LeftyJ

To be fair, any store could have ordered those. Just take a look at their Facebook page, all the lovely custom shop instruments pictured there are ordered by (or through) dealers, that are named in the posts. It's true they had a number of "premier dealers" though, of which Sweetwater is one. And I always used to see UpFront Guitars mentioned a lot in posts with tasteful custom orders!

It's interesting this thread was revived just now, because I've been asking myself this question a lot for the last two weeks. My car is dying and needs replacing soon, and financially it comes at a bad time so I figured I'd need to let a few guitars or basses go but I have a hard time deciding which ones: I quite like the range of different tones in my arsenal, but I barely have an active band anymore and little desire to find one. So realistically, I could do with very few instruments. When I ask myself "Which one do I play the most?" the anwer is usually simply "The most recent one I bought". I have a few favourites that are very versatile but don't excel at one type of tone or character, and I have a few with a very defined character that do a certain tone very well that I happen to like, but it's usually the latest acquisition that gets played the most. Currently that's my Fender Mod Shop Jaguar. I know I have too many because a few of my guitars and basses mostly stand in my rack unused. When I do play those they always bring a smile to my face though: because of how they sound or play, or because of memories of former bands and gigs. My left-handedness adds to my hoarding instinct, because I have found that seller's remorse is a right pain in the butt and lefty guitars and basses are extra hard to replace because they can be so rare. It took me 10+ years to find two "identical" guitars to two I foolishly sold once. Would I risk that again?

Latest rumour (as quoted from an unnamed source on The Gear Page and the GLGuitars subreddit) is Fender did indeed buy the company, will keep the Tribute line alive and possibly even amp it up, but is going to shut down regular USA production. There will only be small batches of premium US "Collectors" models from time to time, at premium prices.

One of the first things they did was reinstate the Fender headstock on the Charvel guitars and the Phil Collen signature, which I think was a cool move because they had sent them the dreaded cease and desist letter over that earlier . And the distribution through Fender's network saved a LOAD of costs too. I know because I had just bought a brand new Japanese-made Jackson DK2 guitar for €1039 and had to watch Fender drop the prices down to just €650 while adding genuine Seymour Duncans and black hardware to the model and retaining the factory in Japan when mine had Duncan Designed pickups

Awesome! I love the yellowing on the bindings and fingerboard inlays. The toaster in the neck position is a great addition too (I think the high gain pickups were stock?).

Sire GB5 series, Godin A4/A5? Not UK-made obviously, but rather interesting and I think the Sire offers remarkable value for money.

That would probably be Hohner

Yes, Fender has a long history of acquiring brands and killing them off because they only wanted to gain certain expertise. Not as bad as Gibson, thank heavens, but their track record is not good. I truly hope G&L will live on and will have their legacy (no pun intended) preserved though. I think they're a wonderful brand with their own identity and great instruments.

Famous last words

That's because they're essentially a passive bass in the first place. The EQ is fully passive and cut-only. The only active bit in the L2K electronics is the boost circuit. They're a bit of an oddity in that sense. Other active basses usually have active tone controls that also boost certain frequencies, and which can be bypassed. Some add active pickups to that package which have a preamp built into the pickup itself that needs power at all times to function.

I've been considering selling my Status S2 Classic 4-string because I only ever play my 5-string ever since adding that to the herd, but I'm still undecided. It would not be an easy bass to replace if I ever come to regret it. And with the whole B-word stuff it would end up more expensive too. I need to buy another car and need to free up some funds, but it's hard to decide what I want to let go.

Looks spectacular! Great top, and a wonderful burst. I love the Burstbuckers, I have a Burstbucker #1 and #2 in my Tokai ES-60 and it sounds great. I also love 10's more on a 24.75" scale. My Tokai has 11's on it currently, but I have 10's on my Cort MGM-1. Still in doubt about what suits my Jaguar (24") best. I have 10's on it currently, would like to try 11's but would need to do some work on the nut and I'm really not eager to.

Your pic would do great in this thread. What a lovely pair!

*ahem* It's the one current G&L headstock I don't like the look of though. It's blobby, wonky, and the way the G tuner is positioned just feels like an afterthought. In the past there have been far worse offenses, like the headstocks (and everything else, really) on the Interceptor guitars and basses.

This thread and the posts over on Reddit inspired me to pick up my ASAT Special again last night after neglecting it for some time, and it was fun. It's such a lovely guitar, and the Jumbo MFD pickups are wonderful. Loud, defined, with more low end and brightness than any other single coil guitar I own, but they clean up beautifully when turning down the volume control. And thanks to the treble bleed the character stays intact when turning it down. Their electronics really are their forte. I sold an ASAT Special once and regretted it for years, I won't make that mistake twice!

For the minor sum of only 2500 GBP you can be the owner of that lush Ibanez MC924 in the for sale section

This is painfully accurate :') They like to present themselves as innovative, when all their innovations date back to the 1980s or earlier and they haven't kept on innovating since- unless you count scrapping Leo's fairly unique Bi-cut neck with single-action truss rod in 2006, and replacing it with a more conventional double-action truss rod routed below the fingerboard, as on most modern guitars, and switching to a whopping FOUR neck bolts instead of three, and six on some basses. I love G&L, one of my guitars dearest to me is an American ASAT Special (one of the earliest with 4-bolt neck, but still with the bi-cut neck) and I've owned a few others in the past (another ASAT Special, a Legacy Special and an SB-2, all 3-bolts) and all of them were wonderful. I would hate to see the brand disappear.

Seconded!

Apparently this has happened several times before and they got through it in the end. I hope they'll live through this too! Would hate to see them go. They're owned by BBE, who don't exactly appear to be very relevant anymore as a company. Their Sonic Maximizer pedals, rack units and plugins were succesful for a while and they made some cool preamps in the past, but when you visit their site now it still says "2016" at the bottom and the button that should lead to their Products page is very much dead. Not a good sign. Their website for their plugins is more up-to-date though (2025).

Status Graphite uses a very similar (if not the same) jack socket, and sells them in their online store at 3 GBP. Their site doesn't allow hotlinking because it uses frames, but when you go to their online shop section, under "Spare parts", click the "Jack sockets etc" button and scroll nearly all the way down.

Agreed, the price of a Nordymute is just silly for what it is. And still I bought two I've got one with 19mm spacing and one with 17mm spacing. I agree a triangular shape would have been massively better! I put mine on at an angle for that reason, but then it's not very firmly attached. They're a ton of fun though!

Interesting, I'm curious about this! Doesn't look very practical, in that it needs to be woven in, alternating over and under the strings so it's not something you place onto your bass on the fly like say a Nordymute. But it does look like a nice and simple concept that shouldn't be too expensive. Long & McQuade lists it for 7.99 Canadian dollars! And there's a guitar version too, that comes in a set of 3 (in 3 different widths for varying degrees of muting) for 7.99 as well. Not sure why the bass version costs the same as a set of 3 guitar mutes though.

Yep, the Custom Shop used to have three levels around 2000. New Old Stock, Closet Classic and Relic. They've added levels since (Journeyman and Heavy Relic).