I've been collecting G&Ls for over 10 years, and this one immediately struck me as unique, weird, and exciting—so I sent an offer. At the very least, I knew the neck was valuable, since G&L made fewer than 300 Cavaliers, and this one even had a rare white headstock. But there was something about the pickups, the mismatched natural body, and the overall vibe that really intrigued me...
The seller countered with a very fair number, and I quickly agreed. I zipped over to close the deal, and as soon as I had the guitar in hand, I knew it was special. The body and pickups were unlike anything I'd encountered, and it sounded absolutely incredible. While I was playing it, the seller was getting messages from other interested buyers—so I made sure to seal the deal fast.
Once I got it home, I took some photos and popped it open to figure out exactly what I had. I’d never seen G&L production pickups like these. They were clearly MFDs but in a unique split-coil configuration—a design Leo was fond of in his final Fender days and continued experimenting with during G&L’s early years. The pickup covers were hand-soldered, and the body had never been routed for any other pickup type or drilled for a pickguard. After a quick dive into images of G&L prototypes and photos from Leo’s Lab, the guitar definitely matched the aesthetic of early factory experiments. The seller even forwarded me an email from G&L: while the serial number didn’t match anything in their database, they confirmed it looked like a factory body and verified that the neck was legit.
Sunny day photoshoot + disassembly
The neck was made exactly 41 years to the day that I bought it!
Next, I posted detailed photos of the guitar in various G&L Facebook groups and on the official G&L Guitars By Leo forum, hoping to dig up more info and maybe connect with someone who had seen something like it before. After some guidance from the admin, I was put in touch with a few of the foremost experts on Leo’s post-Fender designs—and that’s when the floodgates really opened. The more I shared, the more connections started to emerge.
Check out the photos below—these are prototype schematics taken in Leo’s office circa 2009. Look familiar?
John McClaren (co-owner of G&L) chimed in via the admin on the forum: "That’s it! I forgot the Wild Horse name on it. The pickups are basically split-coil jumbo MFDs, sort of continuing on the original concept split-coils for the first Music Man guitar which looked nothing like the production Stingray guitar.”
Gabe Dellevigne- one of the foremost G&L historians- was extremely gracious with his time and gave me some amazing details and additional schematic shots from the factory:
I am familiar with the “Wild Horse” prototype that you now own. The first time I had seen it was in a picture that Dale Hyatt had shown me at his home decades ago. In one hand he had a G&L Wild Horse and in the other hand he had an original CLF/Music Man prototypical guitar that followed the exact same pickup concept though this predates the MFD design. It used large pole alnico slugs instead which was what Leo was doing in the 1970’s. If you are not aware, Dale Hyatt was a close friend of Leo’s besides being an employee and business partner first working for Leo in 1946…actually a full year prior to George Fullerton working for Leo. He and George were like surrogate sons to Leo as he never had children.
I remember seeing a Wild Horse prototype in the Dale picture. The wild horse in the Dale Hyatt picture did not have a Cavalier neck on it but rather an early S-500 neck (This I clearly remember) but with no decal on the headstock but the headstock shape and size I remember, and it was a maple board S-500 neck. It might have been the same body and thus your body or it might have been another. G&L did make multiple test mules of various designs for the test players to try out. They had several of them by that point in time.
Technically, the pickup design (a humbucking pair of staggered 3-Pole single coil pickups wired together) is really nothing more than his P-Bass pickup design from many years prior and the first time he put this design concept to work for a guitar application was in the 1960’s Fender Electric XII. Leo continued to experiment with the concept all the way until his final version Dale called the “Z-Coil” which ended up in the Comanche V and VI guitars of the late 80’s to early 1990’s and, of course, BBE brought it back to life with their version of the Comanche years after purchasing G&L.
Dale, Lloyd and George told me the genesis of the Wild Horse revolved around a variety of split coil humbucking pickup designs Leo had been working on. It was nothing more than the MFD version of the prior CLF Music Man design. There were multiple versions, and this just wasn’t for guitar but there were bass versions as well he was developing and testing out. Since he hadn’t tooled up the special covers for them, he took existing covers, cut them on the bandsaw, glued them together and then punched new holes for the pole pieces. This was a common practice used by Leo during the 1980’s.
Looking at your pictures I know for positive that you have one of the prototypes in your possession. The neck and neck plate were affixed to it at a later date but that body and everything mounted to it is what it started life with. For positive, I have zero doubts of the authenticity of that body, pickups, and control plate. It is very typical with its mineral streaked 2-piece soft maple body wearing only sanding sealer…very typical of many prototypes of that era of G&L.
Thanks for reading! This has been one of the better guitar safari's of my career
