from High School in 1944, Dale enlisted in the armed forces and found himself as a tail gunner for a B17 Bomber in the European theatre. He flew in excess of 30 missions until the end of the war in 1945.
Upon returning home, Dale found himself stationed at the Santa Ana Air Base and it was here, at a USO dance, that he met his future wife. In January of 1946, Dale answered a classified job advertisement in the newspaper. This position, as fate would have it, one day after his marriage, Dale found himself working in a small factory that produced musical instruments. The facility was owned and managed by one Clarence Leo Fender.
Originally, Dale’s responsibilities included assembling 6-string lap steel guitars and wiring 10 watt amplifiers. He convinced Leo that they could save money by covering (or tweeding) their own cabinets in-house and he built all the steel cutting pattern templates to do this and tweeded many of tweed amp cabinet. Approximately six months later, Dale moved into a Supervisory position. Leo approached Dale early on to get him to take his products out to the local night clubs for the musicians to try and hopefully make some sales. Dale sold many Lap Steels and amplifiers in this manner in the early days. It should be noted that in addition to the guitar/amp factory, Leo Fender also owned a radio/record shop at 107 South Spadra road in Fullerton.
Dale approached Leo about managing the shop so Leo could focus his attention on the plant with the intention of buying it. Dale ran the shop continuing to sell the instruments and amplifiers in the evenings. The shop lasted until 1950 as the advent of Television and 33 1/3 records killed the 78’s. Dale was not satisfied with the level of income at that time and pursued a variety of other job opportunities, however, he always kept in close contact with Leo and continued to sell instruments and amplifiers for him at clubs and honky tonks in the evenings in order to supplement his income.
Successful Transition:
In 1955, the wife of Don Randall, Jean Randall, called up Dale inquiring about purchasing a new Ford. They invited Dale to their home to have this discussion. As it turns out, the real purpose of this visit was to interview Dale for a position in FEI working for Don. Don was impressed with Dale’s acumen and decided to offer him a position in FEI as a traveling salesman. Dale accepted and subsequently had great success selling FEI products and soon became a regional sales manager having responsibility over five states; Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico. In 1962, Dale relocated with FEI to Tulsa, Oklahoma in order to be better geographically situated with his territory. Dale’s success continued in Oklahoma where he took on the responsibility of running Fender’s very large distribution center in Tulsa. After the sale of Fender to CBS, Dale retained his high level position along with superb track record in terms of sales volume growth, however, he was becoming more and more disenchanted with CBS’s approach and the ever increasing quality problems. Having toiled for decades in a role of establishing the now world famous Fender brand, by 1972, he could no longer tolerate the direction the new ownership was going and he particularly could not tolerate his most recent management.
Ebb and Flow:
Dale walked away from a high paying executive position in favor of rejoining forces with his long time mentor, friend and former Fender colleague, Don Randall. Don Randall had left CBS-Fender with the intent of building a quality line of hybrid (tube/solid-state) and pure solid-state amplifiers under his new “Randall” brand. Don enlisted the services of Gary Sunda as well as Bob Rissi to design his line. He needed a top notch salesman to help him build the brand and Dale was an obvious choice. Randall amplifiers, while moderately successfully gained the recognition that the Fender branded amplifiers that preceded them. Dale put an enormous effort in pushing the products, however, they were a difficult sell as the sound quality and reliability never quite equaled the amps he sold while employed by Fender.
By 1977, Don Randall had considered expanding the Randall brand to offer a musical instrument line. He requested Dale investigate the possibility of getting Leo Fender to build private labeled Randall instruments in order to accomplish this. During a lunch visit to Leo’s CLF facility, Leo made it clear to Dale that he had a non-compete clause in his Music Man contract and unfortunately could not get partnered up even though the idea intrigued him. The seed, however, was planted in Leo’s still fertile mind.
By 1979, Leo had grown weary of the worsening situation between Tommy Walker and Forrest White at Music Man. He forced Forrest out of his ownership position yet was now not fond of his relationship with Tommy. Music Man was cutting orders to the CLF facility and Leo was forced to cut back the staff to the point that it was merely he, George Fullerton and Lloyd Chewning on the payroll. Leo had the working capital to walk away from his obligations with Music Man (which he technically still primarily owned) and since he was motivated to design and build guitars and basses, he made plans to do exactly that.
Return to Leo:
Leo was already partnered with two longtime Fender associates, George Fullerton and Lloyd Chewning, both of whom could help him handle the operational needs of CLF. What he really needed was somebody that was capable and could be trusted to handle the sales and marketing arm of a new venture. Dale Hyatt was an obvious choice and the courtship to land Dale was short and sweet with Dale agreeing to join forces with a minority ownership stake.
Most do not realize that Leo Fender always segregated the manufacturing corporation from the selling corporation and the new company, which would be called “G&L” was no different. Leo and George began the process of gearing up to make their own new line of instruments long before they enlisted the services of Dale. Other brand names were discussed prior to Dale joining forces including “Electric Stringed Instrument or ESI” among others, however, George Fullerton’s wife, Lucille suggested “G&L” or “George and Leo” and the name stuck. The incorporation documents were drawn up and with a newly hired third partner, it was time to get busy. G&L Musical Instruments would be primarily owned by Leo with George Fullerton being a minority shareholder. G&L Musical Sales was again primarily owned by Leo with Dale Hyatt being the other minority shareholder. The sales company purchased the instruments from the manufacturing company. The sales company purchased the cases, the shipping boxes, handled all the marketing and advertising as well as the related literature. The plant built the guitars in the same grouping of buildings (multiple unit building) and provided them to Sales arm based on the internal Purchasing Orders they received. All dealer/customer orders went through the Sales Company and this separate company was run by Dale with a small but talented staff.
Establishing the Brand:
Initially, Leo and George had taken the existing CLF designs and tweaked them in order to differentiate them. The F-100 was basically a Music Man Sabre with Leo’s latest MFD pickup design, an optional vibrato and a myriad of other tweaks. The L1000 was a similar approach, this time a new take on the CLF Music Man Stingray bass. Having been deeply involved in the musical instrument sales and marketing trade, Dale immediately knew he was in for an uphill struggle. First, the brand name of “G&L” was a hard to establish, it wasn’t nearly as clever or catchy as “Music Man” nor did it have an obvious association with Leo Fender. Additionally, the F-100 was not well accepted by the dealer community, professional musicians or the guitar buying public in general. Many complained that the Music Man Sabre was a better sounding, more versatile and more attractive instrument. Others said they wanted the new guitars to look, feel and sound like a 50’s or 60’s Fender Stratocaster. At the same timeframe, Eddie Van Halen was revolutionizing what the guitar buying public was going to want to buy…the Frankenstrat or Superstrat had been born. The F-100 did not fit the mold yet Ibanez, Charvel, Jackson and Kramer figured it out quickly and were grabbing marketshare at an alarming rate from the established brands. A polar opposite was the L-1000, it was well received model and Dale had plenty of interest from the dealers that he could satisfy.
Besides trying to build a new brand and sell a very limited line of instruments, Dale had to figure out how to get his foot in the door of dealers that needed a lower price point instrument in order to compete with the imported (mostly Japanese) brands of the early to mid-80’s. He had dealers begging for G&L versions of Strat’s and Tele’s along with the aforementioned Superstrat’s with fine tuning vibrato bridges…they also wanted a lower priced line they could sell of the brand and they wanted a greater variety of instruments and many more options in general.
Meanwhile, right around the corner from his office, Leo and George are churning out new model after new model, none of which fit the market demands. Leo was obsessed with designing new pickups and George was working fastidiously trying to keep up with the engineering drawings and tooling required to make all these guitars and parts. Remember, this is pre-AutoCAD and pre-CNC. Making new guitars and associated parts was not only time consuming but expensive. The tooling costs alone for injection molding and die-casting was bewilderingly outrageous. Dale only had so much money in his budget for advertising and he was running into a brick wall with Leo.
A Different Perspective:
Leo had a tight knit group of local musicians that he used as his test playing fleet. Many were no longer relevant and would love to come over to the CLF facility in order to chew the fat with Leo, get some new instruments to play out and in general tell him what he wanted to hear. Dale knew this wasn’t going to help launch the brand successfully. He needed youthful musicians that could objectively assess the instruments and make recommendations. Dale continuously brought in a stream of young test players. Some worked at the factory, some hung around the factory and others just were starving artists stoked about the opportunity to get some free gear and get to meet Leo Fender. These were the Jeff Ross, John Jorgenson types that gave realistic and honest feedback of what G&L needed to come up with.
While the L-1000 bass was a hit right out of the gate and the L-2000, which was a 2-pickup version of the L-1000, was as well, the F-100 was a very difficult guitar for Dale to sell. It wasn’t until 1982 with the introduction of the S-500 model did G&L guitars start to gain any significant popular acceptance. The SC & SB serious instruments were G&L’s answer to competing with the imports of the day. It is a huge misconception that the instruments were geared towards students…this definitely was not the intention. You’ll note the full scale length and same professional grade hardware throughout. The idea was to keep the cost down by using what otherwise would have been scrap wood for the bodies, downsizing them, no contouring, trying to cut down on the finishing costs and selling them with limited options and a much cheaper case. The SC/SB’s did exactly what Dale needed them to do, unfortunately, G&L was never able to keep the cost down so there was any favorable margin in the line. Dale often stated that they might has well ship a $50 check with each SC/SB instrument they sold!
By 1983, the G&L brand was becoming established, however, a huge market segment was being missed…the Superstrat. Dale continuously pressured Leo, however, Leo dragged his feet on designing a fine tuning vibrato nor did he build a PAF sized drop-in MFD humbucker per Dale’s repeated requests. Dale had to do something so he started researching, with the help of various employees as well as his fleet of test players what aftermarket fine tuning bridges are the best. He also had instruments built with various bridges as well as various aftermarket humbucking pickups. The body shape was that of a F-100, however, he wisely chose to rear-load the controls, give them bright solid colored finishes and employ flatter fingerboards which were preferred by those playing Superstrat’s. The locally manufactured Kahler 2300 was the unanimously most highly rated bridge per the test players. The pickup choices were all over the board and Dale elected to go with a Schaller PAF copy as they already had a close relationship with Helmut Schaller and could get the pickups at a reasonable price point. He also knew that Leo respected Helmut and the battle would be much easier than it would if he tried to go with Seymour Duncan or Dimarzio branded pickups. By 1984, Dale was able to launch a full line of Superstrat instruments which Leo was not fond of. It bothered him immensely to see hardware and pickups on his guitars that he did not design. Fortunately, for Dale, sales were brisk right out of the gate and the models stayed in the product line until the change of ownership late 1991.
Shift in Power:
By 1985, for a variety of reasons, George Fullerton gave up his ownership and management stake at G&L and moved into a consulting/special projects role for Leo. At this same time, Leo decided to have Dale run both of the G&L manufacturing plant as well as the sales and marketing arm. It was a huge responsibility but Dale agreed to take it on. It was from this point forward that the biggest changes to G&L’s product offering took place. Also, by this time, Leo had slowed down considerably and his health was beginning to worsen. George, no longer had to focus on the day-to-day operations so he could help Leo finish up the many component designs that he had in the hopper.
Birth of the ASAT:
The most successful G&L instrument was born in 1985…the Broadcaster, which later became the ASAT. The Broadcaster was a brilliant marketing ploy on behalf of Dale Hyatt. He knew the dealers were begging and pleading for G&L to introduce a Telecaster model. Leo would have nothing to do with it. Dale felt there was an obvious market and that the body and headstock shape would get him 90% there…so one day he and Lloyd Chewning grabbed an old 50’s Telecaster body out of a bin, traced the shape on a piece of plywood and headed to the bandsaw. They purposely did not copy the Tele body exactly, instead, they tweaked it shooting to make the body shape approximately 20% from the original. This piece of plywood became the original Broadcaster template.
The same thing took place with the headstock shape…they traced G&L neck template and then traced a Tele headstock shape on it and started playing with it…eventually incorporating the signature G&L “hook” or “tit” into the mix. They affixed the neck template to the body template and kept tweaking until they were happy with the appearance. Lloyd built the actual first prototype body out of northwestern soft maple and the neck he fashioned from the standard hard-rock maple typical of all G&L’s. For the pickups, Dale wrestled with what to employ. Leo had many pickups in his lab that he was experimenting with and there were numerous pickups already in production. He eventually selected the large MFD single coils mainly because he wanted to retain the spanky sparkle of a Telecaster but inject some more prominent low frequencies to go along with the treble and this particular design covered that requirement well.
For the bridge, he knew it would be an easier sell if he used Leo’s Saddle-Lock and after all, it was a superlative functional and ergonomic design. The first prototype was like many G&L prototypes…wearing nothing but sanding sealer on the body and it had a characteristic, for 1985, ebony fingerboard. Dale knew Leo and most players were very fond of ebony even though it was source of great manufacturing difficulties. The control circuit was tweaked a bit from a standard Telecaster but not because of that but because Dale wanted to differentiate the voice of the guitar from the readily available budget priced SC-2 model. For this exact same reason, he revised the pickup locations as well. When the instrument was finished, Dale passed it around to several test players…both young and old, rock, jazz, country players, all of them. The collective responses were that of extreme excitement. They all loved it…even the hard rocking test players that typically would snub their noses had to admit it was a great sounding axe.
The next part of the Broadcaster story is pure marketing genius. You see, Dale was around back when Fender ran into a problem with the “Broadcaster” logo and Gretsch. He researched the trademark and it had long expired and was readily available. Dale knew he could apply for and obtain the trademark so he did. He also knew calling a Tele shaped instrument a Broadcaster would draw immediate attention from dealers and enthusiasts. He also knew that if he were to offer the model as a limited edition of sorts with a Leo Fender signed inspection tag and a certificate of authenticity that the Leo Fender collectors of the world would jump all over such an instrument. So he sat down with Leo, showed him the guitar and explained his strategy. Leo didn’t like the guitar because of the body shape but he liked the components and he loved the marketing concept. He agreed to sign a limited amount of labels to help the cause.
The last detail was what color or colors to paint it? Dale wrestled with this decision for weeks until he concluded that keeping it all black would be unique and quite different from any Telecaster that was ever produced. Besides, black hardware was quite popular by this time and it looked great with either an ebony or maple fingerboard. With Leo’s blessing, Dale had the metal shop fabricate production routing templates. The outside vendor that serialized the neck plates cranked out a batch of special “BC” or Broadcaster specific neck plates. The artwork was completed and provided to Meyerscord in order to crank out the special decal and a separate vendor produced the special neck pocket labels. A special “matte” black plastic, single-ply pickguard was developed and built by an outside vendor. G&G designed a custom case for the instrument with special gold piping. The Tele like but differently sized control plate was tooled up by the stamping vendor and they were off to the races. Everything else used on the guitar was off the shelf and therefore easy to get into production. The bottleneck proved to be Leo’s hand-signed labels. He quickly grew weary of this chore and tried in vain to convince others to forge his signature for him…in short, he hated it!
The Broadcaster was a huge success. It did exactly what was planned, it drew enormous attention to the G&L brand. Fender was immediately enraged and threatened law suits. Gretsch wasn’t nearly as upset as Fender but still were not happy. Dale knew from the birth of the idea that he wasn’t going to stick with the model name. He wanted the model to be more of a collectible but then convert the exact same instrument into a regular production model. Many model names were vetted but one suggested by test player, Richard Smith, ASAT or Anti-Satellite was agreed to by Dale and Leo as they both loved high tech military weaponry.
By 1986, the Broadcaster was put to rest and the ASAT into production. The ASAT came with many more options and was, by far, the most successful instrument produced during the pre-BBE G&L era. It is, of course, still a very successful instrument for G&L today though now BBE refers to it as the ASAT Special, presumably because the width of the pickup coils which many mistakenly assume are P-90 inspired. The reality is that these pickups could not possibly be more different from a frequency response perspective. The P-90 has a huge bump in midrange frequencies and a lower resonant peak. The large MFD single coil has a strong bass and treble response with a wider resonance than P-90. It is actually much closer, design-wise to a Jazzmaster pickup however, performance-wise, it sounds quite different due to the nature of the magnetic field. Not using alnico slug poles has a dramatic impact on the nature of the frequency response and thus MFD’s tend to not really capture any traditional Fender pickup sounds. You have to keep in mind that Leo had no intention of replicating the sound of his former instruments, rather, he was focused on redefining what he felt the optimal performance should be and he was convinced that the MFD was superior.
Guitars by Leo:
Around this same timeframe, the meaning of G&L was changed from “George and Leo” to “Guitars by Leo”. This change was prompted by Leo. Leo actually wanted to change the entire brand name, however, Dale saw no good reason to do this as it took years to establish the brand and all marketing, advertising, decals, and many hardware components would have to be changed with associated artwork and tooling costs to consider. Dale came up with the idea of changing the meaning so to avoid this cost and headaches…thankfully, Leo agreed. The trademark was indeed registered and if you called the office the phone was answered, “Hello, Guitars by Leo.” Some have refuted the reality of this but it indeed was the case.
Another initiative that Dale wanted to explore was how to better use the rich heritage of G&L to better market and brand the instruments. This is where the “Real-One’s” campaign originated. The Leo Fender “Signature Series” idea was hatched from this concept as well. You will also notice that many of G&L’s unique and custom hardware components started to sport stamping/engraving markings pointing out “Leo Fender”…this was no accident. Dale was driving hard to differentiate the brand and point out to consumers that G&L was indeed what Leo Fender, the father of the Tele, Strat , P-Bass and J-Bass was up to. You will find plenty of trade advertising showing Leo and the slogan, “G&L guitars and basses are the finest instruments I ever produced.” Leo believed this as did George and Dale.
Continued Evolution:
G&L’s product offering continued to evolve as the 1980’s wore on. Existing models in many cases were altered and new models and options were continually introduced. At least three different versions of the “Leo Fender Fine Tuning Vibrato” or LFV were developed and installed on production guitars starting in 1987 and culminating with the final, more compact, rendition by 1990. Leo’s P-Bass inspired “Z-Coil” pickups were developed for both guitars (Comanche V & VI) as well as the new L-5000, 5-String bass. The Interceptor that started life with a radical “X” shaped body now sported a sleek and elegant long-horn double-cutaway body shape with an equally sleek sickle shaped headstock. The ever popular S-500 would finally receive a drastic makeover when Dale decided to reshape the body to be more akin to a Fender Stratocaster and revise the headstock to a much smaller version at the same time. Gone were the aluminum pickguard and rectangular bobbin pickups to be replaced with a traditional plastic laminate pickguard and oval bobbin pickups. Dale was simply responding to what the dealers were asking for and while the new S-500 was a hot seller, the original version was similarly popular and still ordered by dealers and produced by the factory.
During the second half of the 80’s, Leo remained semi-prolific, however, his health was declining rapidly and his abilities definitely diminished as the years wore on. Dale ran the entire G&L show which was a monumental task. Considering he was struggling with his own health issues, the health issues of his wife and he and George Fullerton had become caretakers of sorts for Leo Fender. The market conditions were deplorable and attempting to manufacture products within the high labor cost, high tax and environmentally conscious state of California presented additional challenges that demanded a large percentage of Dale’s time to contend with.
End of the Line:
By 1991, Leo’s quality of life had become exceedingly poor. Dale or George would pick him up and take him to work when he was well enough, however, those days grew fewer and fewer between. It got to the point where Dale would literally have to feed Leo his food as his hands were too unstable to feed himself. One day, Leo told Dale that he wanted him to find potential suitors to purchase G&L. His plan was for Dale and George to continue with his legacy and keep the plant up and running. Dale went about fulfilling Leo’s wishes and started shopping G&L. It didn’t take long and there were more than a few interested parties. One of the interested parties was BBE Sound headed by John McLaren a former Yamaha and CBS employee.
On March 21st, 1991, Leo Fender passed away from complications associated with Parkinson’s disease. The primary ownership of both companies transitioned to Leo’s widow and the decision was made to sell the company to BBE.
November 4th, 1991, Dale Hyatt retired from G&L which marks the end of the pre-BBE period of G&L’s history.
Summary:
Without Dale there would never have been the G&L SB, SC and HG series instruments. Similarly, the “Signature” series, the Broadcaster, ASAT, the Superstrat models, aftermarket MFD pickups for Stratocasters and Telecasters, body or neck binding, fine tuner vibrato tailpieces, the Comanche VI, X-Body Interceptors, rear-loaded controls, 2nd style (more Strat-like) Skyhawk's or S-500's would never have made it to market. You get the idea, his hands were at least as involved as the other two, better known, G&L owners. Dale Hyatt was directly involved with the development of the Broadcaster, the ASAT, the late style S-500 and Skyhawk, the Comanche VI, as well as the current line of G&L ASATs inspired by Dale’s original Broadcaster/ASAT design. So when you think of G&L, you must remember Dale Hyatt’s contributions as well as those of Leo Fender and George Fullerton. He was, after all, the man responsible for putting the brand on the map and the instruments in your hands.
Earlier this morning, today, March 28, 2013, Dale Hyatt passed away. He was the last of the original Fender employees from the 40’s…those that helped Leo Fender build the manufacturing base that revolutionized the music industry and impacted so many people on this earth in a positive manner.
From my own perspective, Dale was a very dear friend whose company I enjoyed immensely. It was an honor and privilege to simply know him and I will miss him terribly. I’ll forever remember our conversations, the stories, the history lessons but probably mostly the times we went fishing together.
He was a great man who loved our country and contributed to its success and evolution in a historically significant manner. The mark he left, though he would surely not take credit if you asked him, was indelible and positive. Part of Dale’s large legacy resides in the G&L branded instruments that many of us own. If you persevered through reading all of this, now you know a lot more about the rich heritage of G&L and one of the most significant but unheralded men that made it all possible.
I would ask that the next time you pick up your G&L and start hammering away…you might want to think about Dale Hyatt and realize that he was a significant contributor in helping Leo Fender create the devices that bring all of us so much satisfaction, pleasure and joy.
Rest in Peace my friend,
Gabe
RIP Dale
