G&L LE-2 Guitar

Over the past few years I’ve become more and more interested in G&L guitars. Leo Fender’s third guitar company, he started it after he left Music Man, which he started after he sold Fender.

Of the 3, G&L seems to have taken the most big swings. Fender obviously became the thousand-pound gorilla of the guitar world; Music Man went upmarket, with smaller production and an ultra-premium price. G&L seemed like it couldn’t figure out where it sat in the market, and so you’ll find interesting takes on instruments: mixing up pickups and hardware in some unexpected combinations, and at their heart, the tinker’s spirit that made Leo Fender such a visionary.

What It Is

This is a 2014 G&L LE-2 guitar, the second Limited Edition done for the Guitarsbyleo forum. These were super rare - they were only supposed to make 25, and I don’t know they actually made the whole allotment. They were designed by the forumites at GbL through a series of very rigorous polls over what looks like months, finally arriving at a shared spec that served as a jumping off point for ordering, which had to be done through one dealer, who managed the whole run.

This one has:

• Ash body Fallout shape
• Autumnburst finish
• Single ply black pickguard
• MFD humbucker & single-coil pickups
• DFS vibrato
• Roasted maple neck
• Reverse headstock
• Locking tuners
• Stainless steel frets

But there’s at least one in blue and another in gold, a few lefties… So each one of these is gonna be a little different, have its own thing going on.

I believe the original owner of this one had it shipped to Australia, and then they contacted me when I had an ad up looking for a G&L with a vibrato bridges to complement my hardtail Fallout.

How’s it sound?

Just to set the table here, I use this thing as basically a replacement for a Jazzmaster. It needs to cover sparkly cleans and nasty drive, piles of reverb and heavy vibrato use. What I was looking for was a punky shoegaze weirdo with a pawn-shoppy vibe.

And for that, it sounds great! Compared to the Fallout the MFD pickups are brighter, with the neck getting pretty close to a Jazzmaster piano-like sound. The bridge is a little more specialized, but definitely more usable than a Jazzmaster bridge pickup.

The MFD bridge is a little less powerful than a regular humbucker, a little clearer - I won’t say brighter, because the Fallout has a JB in the bridge, and that thing is BRIGHT. But the MFD has a less pronounced midrange. It doesn’t compress quite the same way when you dig in, either. So the guitar responds pretty differently through an amp, even if the ergonomics of it are basically Fallout/Mustang-esque.

That’s of course when it’s in series. These have a push-pull tone knob, too, so you can split the bridge pickup and get a more traditional single coil sound.

The thing about the MFD’s is that they’re a little… MORE than regular pickups. They’re a little louder, a little brighter, more bass, than a traditional single coil. In practice this means they reward patience and tweaking, but leaving them wide open all-knobs-on-10 is not usually the way to go.

So I’ll usually leave the volume and tone at like 8 and then roll up to 10 if I need that extra push. The humbucker’s a little more forgiving about this, but in single coil mode, you really need to be patient with the MFD’s. There’s lots of great stuff in there, though. These pickups seriously rule.

The neck is gorgeous, too - it’s roasted maple, G&L’s Standard Thin profile, rock solid and glassy smooth. Apparently G&L only ever did a few runs with the roasted finish, and these ones are dark, chocolately brown.

It’s listed as the Standard Thin ndck (#1a) but to be honest I don’t feel much of a difference from my Fallout, which is the Classic #1 neck. 12” radius, 1 5/8” nut width, pretty chunky profile. Probably my favorite neck ever.

Also want to call out the vibrato. As I said above, I’ve got this in the ‘Jazzmaster’ spot in my lineup, and the Dual Fulcrum vibrato is surprisingly sensitive, definitely enough to do the JM thing where you strum and gently move the bar at the same time.

But why?

Firstly, rude.

Secondly, though, this guitar came up right after G&L went out of business. When that happened, I had had my Fallout for a few years and was actually noodling around ordering a custom guitar from them. And when I started thinking about what I’d want - reverse headstock, H/S MFD pickups, vibrato - it started to look a lot like these LE-2’s. So when this one came up, and I knew I’d never get my custom, it felt like fate.

The one thing I can say about this is that it does feel like a shop run, like the factory didn’t quite know what to do with all these specs. The finish on the neck is pretty thick and for some reason, applied to the fretboard? So it feels a little more like a home-jobbie, which is part of its charm.

I also wish it had one of the crinkle black aluminium pickguards G&L used to do. Maybe I’ll be able to commission an anodized one from Herad for it.

Links

You lucky duck. After this thing was paid for and in shipping, I started looking around for any info I could find on it.

This person has an incredible guitar collection and some good info on the LE-2 run. Yowhatsshakin.com

Here is an archived copy of the original order page.

You can also find a lot of information searching the guitarsbyleo forum, which (for now) remains online. Maybe it’s time to start archiving some of those threads.