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Strat lovers listen up! If you don't know about the G&L company and the Comanche guitar they make, you need to. I won't go into the total history of G&L suffice to say that Leo Fender (yes, THE Leo Fender, guru of modern electric guitar and the founder of Fender Musical Instruments) started G&L in 1980 and basically picked up where he left off and innovated on his previous designs (stratocasters, telecaster, etc.).

The Comanche is the ultimate 'strat' and even Leo felt that it represented his crowning achievement. Same contoured body and fast neck but from there it goes uphill. Three Z coil pickups, master volume, master tone, master bass roll off (very cool feature), two more pickup combinations, no hum, locking tuners and a tremolo that really works well without a locking nut.

Z coils - a little odd looking but great sounding. They are actually cleverly designed humbuckers that are two coils but each string is only under one coil to retain the single coil 'snap'. How it works is, one coil covers the low three strings, the other the high three. Then they're wired in humbucking - no 60 cycle hum, a beefier output and single coil twang without being thin.

A control section that makes sense. Ok, who actually uses the tone control on the middle pickup? Leo slapped that on in 1954 and Fender never changed it for the most part. The Comanche has a master volume, a master tone (finally some tone control for the bridge) and a bass roll off. G&L calls it a PTB (passive treble bass) system. The bass roll off lets you thin out the tone (remember Z coils are beefier) to get a more vintage tone, snappy and clean or turn it all the way down for a chimey, funk friendly bite. Near endless combinations without a battery! The tone control is sweetly tuned too. You can actually find several points where it is usable, not just off and on. There is also an additional mini toggle that gives you an additional two settings, bridge and neck (Teleish) and all three (surprisingly different) besides the standard 5 positions.

Add to it the high quality detail work that G&L is known for, locking tuners, a beautifully designed trem that works smoothly and you have a Strat killer. I call G&L 'no excuses' guitars - everything they use, from the screws to the wood to the finish is all high quality. The kicker is that a standard G&L Comanche, made in the USA, is far less than a custom shop piece but every bit as good. The only real down point is that more people don't know about them. But they should! If you are a tone junkie, dig a strat but want something even more versatile, the Comanche is your new guitar!

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