Went to one of the local music stores to help my sister buy a guitar for her boyfriend for Christmas. At the risk of divorce, I walked away with a new Christmas gift for myself, too.
The one I got was an Tribute ASAT Special, Tele-style, with G&L's patented "Super Magnetic Field" (or whatever they call them) pickups.
The dealer was having a blow-out/clearance on their Korean G&L line (Tribute series) due to continuous problems with the tone and volume pots and the legions of unsatisfied customers that result from having to return a "defective" guitar. In a word - whatever pots are in the Tribute series are complete junk.
Why did I buy? The sound !!! Pro-level++++ sound...and the fact that I can replace the pots with pro-quality pots in about 20 min, and upgrade this $350 bargain basement deal into a pro instrument.
Whatever Leo Fender is doing (oops..has done - may he RIP) over at G&L is something fantastic. Imagine the spark of the classic tele sound, with more sweetness built into the tone than even 15 tube stages can add. I was blown away.
Close second for me was the G&L Strat-copy S-500. Same SMF pickups as the ASAT. The difficulty was a "dead-spot" on the big E on the first 2 frets. Maybe could have been cured, but I didn't want to risk it.
Which comes to another point - quality control. The pots suck. There are dramatic inconsistencies betweeen the guitars I tried, and between guitars of the same series and model.
However-amongst all that statistical variation - I found a gem. It'll never command high resale, but how do you trade a guitar that you can't set down ?
[This message was edited by Tom Gorr on 24 December 2004 at 12:36 PM.]
[This message was edited by Tom Gorr on 27 December 2004 at 06:23 PM.]
