Description
The SB-1 traces back to 1982, when Leo Fender took the well-worn single-pickup passive bass concept and quietly rebuilt it from the inside out. Early versions ran a single-coil MFD pickup with no pickguard at all. By 1985 the design had settled into the split-coil humbucking configuration and pickguard you see here — a layout that ended up shaping the DNA of several G&L basses that followed.
This 2020 Fullerton Deluxe reissue keeps that familiar silhouette but tightens up the body sculpting for better balance on the strap. The neck is where it really wins you over: a 1 5/8" nut width paired with a C-shape profile, a 9 1/2" radius fingerboard, and 21 Jescar 57110 medium-jumbo nickel-silver frets. It’s built to disappear under your hands so you can focus on locking in with the drummer instead of fighting the instrument.
The heart of the tone is Leo’s own take on the split-coil pickup, built with his Magnetic Field Design approach — you get real weight and push in the low end without it turning muddy or losing note definition. Backing that up is the Saddle-Lock bridge, engineered to drive string vibration straight into the body’s end-grain, giving the whole instrument extra sustain and resonance that you can feel through the strap.
- 3-Tone Sunburst over Alder body, 3-ply tortoise pickguard, Caribbean rosewood fingerboard
- Andromeda over Alder body, 3-ply pearl pickguard, maple fingerboard
Built in Leo Fender’s original G&L facility on Fender Avenue in Fullerton, California — the same shop that’s been turning out G&L USA instruments since the company’s founding in 1980, and the birthplace of the bolt-on neck.
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