G&L Tribute S500 Electric Guitar Sonic Blue

Great guitar with so many tonal options! G&L guitars rival, if not beat, Fender guitars in my book. Better bang for the buck, too!

This guitar has been amazing for me, though it wasn't out of the box. Action was a bit high, and bridge pickup was not working correctly. Once repaired by G&L, this guitar played and sounded better than strats 4 and 5x the price. The only, and I mean only, reason to buy an MIM Fender is because you want Fender on the headstock. This guitar is great to play, has a much better tremolo, and better pickups and electronics.

Action was terrible, we would need a huge shim just to get the action to a reasonable level. Was really hoping this guitar would be great. So disappointed.

The Tribute S500 is out of this world! Great tone, The setup was near perfect. G&L is worth the look if your wanting to buy The top of the line Instrument.

I own 30+ guitars including 5 American Stratocasters. I also own a G&L ASAT Deluxe. I am totally impressed with the G&L so I bought the S-500 Tribute to use as a gigging guitar and save wear and tear on my 2009 American Strat. First, I love the look of this guitar. Finish is smooth and even, neck feels good, although a little chunkier than the C-shape I was expecting. Lots of sounds available with the push-pull tone knob. I haven't quite figured them all out. I adjusted the saddle height to my liking with the factory strings. Neck was straight, no adjustment required. I like the bridge to sit flat on the body. Went to add the 4th vibrato spring and the claw had only three tabs to attach springs. Grounding wire was soldered to the middle tab, so the middle spring could not be removed. I resoldered the wire to the body of the claw and moved the two outside springs, added the heavier 4th spring to the middle and adjusted the claw screws. The vibrato arm is tightened with an Allen wrench and seems to work itself loose with minimal usage. All in all, a pretty usable guitar in a professional environment for not a lot of money. I pride myself on making inexpensive guitars playable and this one didn't need much. It does not fit in a standard Strat/Tele case, so it lives in an old gig bag.

Like most people I had in mind that my best option to get a Strat body type guitar in this price range was the Fender MIM, i was completely wrong, I tried many fender's in my search including the classic players 50's,60's and I liked them a lot, but it was a completely different story when I decided to buy one MIM Strat at GC and the moment the guy took it out of the box to show it to me it had problems already (bridge to high, and a broken volume knob) I took it as a sign that maybe I should keep my research, that was when I saw this guitar (in another music store), I played it for around 10 min and I knew right away this was the one for me, the quality in electronics and build compared to Fender is a completely different world, plus the Pickups are made in USA, the neck feel incredible comfortably to play and the craftmanship in it is top notch, plus it already had the setup perfectly right out of the box, I think I can even compare this guitar to the American Fender Strats in the quality, feel and sound it has, I've had absolutely no problems with it since I got it, and is my everyday use guitar for recording or simply jamming, I love this guitar. Best Strat type body guitar in my opinion.