Finally Friday Lunch Report 10-08-2010

Thanks to everyone for contributing this week. I am astounded by many of the photos this week. What a treasure of guitars that you have shared. Just when I think I have seen it all, another gem appears. I think it really reflects on G&L when you compare the production numbers alongside the F company. I went through the Low-Ender report (Wed) last night and I am blown away by what I am seeing. Beautiful basses, Carbon Fiber necks and pictures of old G&Ls that some of us never knew existed. This is interesting stuff! This is like visiting a museum.

Lunch today will be a stop at a DQ as Ginny and I are heading "up nort" as they say. Any questions from today will be responded to on Sunday when we return.

I gathered the crew last evening for a group photo and here is our G&L family:

From left to right is:
L 2000, Twin Vintage White Legacys, Mahogany BB, F-100 Return, CAR Legacy, ASAT Classic S, ASAT Z-3, Legacy and a Tribute ASAT Special.

Back to some basics as to why I like G&L. I got back into guitar in 2004 after a 40 year absence. By 2006 I had four Fenders, Strats,Tele, and JB, all American Deluxe. I continued to buy Fenders and some other brands. In the summer of 2007, I saw a for trade ad on CL. This guy had a 2006 Transparent Red Legacy HB. We traded even up and he got my Natural 1997 American Tele as he wanted an ASAT/Tele. He couldn't find an ASAT locally from a private party. Both guitars were in pristine condition and we were both winners. I did a setup when I got it home and it was love at first sight. I became serious about collecting guitars and we now have a family of over 40. There are Gibson, Ovation, Fender Hamer, PRS, Music Man and Gretschs in this family and a quarter of them are G&L. My Fender share has dropped. Why? Value and quality of G&L second to none. I doubt that newer Fenders will be collectable. Thumbs mentioned the other day that he thinks quality at G&L is better that ever. I agree. The White Twin Legacys were a value package of some type by G&L and came with gig bags. They are no different that the other American G&Ls that I have, in fact, they have slightly figured gloss necks. and I believe they are 2007 vintage. Even the standard tuners are designed to lower the string to the headstock. That is a Leo design. I have locking tuners on all of them but they are a value no matter how you cut it. Have I said enough about the woods this week??????? The list goes on.

I would like to see some changes. I think a perfect design would be to put a saddle lock system on the DF vibrato. I have had string buss on several guitars, mostly Strats and the high E string is most common. Buzz caused by saddles not being tight together, but close. Do not confuse this with fret problems. I have corrected this with shims between the saddles. Look at any American Fender Strat Hss at your local GC and you will the string alignment over the humbucker is bad. I correct this with shims. If there were a saddle lock it would really complete the job. When I bought my L-2000 the Saddle Lock screw was backed way out. Tightening it changed the alingnment of all the saddles. I think the DF should have a lock. There isn't much else I would mess with on a G&L. Strap locks on these beauties is a must. I use Schallers and I have Ernie Ball straplocks on my Stingray 5. I caught the body as it fell because the lock was not set properly. I now double check it every time I use it. Schallers will never fail like that. What are your thoughts on these items? Straplocks would not add that much to the cost of the guitar. The only other change I would make is to become an adoptive parent to some I have seen here this week. Boy,would I love to be a factory dude building these beauties.

I have enjoyed being the LR this week. Some thoughts on Lunch Reports. It seems like most of them recently have been getting anywhere from 60 to close to 200 hits a day. Someone is looking at them. Therefore they are serving a purpose. It is easy to browse and takes a lot more time to respond. Responses seem to be anywhere from 6, 8 a day to as high as in the 20s. It does take time to do the LR. I was using Imageshack to post my photos and I had so many problems that on Wednesday I signed up on Photobucket. That got me through the week. I prepare the report the evening before, save it, and post it in the morning. My first stint was last March just after the new system was up. After doing it once, I had high expectations for myself if I were ever chosen again. My intent was to post MP3 tracks from our latest CD each day. I failed as I discovered that I will have to get the license for MP3 in Pro Tools. I will do that and I think I am now at a point where I may be able to figure out how to post an MP3 track. I find that most of you are way ahead of me in using this forum. But it is rewarding as I learn it and I continue to learn as I use this system. I am better in the school of hard knocks that classroom training. I have had no training in Pro Tools other that doing it. After a couple of CDs I have learned a lot. So, if I had not had the opportunity to be the LR this week, there are many beauties out there that we may not have seen. Also there were some pretty darn cool stories from many of you. Now here is the punch line, I will be fully retired in about a week. So, lets keep this thing going so I can sit here every day and drool over beautiful guitars, cool information and a tale or two. Thursday we really had an abundance of Red beauties to enhance the autum colors. Low-Ender day was hard to top.

I would like to close this week with one more thought. I see guys setting up guitars at the GC all the time. They take the guitar form the customer, look down the neck, made an adjustment to the truss rod, play a few hot licks and hand it back and say, "Try this". The customer walks out thinking they did something amazing to the guitar. I happen to have a Stew Mac set up kit, and for a proper setup, you do need some setup tools. My point is that it is all logic and with the help of others on this board you may be amazed at what you can do and how well it works for you. GPD on this board has a setup procedure documented that works extremely well and it clearly explained. I am finding the Bass Forum to be full of shared knowledge. There probably isn't any guitar problem this board couldn't solve. I'm not sure I would go to them for relationship issues with the misses. That could be more trouble! Thanks for having me this week and I am leaving you with a picture of our band (OTD and we represent Social Security very well).


and a picture of Magic doing a final inspection of the Z-3.


Have a great weekend everyone!-- Darwin

Hey Darwin,
Thanks for a great week of LRs. And a nice family shot there. I noticed the Fender Custom Shop certificate snug in to be amongst guitars it actually would like to produce

- Jos

Right on Jos. I have a custom shop Clapton and it is the most plain looking guitar in the bunch and in my opinion extremely over priced. It does play well but I guess that is how the market dictates.-- Darwin

Great week Darwin, generated a whole tonne of chatter.

I like strap locks, I use dunlops as they seem to work, and are what my Carvins came with. I have never had an issue, and oil them every year or so as the directions state. I put em in, then I tug em good to make sure though, having heard the horror stories. A lock on the DF could be beneficial, I have never experienced saddle buzz though.

Here is how I convert to MP3 Darwin, get a program called Goldwave, it is 'freeware', you can download and use it free, after X point it asks you to please purchase it, but does nothing to prevent it's use. So if you are like me and have no conscience, that will get the job done. I would like to hear what you have to offer. This is how I convert all my 192k Wav masters to MP3 (you can select any bitrate, mono/stereo etc).

I am no stranger to setups, and would like that kit you mentioned (along side their fret work kit, that is something I will be learning. I plan to build guitars whence I am established). I am only missing radius gauges though, I have feeler gauges and good enough rules to do everything pretty spiffy. You can pretty well approximate your radius either way with good results. I think a lot of why people shy away from setups is the horror stories about how some idiot broke his truss rod. He forced it. That is all there is to it, you might need to give a bit of torque, but never more than finger tight (and for me not even that, my grip is fairly excellent).

My worst set up was my bass after being in and out of the studio for a winter, neck relief was .03! Took a good weekend to actually get it back in good playing shape (.016ish for me). However this bass was built in 2008, that is probably the most it will ever move and partially due to the neck settling. I should not have left it that long, but I was raising a puppy and finishing my undergrad at the time.

Great report, Dawin. A few points to consider.

The White Twin Legacys were a value package of some type by G&L and came with gig bags. They are no different that the other American G&Ls that I have, in fact, they have slightly figured gloss necks. and I believe they are 2007 vintage.

I think these guitars were called some sort of Fullerton Specials. I remember Dave talking about them about 3 to 4 years ago on this board. You are right that they were a special value package and I think they had matching headstocks, multi piece bodies and gig bags. They were done in white, candy apple red and LP blue. They rock and are not lacking anything as compared to other USA guitars as you know. The value for the company was that they could run them through without having to provide any custom features and to use up some multi piece bodies.

I would like to see some changes. I think a perfect design would be to put a saddle lock system on the DF vibrato.

You have to realize that a guitar's DF bridge has a very different function than a bass bridge. If you put a saddlelock system on a Dual Fulcrum bridge it will change the sound of the bridge. I don't know if this will be better or worse but i will defer to Leo's tinkering in that he probably thought of this and tried it out. It wasn't used for a good reason.

Strap locks on these beauties is a must. I use Schallers and I have Ernie Ball straplocks on my Stingray 5. I caught the body as it fell because the lock was not set properly. I now double check it every time I use it. Schallers will never fail like that. What are your thoughts on these items? Straplocks would not add that much to the cost of the guitar.

My thought on straplocks are this: The only time i had a strap fail on a G&L was with my 96 L-2000 that has Dunlop strap locks. The strap portion of the lock came off of the strap in mid-song.
This is a very rare occurance, but it happened to me.
The reason that his bass has Dunlop Strap locks is that they came on the bass. I bought it used.

Whenever I have used the stock G&L strap buttons, I have never had a guitar or bass fall and I have played G&Ls since 1989.
The width of their button just does not come unfastened from any decent quality strap. Now I am not swinging the bass around my back or doing somersaults on stage while playing, but with reasonable use these strap buttons are the best, IMHO.

The problem for G&L in providing strap locks is that it adds to the cost of the guitar. Everybody has different ideas on which strap lock system they prefer. The cost of inventory will go up if G&L has to stock enough Dunlops, Schallers and standard strap buttons to keep everyone happy.
I think there may be a warranty/ liability issue if G&L installs a strap lock system and it fails on your guitar or bass.
When you install it, you assume the liability for its installation.

Another problem with strap locks is that all of these sytems require you to install a chunk of metal at the end of your strap. This metal piece inadvertenly acts as a pendulum and can do severe damage to your guitar's finish if it is swung recklessly against your instrument's body.

This is up to the user to prevent, but accidents happen.

Have a great weekend Everybody!

bassman

Darwin,

Great week, and as sirmyghin said, we heard some chatter round here this week.

I notice one empty wall hanger, do you always keep an empty one for the next great find?

Here is how I convert to MP3 Darwin, get a program called Goldwave, it is 'freeware', you can download and use it free, after X point it asks you to please purchase it, but does nothing to prevent it's use. So if you are like me and have no conscience, that will get the job done. I would like to hear what you have to offer. This is how I convert all my 192k Wav masters to MP3 (you can select any bitrate, mono/stereo etc).

I used cdex, which is truely free. It will let you rip wav files from CDs, plus convert between wav and mp3 files in either direction. If you convert to mp3 it allows you to set the sampling rate; my ears tells me that anything higher than 128K sampling is quite good. One thing I found cdex won't do is recognize wma files, but I'm no fan of Microsoft in any case.

When I do home recording I use a Fostex digital 8 track which records to wav files. I do my mix down on a computer using a program called ntrack and export the result to a stereo wav file. And if I want to make it a manageable size to put it online I used cdex to convert it to mp3.

Kit

Here is how I convert to MP3 Darwin, get a program called Goldwave, it is 'freeware', you can download and use it free, after X point it asks you to please purchase it, but does nothing to prevent it's use. So if you are like me and have no conscience, that will get the job done. I would like to hear what you have to offer. This is how I convert all my 192k Wav masters to MP3 (you can select any bitrate, mono/stereo etc).

I used cdex, which is truely free. It will let you rip wav files from CDs, plus convert between wav and mp3 files in either direction. If you convert to mp3 it allows you to set the sampling rate; my ears tells me that anything higher than 128K sampling is quite good. One thing I found cdex won't do is recognize wma files, but I'm no fan of Microsoft in any case.

When I do home recording I use a Fostex digital 8 track which records to wav files. I do my mix down on a computer using a program called ntrack and export the result to a stereo wav file. And if I want to make it a manageable size to put it online I used cdex to convert it to mp3.

Kit

That is another one but when I started running 64 operating systems, it stopped working for me, or did poor jobs. Some kind of architecture algorithm conflict. It did work in the olden days of x86 though (I have been running x64 since 2005)

That is another one but when I started running 64 operating systems, it stopped working for me, or did poor jobs. Some kind of architecture algorithm conflict. It did work in the olden days of x86 though (I have been running x64 since 2005)

That may very well be the case. That is the vagaries of truly free software without any incentive to update and upgrade.

Kit

I recommend checking out gold wave though, it can do more than convert files (including pick up RCA ins and record if you computer is so equipped) I use SONAR for that crap though, I just refuse to buy more to be able to convert a file to an MP3

Hey, Darwin!

Thanks for the wonderful week. You represent what this place is about.

Ken...