My family is growing. I bought this 1984 Skyhawk from Greg Gagliano the other day. It's got a maple body, ebony board. Makes a nice companion to my '85 S-500.
I took it to my rehearsal space today and put it through the paces. First of all, and this surprised me, the Skyhawk pickups are considerably hotter than the S-500. This is probably due to their being set up to be closer to the strings than the S-500 pickups. Also, I keep the pole pieces flat across the pickups on the S-500; GG has the Skyhawk pickups set up like a Strat -- staggered to go along with the fingerboard radius. It plays amazingly well. Similar neck to the S-500 though a little thicker. It felt fantastic as soon as I picked it up.
The Skyhawk is very jangly, a little ragged. It struck me as a rock-and-roll machine, whereas my S-500 is very, very sweet (jangle and sweetness may actually be mutually exclusive properties for guitars). In very general terms, the Skyhawk reminds me more of a Strat; the S-500 leans a bit more Tele-ish. I'm not sure how much these differences I'm noticing have to do with the pickup/pole-piece heights, or other differences between the guitars. These are just my first impressions. I'll know a lot more when I play it with the band.
I still look in on this forum from time to time, though as I'm generally not very GASSY, I usually just lurk. I've been exceedingly happy with my S-500 since I got it a few years ago. My band is about to release an album and the S-500 is all over it. It's pretty much the only guitar I play actually, live or in studio. We'll see if the Skyhawk ends up making some appearances or simply becomes a backup (which is why I wanted it anyway).
