FACTOIDS & TRIVIA

The F-150 dates to drawings from April 1981 and August 1981. Note the body routing and pickguard are identical to the drawing. The body is the same as the F-100's and is fitted with three early-style Magnetic Field Design (MFD) pickups designed by Leo Fender in 1979 (and granted a U.S. patent in 1980). These are high-output and have strong response in the upper frequency range. The pickups have rectangular bobbins and a ferrous metal keep plate that are similar to the metal-claw surrounds Fender had used in the 1960s on the Jaguar and Bass VI pickups. These provide some shielding from electromagnetic interference as well as to help direct magnetic flux to the pole pieces. Several sets of these were made, but never put into production. They eventually became the basis for the S-500 single-coil MFDs with rectangular bobbins.

A test mule F-150 was assembled using a maple F-100 body blank. Its controls were mounted to the two-ply pickguard with a Stratocaster-type circuit that would be changed to G&L's ubiquitous PTB circuit on the S-500. The specs, derived from an original Fullerton drawing, called for a 24-fret, 25 1/2″-scale neck, but the test mule was fitted with a standard F-100 Series II neck with ebony fingerboard. Such a neck would require not only a different neck blank, but a different neck pocket to retain proper bridge-to-neck relationship. It’s not known if a proper 24-fret neck and matching body was ever produced. Other than this test mule, no other F-150 guitars were made.

 Body: Solid; 2-piece maple

 Finish: Sunburst, nitrocellulose lacquer

 Neck: 1-piece maple, bolt-on

 Fingerboard: Ebony; pearloid dot markers

 Number of Frets: 22

 Pickguard: None

 Bridge: G&L Dual Fulcrum Vibrato, chrome

 Nut: Plastic

 Tuners: Schaller, enclosed, nickel

 Pickups: Two, G&L Magnetic Field Design humbucking with adjustable pole pieces

 Controls: Volume, treble, bass, 3-way pickup selector, pickup coil splitter, phase switch

 Scale Length: 25 1/2 inches

 Neck Width at Nut: 1 5/8 inches

 Body Width at Lower Bout: 13 inches

 Body Depth: 1 5/8 inches

 Weight: 8.5 lb