My guitar collection - G&L
After a hiatus of give and take a year and a half, G&L added the SC-3 back around late-summer 1987. The outline of the guitar looked very similar to the 2nd style SC-3: same more Strat-like shape of the soft maple body, a Dual-Fulcrum Vibrato (DFV) as your only option, 3 Skyhawk Magnetic Field Design (MFD) pickups mounted directly in the body, and black powder-coated control panel with a wiring harness consisting of volume, tone, 5-position pickup selector, and output jack. And the headstock still had the same shape, still without the G&L hook. But there were plenty of differences too. First, the body now had belly and arm contours for more comfort. Slab body no more! Second, look at the finish on this guitar: Hot Pink! Not just on the body but neck and headstock alike. G&L was experimenting with building instruments with matching necks until BBE Sound, Inc. started to take over at the end of 1991. Check out the guitar prototype page on their archived website for some more recent experiments. Third, whereas all ‘entry level’ models up to that point in time had had a maple fingerboard, the reintroduced SC-3 came exclusively with a 7½” radius ebony fingerboard on its hard-rock maple neck. One did have the choice between a bone nut with regular tuning machines or, as seen on this guitar, the combination of a Wilkinson roller nut, made popular by Jeff Back, with Sperzel Locking tuning machines. The latter option was only available for a couple of months and removed on the June 15, 1988 price list. And this would still not be the last change for this model currently so popular in player as well as collector circles. Greg Gagliano also has a Hot Pink SC-3 as well as a gorgeous “Bright Screaming Yellow” one in the G&L section of his ggjaguar.com website.
SC-3 (2nd style) w/ebony fingerboard
The story behind this guitar
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So this is what can happen. You think you are pretty much done and then you go over all this material you have collected. And all of a sudden the light goes on. Wait! In Leo’s days there was something like an SB-1 Deluxe? I do not see that listed as a model in the drop-down in the Registry on the Guitars by Leo website! Whoa! There was a gap in accepting orders for any and all ‘entry level’ models? That does not jibe at all with what I have read elsewhere! And so you learn. And so your interest is piqued. And so you buy another guitar. This particular one had been on the market for quite a while but the Gear! store on Reverb gave me a great opportunity to get it at a more than decent price given it came in a gig bag. These guitars are pretty long, so some G&L branded tolex hardshell cases actually do not fit! But I had a TKL hardshell case laying around which has become its new home. Another interesting observation was that the original socket had the wider bore for a ¼” diameter arm. I replaced it with a pre-1987 socket with ³⁄₁₆” bore and corresponding arm. Sonically, it is just “another” SC-3 with amazing pickups, the simplest set of controls you can wish for, and all sorts of tone at your fingertips.
The story behind this guitar
1987
G021782
OCT 4 1987, second stamp SEP 9 1985, marked ‘5’
AUG 26 1987, second stamp illegible.
