"Rescuing" a 1994 Legacy

[lucky]

About a week and a half ago a 1994 USA G&L Legacy was listed on Craigslist. The seller didn't know much about it other than he bought it about 12 years prior and hasn't played it much. It includes tremolo bar, manual, and original hardshell case.

When I took a look in person I found that the body and visible hardware were in reasonably good shape, given the age. The strings felt old and dry. I would guess they hadn't been changed in at least 5 years, likely more. The fret wear was mostly a couple of frets and minor enough that I figured it wouldn't yet affect the intonation. For some reason the tremolo didn't move. I noticed it was flush with the body so I figured I could float it and get back to normal. The biggest problem I could see was the tarnish on the bridge components and a couple of rusted springs, but they moved just fine.

After I got it home I restrung it as I wanted to get a feel for the sound. It sounded okay, but for some reason it felt like absolute garbage, the strings were better, but the frets were stained and the rosewood fretboard was extremely dry. I decided to do a full setup. With the cover off I could see the reason for the lack of tremolo movement:



Somebody has obviously done some work on this instrument. This tremolo blocked was wedged in super tight so it took a lot of time carefully tapping the pieces out with a rubber mallet. I adjusted the bridge to be about correct and already it looked better.

Then I polished the frets, many of which were stained brownish and had felt gritty when playing. After that I cleaned and oiled (and re-oiled, and re-oiled) the fretboard. The photos don't do justice the night and day difference to the color of the rosewood.

Before:


After:


Last thing before I perform the setup was to take a look at the electronics. There's a little flakiness with the 4 position on the pickup selector where it doesn't connect to the middle pickup unless you push it to one side.

Anyway, once I got it open, I found another surprise:



Okay, so Lollar Blonde pickups in the neck and middle, and a Lollar Special in the bridge. Unfortunately, whomever installed these also switched the bass tone knob into a bridge treble knob that doesn't do anything until about 3/10. It's practically useless.

I'm fairly certain these modifications occurred before the previous owner bought it because he clearly had no idea about any of them.

I threw on some Ernie Ball 10-46s and proceeded to go through the setup process outlined in the manual. The truss rod was already perfect so I didn't need to adjust it, thankfully. The only thing of note is that the micro-tilt adjustment was not engaged, as if the last person to set it up had entirely disengaged it.

Once properly set up it played like a dream. None of that dryness from the fretboard, either. I plugged in and jammed for longer than I meant to. The Lollars sound good, but in the end they're not for me.

More photos can be found here.

[sam]

Hey Lucky,

Great find, super job and well done!! Talk about being at the right place at the right time.

The Lollars are a surprise for sure. I picked up an ASAT III with Lollars that are perfect for that guitar, for me at least. Your Legacy seems to be fitting in well, based on the extended playing time. Look forward to hearing more about this one. Are you planning to restore with G&L pickups?

[lucky]

Are you planning to restore with G&L pickups?

I’m not sure, yet. This guitar has a unique history and for whatever reason I am thinking I will leave it as it is, even if it’s not ideal for me. On the other hand, I like guitars that are 100% stock so it might make sense to restore it to original condition. Also, I have two 3-tone Sunburst Fender Strats (1999 MIM Standard / 1997 American Standard), so in a way it’s a bit redundant.

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is getting a set of the G&L blade pickups and putting them in there, It would allow me to try out those pickups and emulate a Legacy Special without having to put out $1000+ for the full guitar.

I need to let it sit for a while and play it for a bit before I decide. For now it’s yet another fun toy!

[yowhatsshakin]

Lucky,

I am somewhat intrigued by the "SNEEK" in the tremolo cavity. Wonder whether it is a misspelling of "sneak". Have you by any chance also taken the neck off to look at date stamps (if present)? Depending on what you find there, bringing it back to its original state might entail installing a set of SD SSH-2 which G&L used until they had fully developed their own CLF-100 pickups. The SD's were still used even in 1994. And although not advertised as such, enough early Legacy guitars left the factory with a more traditional wiring harness which, as you undoubtedly know, involved treble cut controls on the middle and neck pickup, not the bridge pickup. Thing is, instead of a triplet of 250kΩ AT pots, these still use the same pots for the PTB circuit, including an 1MΩ Reverse AT on the middle pickup, which leads to an anemic control over the tone.

- Jos

[lucky]

Lucky,

I am somewhat intrigued by the "SNEEK" in the tremolo cavity. Wonder whether it is a misspelling of "sneak". Have you by any chance also taken the neck off to look at date stamps (if present)?

Here's a photo of the neck pocket where the date is hard to read but I believe says "1994" if you look for it:



And here's one of the neck itself where the date is clear:



Also here's a photo of the body cavity which has a ton of markings, none of which I understand:

Depending on what you find there, bringing it back to its original state might entail installing a set of SD SSH-2 which G&L used until they had fully developed their own CLF-100 pickups. The SD's were still used even in 1994. And although not advertised as such, enough early Legacy guitars left the factory with a more traditional wiring harness which, as you undoubtedly know, involved treble cut controls on the middle and neck pickup, not the bridge pickup. Thing is, instead of a triplet of 250kΩ AT pots, these still use the same pots for the PTB circuit, including an 1MΩ Reverse AT on the middle pickup, which leads to an anemic control over the tone.

- Jos

Thanks for the info. I don't quite understand all of it, but I'll read up on it. That said, I did have the foresight to take some photos of the electronics:

[lucky]

Here's another view (click for full size):

[bigjim711]

Sweet deal!

You know... S-500 pickups might just fit in that pickguard. You can probably use a push-pull tone pot like the imports rather than drilling a hole for a toggle or getting another pickguard. Either way I dig it. You can't go wrong with good ole' sunburst.

You could probably throw those pickups and pots in a cheap fender pickguard and sell it "loaded" for enough money to get some S-500 pickups. I did that with some Lindy Fralin pickups that were in one of my Legacys.

[lucky]

Sweet deal!

You know... S-500 pickups might just fit in that pickguard. You can probably use a push-pull tone pot like the imports rather than drilling a hole for a toggle or getting another pickguard. Either way I dig it. You can't go wrong with good ole' sunburst.

You could probably throw those pickups and pots in a cheap fender pickguard and sell it "loaded" for enough money to get some S-500 pickups. I did that with some Lindy Fralin pickups that were in one of my Legacys.

It's funny you mention that. I sat down a bit ago to compare the sound of the Tribute S-500 to the Legacy w/Lollars and ended up playing for over an hour. I think I like the Lollars more than I first thought. Which is not to say I like them over the MFDs, but they do have a really nice distinct sound. I might have to keep them.

[yowhatsshakin]

lucky,

Note that the bottom potentiometer in you picture quoted below has "1Meg" printed on it whereas the top one says "250kΩ". Although that big red capacitor is in the way to read the value for the middle potentiometer, I bet ya is it 500kΩ. This means they are all what they are supposed to be for a Passive Treble and Bass (PTB) circuit, i.e. G&L's proprietary tone stack working on all 3 pickups together. Like I wrote before, if you just want to have a treble cut on 2 out of the 3 pickups, having 250kΩ pots across the board is more common.

- Jos

[lucky]

lucky,

Note that the bottom potentiometer in you picture quoted below has "1Meg" printed on it whereas the top one says "250kΩ". Although that big red capacitor is in the way to read the value for the middle potentiometer, I bet ya is it 500kΩ. This means they are all what they are supposed to be for a Passive Treble and Bass (PTB) circuit, i.e. G&L's proprietary tone stack working on all 3 pickups together. Like I wrote before, if you just want to have a treble cut on 2 out of the 3 pickups, having 250kΩ pots across the board is more common.

- Jos

Thanks for the info, I think you're right about the 500k pot. If I wanted to restore the PTB circuit, do you know what I would have to do?

[Tooslowhand]

I would leave the Lollar pickups in it. As Jos said, when this guitar was built G&L wasn't yet making their own CLF-100 alnico single coil pickups. The guitars were frequently supplied with Seymour Duncan pickups and I think occasionally Schaller. I have a number of guitars with Jason Lollar pickups, though not Strat style, and really like them all. Jos also noted that the potentiometer values shown in your picture are already correct for the PTB circuit, so you should only have to perform some rewiring to go back to that configuration. You will find circuit and wiring diagrams in the Gallery on this forum. If you decide you want to keep the Strat style tone circuits I would contact Lollar to see what pot and capacitor values they recommend for those pickups. If you do end up changing any of the electronic parts in the guitar, keep the old ones so you or the next owner have the original parts.

[umma_gumma]

Wow, congratulations!

You did a great job cleaning that up!

I find you need to crank the G&L pickup heights up, to match a typical strat string-pickup distance & thus equivalent sound/volume. I'd wire it for the PTB circuit too.

[lucky]

Wow, congratulations!

You did a great job cleaning that up!

I find you need to crank the G&L pickup heights up, to match a typical strat string-pickup distance & thus equivalent sound/volume. I'd wire it for the PTB circuit too.

You know, I'm glad you mentioned that. Just yesterday I adjusted the pickups to the recommended 1/8" that Lollar recommends and felt like it was extremely high compared to my Fenders. It sounds amazing, though, so I guess I can't complain!

[umma_gumma]

Yes the G&L floating bridge design is higher off the body than the flatter Fender type.

So the strings are a bit further away from the pickups.