Leo Fender's lab

[taturana]

great video... leo fender was one of the greatest inventors in my book....

[BeerHunter]

Leo was an engineer through and through. We interviewed his wife Phylis for about 15 minutes while we were there as well and she shared some interesting stories about Leo. (I will be posting this video as well)

My favorite story;
While Leo and Phylis were on their honeymoon Leo just had to meet with the captain to inform him on the various ways that his ship should be tuned in order to get better performance. He was always looking at ways to improve something/anything. When they got back from their honeymoon, Phylis had a camera full of beautiful beach scenes and other landscapes, Leo's camera was full of gears, pullies and chains.

[BeerHunter]

I thought I would give this a quick *bump* as I have added and additional 60 seconds of footage.

[BeerHunter]

I replaced the video link above with a higher quality version of this video.

Enjoy!

[Nu-tra]

That made me sad. It's so cool they left his room untouched with dust an all. I've been playing G&L's for years.

Thank you for sharing this.

[big country]

cool video.

thier is a Fender museum in fullerton thats pretty cool .

worth the five bucks to check out

[Drumsound]

Thanks for sharing that. I think its cool that Loe Fender worked until the end. He is one of my hearos. He got it right the first time so many times!

[BeerHunter]

It's truly amazing that someone that could not play a note could produce time and time again a top quality instrument. He would work on an idea and then ask one of his many associates to play it.

Being in that room felt like he still walked amongst us.

[allencollins]

Ive never seen or played a g&L
Im curious are they as bad as 'Fenders'
or did he make the necessary
impovements on the original flawed design?

[big country]

some say they are better , but like you , everyone has thier opinion

thank fully were alowed to express it

[Nu-tra]

They are all of Leo's best ideas and then some. The dual folcrum is best standard tremelo ever made. All hand built in the original fender plant. The quality of G&L's are way higher than any fender being manufactured today unless you go for a custom shop fender. I would still rather have a stock G&L then a custom fender. My guitars stay in tune and sound amazing! Their basses are amazing as well/

[big country]

beer hunter

did you go the fender museum while you were down here?

at the museum they have a book with all his patents

you can look as you please.

[BeerHunter]

No, actually I didn't go to the Fender museum. I was much too busy with the NAMM show and G&L.

We interviewed Phylis Fender however, and she talked about putting this stuff in a museum. At this point it looks like all his stuff is looking for a home.

After we returned from seeing the lab, we were asked if we had looked in the file cabinets. Apparently they are full of drawings and sketches etc. We thought we shouldn't touch any of it. D'oh, I wish we had looked now. I'm sure there would have been lots of cool stuff to see.

[kelldammit]

a guy in a local band has both a g&l and a fender strat. the g&l sounds more rich, creamy, smooth...where the strat through the same chain sounds pretty...ummm...snarky. it's almost like humbucker vs single coil, the difference between the two (though both are single coil instruments).
jerry cantrell swore by 'em, too.

kell

[BeerHunter]

In case you didn't catch this in the other thread, here is a tour of the G&L Factory.

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