G&L Guitars announces return of the Jerry Cantrell Rampage years after it stopped producing the classic grunge instrument
G&L Guitars is bringing back its Rampage, the S-style famously designed in collaboration with Alice in Chains’ guitarist Jerry Cantrell.
The guitar has been out of production for years, but G&L president and CEO David McLaren says in a new Instagram post that it’ll be coming back.
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He admits that the company may have been a tad hasty in taking it out of production, saying, “By 1991, the music scene was changing and so were we. The G&L Rampage, first released in 1985, was discontinued as we focused on Leo Fender’s more evolutionary models, like the ASAT Special and S500. It felt like the right thing to do, as we thought the era of the Rampage had passed. But it turned out that Leo had outplayed us all.”
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Cantrell can surely take the credit for much of the G&L Rampage’s enduring popularity. His 1985 Rampage, also known as the ‘Blue Dress’ guitar, is one of the most iconic guitars of the grunge era.
Cantrell, who’s also a solo artist, bought the guitar in 1985 from a music store he’d been working at in Dallas. The sticker that gives the guitar the ‘Blue Dress’ nickname is of a pinup girl, and was taken from an old pornographic magazine.
McLaren says of grunge, “It soon became obvious that grunge was more than a passing trend. It was a musical revolution, and the absence of the Rampage left a void in the guitar world. Sure, we did some limited editions later, and of course, there were the Jerry Cantrell signature models, but you kept asking for more and the time has finally come. So, get ready for the next era of the rampage.”
In April this year, Cantrell feared that his Rampage had been stolen. But, fortunately, Cantrell said days later that his beloved axe had merely been lost in transit, causing a collective sigh of relief from everybody in rock.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
