Rooted in the Music Man Sabre, the F-100 was the very first electric guitar released by G&L in 1980. Likely the name is a play on the military designation for the North American Super Sabre, one of the models in the famous Century Series of high-performance jet planes designed in the 1950s. For the G&L F-100, one had a choice between Series I (12” fingerboard) or Series II (7½” fingerboard), mahogany or ash body, ebony, rosewood, or maple board, and optional preamp. And humbuckers. But not just any humbuckers, rather the first application of Leo’s patented Magnetic Field Design (MFD) pups. Notwithstanding how great these guitars were, there always was a tremendous pressure from the music community for G&L to build models that were more “Leo like”, i.e. single-coil Tele- and Strat-shaped guitars. Although available through special order until 1991, production of the F-100 practically stopped in 1983. Here we have an example of a very early F-100 Series I with swamp ash body in Natural Gloss finish, MFD humbuckers (with slot head pole pieces), and early version of the Locktight (Saddle-Lock) bridge. A peculiarity of these early F-100 Locktight/Saddle-Lock bridges is that they are of a string through body design. The passive F-100 wiring harness and its many controls provides a wide range of sonic options. This Series I has a hard-rock maple neck with 12” ebony fingerboard, (replacement?) Graph-Tech nut, and old-style “diagonal” Schaller open tuning machines. A skunk stripe closes the truss rod rout. The estimated number of pre-BBE F-100s produced hovers around 3500, so no Rarebird status for this model. But check out Greg Gagliano’s F-100 Series I on his ggjaguar.com website. Between September 2009 and December 2017, the F-100 was a production model, but has been discontinued again. Information on the BBE-era model can be found via this archived snapshot from 2017 or on Greg’s page for his F-100 “reissue”.