The place to discuss, post photos, video, and audio of the G&L products (US instruments, stomp boxes, etc.) produced after 1991, including the amps & gear we use with them.
Here's some G&L Porn of my 1995 G&L George Fullerton Signature. I have the original case, the George Fullerton book, all the paperwork, and even the original box it shipped to the dealer in from the factory. She weighs in at 6-1/2 lbs and has an awesome smooth, woody tone, even the bridge pup is useable in this one. 1995 was the first year of the Fullertons, now discontinued (<sigh>)... my favorite G&L model... gets cancelled... ugh, LOL. Nice birdsy-eye neck, too...
I bought this one from Milt Smith (Smith's Music) in Portland, MI. Though I bought the guitar brand new in 2004, it had been in its case, in its original box since he got it from G&L in 1995. LOL. You can see other G&Ls lined up behind him, in thier cases, in their original boxes. Milt has had his store in Portland since about 1949. He was one of the first dealers to carry G&Ls. He is now 90+ years old. Last year Milt had a bad fall (at 90-something) and for te first time in his life, the store is now closed. I bought my first electric guitar from Milt in 1975. So, the Fullerton he sold me has plenty of G&L mojo, plus it is a keepsake for me having bought it from Milt. Milt is/was life-long friends with Dale Hyatt, and talked with Leo by phone and in person many times. One time he shared with me that he had a "whole closet full" of Pre-CBS Fenders... can you imagine what a collection like that would be worth today? Next time I asked him about them, he said he had sold all of them. Personally, I think they are going to be an inheritance for his kids after he is gone. I bought a G&L Broadcaster from Milt back when I had no idea of its significance. Like a dumbass, I sold it at a guitar show in about 1994 for like $750 bucks... duhhh... wish I had that guitar today. Here's Milt holding my 1995 Fullerton the day I bought it in 2004.
Beautiful guitar Candleman! And a great story to go with it! As much as I love looking at beautiful G&L's on here, what really makes this site unique are the wonderful stories behind so many of them. Thanks for sharing!
I can add a little more about Milt. He started his business as a radio repair shop in 1949. Originally he was across the street in Portland. After a couple years he bought and opened up his shop where it is still there today. Maybe 1950-1951. That's when he started dealing in musical instruments. I'm a little foggy on just what music stuff he carried early on. Milt never played a lick as a guitar player, but could do one helluva setup on your axe. After so many years in the business he knew what screw did what, etc... I think he was a Fender dealer way back in the day. Having been in business for 65 years, that kinda makes him one of the oldest dealers around. Because he was a small shop, Fender screwed him in the late 70s requiring all dealers to have X-amount of stock on hand. That was out of Milt's budget, so after serving as a Fender dealer for several decades, Fender stopped sending him gear. That's right about the time Leo started G&L, so believing G&Ls were really the only REAL Fenders being made anymore, Milt became one of the first G&L dealers.
I bought my first electric guitar from Milt in 1975 (might have been '76). Well, I should say I got it as a Christmas present on Christmas 1976-ish. I got it and a small 1x10" Silverface Vibro Champ for Christmas 1976. I think my first guitar cost $44 and was an acoustic Gibson Hummingbird clone. I was the only kid in 9th grade the next year to play guitar in my high school, so I got the electric to play in the high school jazz band. Quite a cool break of sorts, and what a wild way to start out playing guitar, reading jazz charts. My first instructor was a friend of the family who had been an orchestra leader all the way back to the 1930s. His lessons cost $1.40 each. $1.00 for the lesson, and 40-cents for the piece of sheet music each week. Howbeit he taught Hawaiian 6-string guitar style and all the sheet music was some kind of Hawaiian stuff, LOL. I was 13 years old and wanted to rock-and-roll.
I played in the jazz band all through high school and actually earned my Varsity letter in music as a guitar player, LOL. The Vibro Champ was no where near loud enough to play with the jazz bands (don't you just hate trumpets blaring in your ear? haha) So by the middle of my Freshman year it was back to Milt's place and I carried home a 100 watt Traynor head and a 2 x 15" Silverface-era Fender cab. Definitely loud enough to put those pesky trumpeteers at bay.
In 10th grade some of the folks in band wanted to start a rock band, so we did. The drummer went on to play professionally after high school, one gig he got was with Mickey Gilley. I went to see him play with Gilley one time and was really odd to see my old friend the classic rock drummer, shorts and muscle shirt, long hair and a mustache, playing on stage with Mickey Gilley, haha. The compliment for the high school rock band was me on guitar, a lead singer, a bass player, that guy on drums, and a guy playing keyboards. That was a pretty popular combo for back in the day. We played all the latest-greatest hits... Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, Styx (when they used to rock), REO Speedwagon (when they used to rock), and anything you'd hear on a "Classic Rock" radio station these days.
We played a couple of school assemblies because the drummer's mom was the head of the high school band boosters, and also in good with the Principle of the high school. I think what glued me to playing guitar for the rest of my life was this... we opened up our first high school assembly with a Rush song, "Bastille Day"... we had lights, flash pots, all kinds of <censored word>. When we ended the song, the entire high school assembly stood to their feet and roared a standing ovation. Thinking back, we probably really sucked, but we were the rock band for the high school, and that wave of applause wiped me out. I can still hear them cheer to this day... it was an event that stands you hair up on your arms.
Oh yeah, my first stomp box ever was a Heathkit Distortion box somebody gave me. Back in the day, electronic projects were pretty cool, and the Heathkit company used to sell all kinds of do-it-yourself doo-dads. That through a Traynor head and a 2x15 Fender cab was my first loud amp. Somewhere in there I got a Cray Baby wah-wah from my Hawaiian guitar teacher... those were my only two doo-dads back then.
So my guitaring started at Milt Smith's store. Had he not sold me my first electric guitar, things might have been a lot different in my life. Guitar playing took to me, or maybe I took to guitar playing as if it were the highest passion. In my teens I would sit in my room for hours and play my guitar, then polish it for an hour, LOL. My next guitar was a 1972 Gibson SG II. It was a dark brown "walnut" they called it, and it had two small plastic mini-humbuckers. Eventually I started taking rock-and-roll guitar lessons at a local music store. They hot-rodded the SG with two Dimarzio Dual-Sound humbucking pickups. They also replaced the half-moon pickgaurd with a new one that included a Les Paul-type toggle, and two mini-switches for the dual sound pickups. At 17 years old, I could make 8 significantly different sounds with that one guitar. And it rocked. Dimarzio was the <censored word> back in the day. Long before any other pickup folks were mass-marketing stuff. Bill Lawrence might have been making stuff, but I think it was before Seymour Duncan was big. Definitely before anyone had heard of Lollar or Lindy Fralin, etc, etc, etc... Dimarzio still makes damn good pickups.
I remember in the 70s Milt has a ton of (what we now call) Silverface Fender stuff. He had heads and combos, and speakers of all shapes and sizes. For a small town music store, he was really setup nice. I remember seeing my first Fender Starcaster guitar at Milt's place. Him and his wife ran the store. She passed away a number of years ago and Milt has kept the store going well into his 80s. If I'm not mistaken, Milt was about 92 when he had the fall and hit his head and his family would no longer let him go to the store anymore.
He was always a shrewd business man. On some of his stuff he might have had the list price or higher, LOL. I know I paid out the nose for the couple of G&Ls I bought there, but I didn't care because Milt was like my "Guitar Poppa"... he still is. I haven't talked to him in several years, but anytime I was in the store he would spend hours talking about the old days, and how Fender had become a Japenese-run company in the late 1970s (was owned by Fuji once upon a time) and gave him the screw-ya' boot to the pants. That was the end of Fender at Milt's shop and his new #1 brand became G&L close to 1980-1981... not sure when G&L first started, but having an "in" with Dale Hyatt, Milt became one of the first-ever G&L dealers.
Some folks didn't like Milt. Because if you came in his store dictating prices for this or that, he'd simply just tell you to leave. He'd been there forever and some young dum and full of dum kid coming in would not be allowed to play his guitars, at least not the top dollar ones. Milt had this trick of buying the plastic bags that go over suits from the dry cleaners. Every guitar in Milts store, for as long as I can remember, might be on the wall for sale, but would be wrapped up in one of those bags. That kept young bucks from coming in to his shop and denting up his guitars. If Milt thought you were serious about buying a more expensive guitar, he would unwrap the guitar for you and let you play it. If he measured you up to be a punk, he might unwrap a Japanese made something that cost a hundred bucks. That pissed a lot of people off, but Milt had his loyal customers. Like me. Anytime I would go in, he was always friendly to me, maybe a bit cocky, but it was a fun kind of cocky. But I've played some of the most beautiful G&Ls of my life in Milt's store. And carried home a few... probably for way over list price, but I never cared. He was my "Uncle Milt" and just having a guitar from his store meant a lot to me. After so many years of getting stuff from him, we developed a bond and a long-standing friendship. I just love Milt. Folks can say what they will about him, but he's like part of my real family. Not the dumb-azzes that come at Christmas with the same last name... I mean my musical brothers and sisters over the years.
I grew up in an abusive family. My dad did his absolute best to make sure we were always cowering from his anger for some reason or another. Emotional, physical, and verbal abuse was the flavor of the day all my life. But what I did with the abuse was... sink my hands into the blues and play my guitar even more. Perhaps had dad not been so abusive, I wouldn't have learned to play so well even in my teens. Today blues is my #1. Its all about the emotion, and the improvising, and the story telling about real life knives in the back from your closest friends and relatives. I wouldn't be afraid to stand on stage with any player these days, professional or amateur. After a lifetime of being beat to hell and back by my father, there is little I fear these days. Maybe sky-diving, I don't like heights... haha.
I've seen my share of hard times. Last year and for a while the year before, I lost everything I had and was living in my truck. I moved here to Texas from Michigan. I spent the last 2 winters in Michigan sleeping in the bed of my truck. I had a twin-sized mattress I bought, and a ton of comforters, and a $400 mountaineering sleeping bag I bought back when I had a good job. In fact a lot of the gear I used to survive in my truck came from a mountaineering/backpacking perspective.
I can remember 30-below wind chill and the wind blowing so hard in drove Wal-Mart shopping carts into the side of my truck while I was trying to sleep at the 24-hour Wal-Mart parking lot. Michigan just sucks for jobs. Its not like I didn't try. I worked at a music store for a little while for $300 bucks a week. Loved being there but the pay sucked. Then when that job ended I helped a guy who did window washing and gutter cleaning. The one thing I'll always remark about is... no matter how low I went, I never lost my faith. I didn't do drugs, I didn't drink. And (ok just a little Bible stuff)... as it says in the Bible, God always met my needs. I never went hungry, and I never ran out of gas in my truck. When it was really-really cold outside, I would start the engine and run the heater for a while. Then crawl back into the topper and cover up with the sleeping bag. It would only take about 3 minutes or less and I would honestly be warm as toast, even if it was 30-below outside. Believe me, I can play the frokking blues. I've lived it, and it bubbles out of me in great measure. Its just something I do. No matter where I've lived, I've had a guitar around me.
To survive, I took all my guitars to the pawn shop. They have a heated and air conditioned room, and they were actually safer there than riding around in my truck when I was living in my truck. I sometimes bought an el-cheap-o something for a hundred bucks. I'd have that and a Pignose amp I've had since like 1979. One of the original battery operated ones with the hog snout for a volume control. Between my faith, my guts, my will to survive, my survival skills, and my music, I made it through.
Now I live in Dallas, Texas and I have a bad-azzed job with AT&T. I make good bucks and I'm able to re-build some of the gear I lost when I was homeless. I lost everything at the pawn shop. Did I mention my dysfunctional family? My dad helped me pay interest at the pawn shop... my sister has power of attorney over his finances... so, finding out he had helped me, and being a nutcase control freak, she called dad's VISA and reversed the charges on my pawn shop interest. The pawn shop called me and said I had like 2 days to pay them or they sell everything of value I have ever acquired. A frined helped me save about ten things, but I lost 35 things to the Devil Pawn Shop.
A Marshall Class 5 amp (in limited edition red), a Vox AC-15 (in limited edition Racing Green), about 7 guitars, and all of my stomp boxes but one. I kept my 1979 ProCo which I bought in 1979 and has been with me forever. I had pawned everything I owned as a matter of survival. Anything not of much value I sold at flea markets. I did whatever it took to keep gas in my truck and food in my belly. The last things I sold were two really nice IWI pistols. I didn't really want to sell them, but I think selling them might have in some way saved my life. You get low enough in life and you stop giving a <censored word> if you live another day. I got to the point where I'd pray sometimes several times day for God to kill me. I have no idea why He kept me alive. Maybe so I could write about my story. Maybe because having sunk so low and survived, it will give somebody else hope. Maybe so my blues playing would be even more intense. Maybe so I could prove happiness isn't in your house or your junk possessions, it is in a deeper place. I cried my Buffalo tears when I saw my guitars on the pawn shop eBay page. It hurt like driving a nail in my heart. But what I figured out is that "its just stuff"... One great thing I got out of it is that I have no fixation to material things anymore.
I kinda lived a modern day version of what Job wen through in the Bible. Job was a righteous guy, he did no wrong. And to prove and argument with Satan, God allowed Satan to take everything Job had away. He even affected his health. After he went through all that crap, Job was given way more in the end of the book than he had started out with in the beginning. I'm at that part of the story now.
I've been able to buy back several of the guitars I've lost, and 18 of the 30+ foot pedals I lost. I bought back a couple pistols. And I'm living good, might have even put on a few pounds 'cause I'm eating good, too. For the first time in decades I am feeling something I haven't felt... I actually feel lonely. I joke with people that one of my Facebook game names is "Lonewolf"... but that describes a huge chunk of who I am. When I was 12 my last sibling moved out of the house, so it was just me and my guitar, an abusive dad that worked off, and my lovely mom. She was the reason of support that kept me playing guitar. Dad hated everything about music. He wasn't too shy to yell it at me, either. "Turn that damn sht down" still rings in my ears. But dad worked off as a construction worker, and usually wasn't home most of the time. When he was home he brought hell and Satan with him. When he wasn't home it was me and my guitar.
That 1972 SG II? My mom bought that for me in like 1977 or so. And I had to hide it from my dad for the first 9 months that I owned it. That's what mom told me to do. She walked on plenty of egg shells her entire life until she passed away in 2011. I have no idea how she ever put up with that guy. I guess divorce wasn't in their vocabulary in that generation.
When I graduated high school, my mom bought me a 1980 Gibson Les Paul Artisan. The only Les Paul model to ever have the hearts and flowers inlay. It was a "Norlin" era Gibson, and it weighs in at 13-1/2 pounds. Not for the faint of heart... or bad of back. I still have it. That one guitar being a gift from mom is my #1 prized possession of all time. Its dented, skinned up, I've played the hell out of that guitar. Its been with me in every move I've made in my life. One time I calculated and wrote out each town or city I've lived in.
Somewhere over 50-something different places in my adult life. That guitar and the 1979 ProCo Rat have been with me since the near beginning. I special ordered the Les Paul Artisan from a music store back in the day. I insisted that when it came in, I was to be the one who broke the staples off of the shipping box. I remember how beautiful that guitar looked to my 18 year old eyes. Its still a beautiful guitar, but today it looks like Fender's "relic" shop got their hands on it, LOL. In my late teens and twenties I wasn't so kind to stuff. Plus I have played it for so many years that the finish is all but worn off of the back of the neck.
All my rock idols from the 70s played a Les Paul, so I always wanted a Les Paul. To be honest, Fenders in the 70s really sucked. The neck pockets were loose, and I never wanted anything like that. I've had 2 1970-something Strats and they both had loosey-goosey neck pockets. You'll playing them and the neck will drift in the pocket and toward the floor. Then you'll have to hold the body with your right arm, and yank the neck back up into the pocket. That's one of many reasons I am a tried and true G&L lover. I've owned over 20 G&Ls over the years, and every single last one of them was pristine quality, sound, fit, and finish. They just simply make the greatest guitars on Earth. If given a choice of a Fender custom-shop something, a Gibson custom-shop something, a high-dollar Paul Reed Smith... or they put any G&L on the stand next to any of the above... I'll gladly take the G&L first. Regardless of price of the list above.
Milt Smith was my introduction to G&L. I didn't like how Fender treated him in the 1970s. I'm still not into Fender guitars. I'd much rather spend my money on G&Ls (plural, LOL). I would like one nice Strat (I have a red Eric Johnson STrat on lay-a-way), and one nice Tele (I also have a '52 Re-issue Tele on lay-a-way at the same store, LOL). But thats it for me and Fender. I don't need 50 Squire-somethings, and they just don't make guitars for me. G&L makes guitars for me.
My latest order from G&L is a vintage white Legacy HB, reverse headstock, mint PG, white pups/knobs, clear gloss REVERSE headstock neck, with a saddle lock (yay, hard tail) bridge. Can't wait to see it. Its currently on order and its up to the boys in Fullerton to make it happen. I'm already nicknaming it "The Ghost" because it is all white, etc. I asked for a flamey neck, but no promises the dealer says... I might get lucky.
Even when Milt is gone and in the grave I am still going to love G&Ls. I think it was partly some of the stories we shared down at his store in Portland. I've lived all over God's green Earth, but whenever I went back to that small town, I always visited Milt's store. Not that era is over. The store is closed and Milt doesn't go there anymore. But my roots are in that shop. He has this crazy nylon guitar pick he carries and I've played with those same picks for like 40 years or something. I've never seen the same picks anywhere else. They used to be made by Mel Bay, but then I heard a G&G company made them. No big deal, I have 2 gross of those picks and they never break. They are also super things. They are similar to the super thin white Dunlop picks, but these are made better. They have a cat-tongue sand-papery end, and I spin them around in my fingers to do different things. Mostly I play with the round edge oif the pick. By using my index and middle fingers holding the pick over my thumb, I can bend it to be the hardest heavy pick... then it is also the feather to strum open chords by using the pick-end. Its been in my hand since the beginning and I've never used any other kind of pick. And... I got the picks at Milt's store in the 1970s... he still carries them or did last he was open. I bought 2 groos of them (a gross of picks is 144), so I have literally a lifetime supply.
In the mid-1980s I was blessed by being able to study jazz with a fairly famous jazz guitar guy in Jacksonville, Florida. We hit it off big time right off. He is the only other guy I have ever met that used these same thin blue picks. On his 66th birthday a few years ago, I sent him 66 blue guitar picks, haha. I have always kept 5 of them in the shape of a flower underneath the toggle switch washer on my Les Paul. It makes for an easy access to picks if you drop one, I've done that forever. Somewhere I have a picture of my jazz instructor playing at a 1980-something Jacksonville (Florida) jazz festival, and he has 5 picks in his toggle switch washer... he did that to honor me. I worked my ass off in his lessons. I earned both his respect and his friendship. Today he has his own signature guitar model, and I am lined up to buy one out of the next batch. I'm going to take a picture of it when I get it and send it to him... with 5 blue guitar picks under the toggle washer, haha.
Well, it took me over an hour to write this. Somebody said they like hearing G&L stories. That was my encouragement to write.
I've taken my guitar playing to lots of fun places. For a while I played in a blues duo with a harmonica player as my only income 6 nights a week. I also play straight ahead jazz music. Think "Joe Pass" he is my all-time favorite guitar player. He kicked a heroin addiction in the late 50s, and went on to be a super star. I cried when I heard he passed away in 1994. One of my life's goals was to take private lessons from him. That dream died that day. For about 5 years I was a very successful guitar instructor. I made up my own method of relating guitar to a newcomer's hands. I could get some guys who were willing to work hard to play sweet rich jazz chords and read jazz chord charts... some "got it" from scratch in only about 3 months. Others tried and gave up and wanted me to teach them how to play blues. At one time I was this kinda "wierdo" jazz purist. But after studying with one of the top jazz instructors in L.A. in the late 80s, I got my head all crammed up with that stuff and stalled out. Somewhere in the early 90s or mid-90s I started learning how to take all that information and use just bits and pieces. And I got turned on to playing just blues music, with all that head knowledge. I developed my own original style of the blues and shortly after had a very successful streak as a full-time blues musician.
I can still sit down and play beautiful jazz chord melodies and improv, but my passion is the Pentatonic scale over 7th chords and 9th chords... doesn't always have to be a I, IV, V... blues is much more than that. Think "Ray Charles - Hard Times"... Buddy Guy, Johnny Winter, the boogie beat of John Lee Hooker (I lived in Clarksdale, Mississippi for a long time, John Lee's home town). I also had a regular Saturday night gig in Clarksdale when I was there. Google "Clarksdale, Mississippi." Its one of the places Mississippi Delta Blues was formed. Robert Johnson sold his soul at the Crossroads near Clarksdale (I've visited that Crossroads... didn't sell anything, though). Muddy Waters left out of the train station in Clarksdale in the late 40s and hit it big in Chicago not long after. There are still juke joints in and around Clarksdale. They have a really great Delta Blues Museum there, too.
I also lived in and around another regionally (not so famous) blue area. North Carolina. Near the tobacco warehouses of Winston-Salem, Highpoint, and such, an eartly rag-time type of blues was born, called "Eastcoast Blues" aka "Piedmont Blues." The Piedmont is a region in NC where tobacco grows abundantly. In the 1930s a man by the name of Blind Boy Fuller recorded 130 original songs in the Piedmont style, thus establishing the style known as "Piedmont Blues"... you might want to Google that, too. Before I lived in NC, I had no idea it existed. But Fuller played his music outside of the Tobacco warehouses. Whereas the Mississippi Delta Blues formed out of the hands of former slaves who had worked the cotton fields in the Delta (a letter "D" shaped region by air that has the Mississippi river as the up and down part of the back of the D, and the Yazoo river that makes sort of a V shape from Memphis, TN, then back to Vicksburg, MS on the Mississippi River... all my life I thought the "Delta" was the "river delta" where the river emptied into the Gulf of Mexico... NOT...)... the Piedmont Blues originates in a Piedmont area from Virginia, into North and South Carolina, and into some of Georgia. You have about 100 miles of coastal plain on the Atlantic in all those states... then the land begins to roll into the Piedmont. The next geographical area after the Piedmont inland, is the Appalachian Mountains. So we have Chicago blues, Delta Blues, Texas Blues, most people have heard of them... and we have Piedmont Blues... I'm sure there are tons of Piedmont Blues artists on YouTube these days. Check it out if you have never heard of it. The Piedmont Blues style has sort of a rag-time feel to it. Blind Boy Fuller is "the man" of Piedmont Blues, he is sort of the (loosely) Robert Johnson of Piedmont Blues. If you had to pick one person to describe Chicago Blues it would be anything Muddy Waters or Willie Dixon composed, if you had to pick one person for Delta Blues it might be Son House or Robert Johnson... if I had to pick one person to describe Piedmont Blues it would be Blind Boy Fuller, sort of the inventor of the genre.
I better stop writing and post this or I could write all night, LOL...
I have one or two earlier influences, but Milt Smith was my most early electric guitar guy. He sold me my first STrat-copy electric guitar and a 70s Fender Vibro Champ (silverface) amp... so blame him, hahahaha.
Happy to have a place to come and spill my guts about cool G&L guitars. To me, the best guitars on the planet and my most favorite brand of any ever produced.
