My guitar collection - G&L
To celebrate the introduction of the “Leo Fender-designed and Paul-Gagon specced” Alnico single-coils, G&L released a 100-instrument run of the ASAT Classic Alnico Launch Edition and 50-instrument run of the ASAT Classic ‘S’ Alnico Launch Edition. These guitars do not have any markings associated with the Custom Creations Department (CCD) and, notwithstanding their limited availability, are neither a CCD Limited Edition nor CCD Special Build. A Western sugar pine body with belly contour has a custom Autumn Burst finish designed by long-time G&L employee and master painter Malcolm McLamore. The hard-rock maple #1 neck has a 12” East Indian rosewood fingerboard, Jescar Medium Jumbo 57110 frets, and 1⅝” nut width. This particular guitar, which was completed on 10/12/2012, underwent 3 modifications after it had left the factory, including changes to the pickup and wiring harness, discussed below, and the standard closed G&L branded tuning machines being swapped out for to Schaller Locking tuning machines. For more information on the unmodified version, consult this archived snapshot from 2016.
ASAT Classic Alnico Launch Edition (Fralins)
The story behind this guitar
Year:
Serial number:
Neck date:
Body date:
Strings:
As the sole exception in my collection, this guitar does not have the original G&L Alnico pickups but rather a set of Lindy Fralin ‘Stock Tele’ pickups. The wiring harness is (partially) modified to what is typically found on a Telecaster with a single RS Guitarworks paper-in-oil 47,000pF (.047µF) ‘RS Guitarcap’ soldered between the wiper lug on the 250kΩ Audio Taper tone pot and the housing, i.e. common ground, of the 250kΩ Audio Taper volume pot. These CTS pots likely have not been replaced given their ’1233’ date stamps, corresponding to the week of August 13-19, 2012. Since the original pups were part of the deal, as well as the original tuning machines, it can always be reversed to stock. However, these upgrades are worth quite a bit. Given what I paid D-Town Guitars in Doylestown, PA, it comes to about ¼ of the price of the guitar. And it has to be admitted that some of the special features on this guitar can be found in other instruments in my collection too: ‘Port & Chocolate’ is a prototype with a Pine body and the GbL LE-2 is the only other model which got the Autumn Burst finish. A beautiful looking instrument nevertheless. When measuring the DC-R values of these Fralin pups, the values are not too dissimilar to those of the stock G&L Alnico pups on the Alnico prototype. The neck has a higher value (7.17kΩ vs. 6.97kΩ) whereas the bridge pickup is lower by about as much (6.59kΩ vs. 6.80kΩ). They sound balanced, achieving the same goal: more definition with slightly less ice-pick. No need to revert (yet).
The story behind this guitar
2012
CLF065775 (one of 100)
none, marked ‘ASAT Cl’, ‘Alnico L’, ‘30628F’
none
