Description
The G&L Tribute S-500 carries forward a design Leo Fender himself refined in 1982, taking the classic bolt-on double-cutaway formula and pushing it further with his own Magnetic Field Design (MFD) single-coil pickups and Dual-Fulcrum vibrato system. It’s a guitar built by an inventor who wasn’t content to just repeat the past.
The MFD pickups are the heart of this instrument’s voice – bright and articulate on top, solid down low, and never muddy in the midrange. Back off the volume or the bass control (part of the S-500’s PTB, or Passive Treble and Bass, system) and the tone turns surprisingly glassy and detailed. That PTB circuit works across all three pickups, giving you real tonal range from a single knob layout. A push-pull switch on the treble pot unlocks two extra pickup combinations – neck plus bridge together, or all three at once – and the neck/bridge blend gets you remarkably close to an ASAT Special tone in a pinch.
Under the electronics sits a mahogany body, one of Leo’s preferred pairings with the MFD pickups thanks to the wood’s warming, high-porosity character. The Dual-Fulcrum vibrato – engineered by Leo Fender himself – lets you bend pitch up or down with a stability and smoothness that’s hard to find elsewhere, helped along by a substantial aluminum arm.
This Tribute Series build brings that original vision down to a price point working musicians can actually afford.
- Construction: bolt-on
- Scale: 25 1/2″
- Pickups: Leo Fender-designed G&L MFD single coils, made in Fullerton, California
- Body wood: Mahogany
- Neck wood: Hard-Rock Maple with Rosewood fingerboard
- Neck width at nut: 1 5/8″
- Neck radius: 12″
- Neck profile: medium C
- Frets: 22 medium jumbo, nickel
- Tuning keys: 18:1 ratio, sealed-back
- Bridge: Leo Fender-designed G&L Dual-Fulcrum vibrato
- Controls: 5-position pickup selector, volume, treble, bass (PTB system), push/pull expander switch on treble pot for neck+bridge or all-three pickup combos
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