The very first model offered by G&L’s Custom Creations Department. The seed for this department was planted in February of 1998 when working on what in the end became the ASAT ‘Junior’. But by April of the same year, the artist program had gotten a sufficient number of requests for another ASAT III type guitar for which production had ceased by 1991, with an additional small number produced between 1995 and 1998. And apparently G&L could deliver faster on that idea than the ‘Junior’ likely because most tooling and materials were available. This model, also known as ASAT ‘Classic Three’, has a solid swamp ash body finished in Two-tone Sunburst, 3-ply pearl pickguard. The Bird’s Eye maple Bi-Cut neck has a 7½” radius, Dunlop (Medium) Jumbo 6100 frets, 1⅝” nut, and is finished in hand-rubbed gun-oil with polished gloss. In contrast to the (pre-BBE) ASAT III, the ‘Classic III’ uses 3 traditional sized ASAT Classic Magnetic Field Design (MFD) pickups but with the middle pickup being a reverse wound/reverse polarity neck pickup. This leaves the middle+neck combination hum canceling whereas bridge+middle still has some hum left, although less than when using single pups. This is not unexpected. On any ASAT Classic, the neck and bridge pickup are relative hum cancelling. So on this guitar, the middle pickup resembles the bridge pickup in terms of helicity and polarity. Note that this is different as for S-style guitars, and thus the ASAT III, with its complete set of Strat-like pups, where the middle pickup is reverse wound/reverse polarity with both neck and bridge pickup. Beyond the 5-position pickup selector, it further sports an ASAT Classic 6-saddle bridge, volume control, tone control, and Schaller closed tuning machines. This guitar was completed 8/19/1998 and is another Rarebird in the Registry of the Guitars by Leo website. More information can be found in this 2017 archived snapshot of the original page on the G&L website.