G&L Tribute Fallout

by Adam Husk

A guitar does not have to carry an eye watering price tag to make an ear meltingly good sound.

The Fallout’s design is a descendant of G&L’s SC2, which first stepped onto stages around the world in the early 80’s. A full blown USA version of the Fallout is available, but this month G&L’s tribute range takes centre stage. Constructed in Indonesia, the Tribute range offers an incredibly robust instrument at an affordable price point.

With a slab of mahogany as its torso, the guitar’s guts twist and turn through its cavities, breathing life into what would otherwise be a simple piece of wood. These internals are a diverse set of affairs. The two pickups, that sit proudly waiting to absorb your licks and riffs, have been designed by one of Fenders lesser known heroes. His name is Paul Gagon. Like many others, after working for Fender he moved on to work for G&L, further innovating and improving on designs from his previous role. The aggressive nature of the humbucker in the bridge position could excite any angsty individual ready to obliterate a room full of ears with a barrage of power chords. Give the tone pot a yank and, with a satisfying click, you will sweep the bass from below the feet of your humbucking sound and enter a coil tapped state. A thinner sound with less output will now be seeping out of the guitar. This additional coil split circuitry can be a fruitful destination for tonal inspiration. The location of the three way pickup selector has been chosen with a clear level of forethought. This is a guitar that wants to be spanked a little harder than the others. The last thing you want when strumming hard, is to be sporadically knocking your guitar into every pickup position under the sun. It can result in a comic, anti climactic mess. The wrong type of carnage, that could be likened to a tonal food fight. Thankfully, this will not be a problem as it would take an outrageously erratic strummer to accidentally knock this switch. Each flick of the switch results in a satisfyingly solid click that cements your pickup choice firmly in place. Diving from the bridge position to the P90 in the neck transforms the guitars tonality entirely. There may be less output than your hot humbucker, but there is far more bottom end to be discovered here, which is perfect for exploring a more polite cleaner tone. The P90 complements the other sounds available from this instrument perfectly.

The offset body shape is accented by the large curved 3-ply scratch plate. The Tribute series Fallout is available in four different colour combinations, Alpine White with Black pickguard, Gloss Black with Tortoise pickguard, Sonic Blue with White pickguard, and Mint Green with White pickguard. The neck will feature either a Brazilian Cherry or Maple fingerboard with Jumbo frets impaled into it. A Medium C neck profile and a 25.5 inch scale length are comforting familiarities to anyone who plays a Fender style instrument. The guitars thin body makes for a nicely weighted and well balanced instrument, which is ideal for guitarists that want to jump around the stage playing Fat Lip (other pop punk songs are available). The build quality, as well as the hardware mounted to the guitar, are of a higher standard than what you may expect from such an affordable instrument. If you were to aggressively launch one of these at your drummer in a grunge fuelled spectacle, then your drummer will most likely come off worse than the guitar.

The diverse pickup options and colourful array of finishes makes this instrument an option for a
wide pool of players at a very affordable price point.

G&L Tribute Fallout

Published: 28/02/2020