My guitar collection - G&L
One of the hardest guitars to find, these ASAT Customs were intended for the European market. But after somewhere between 25 to 30 guitars, G&L cancelled the project and at least some of them stayed Stateside. Greg Gagliano shows a beautiful specimen on his ggjaguar.com website which was one of 2 built for the 1996 Winter NAMM show. Another, with a gorgeous deep blue finish, is shown in the Guitars by Leo Gallery. With this model G&L started to offer binding as a standard option again after it previously only had been available on some very special instruments. In addition, with its mahogany body with creme colored top-bound flame maple top, the ASAT Custom is the precursor to the ASAT Deluxe, also introduced in 1996. Just change these 2 Jumbo Magnetic Field Design (MFD) pickups for 2 buckers and voila. In 2001, only 5 years later, the ASAT Special Deluxe became available although with maple top on American tilia (aka basswood) body. It would take until 2007 before mahogany was used again and an ASAT (Special) with similar esthetics became available. This model has the usual Saddle-Lock bridge, customized wiring harness (3-position pickup selector, volume, tone), here in all black whereas other ASAT Custom guitars have all chrome hardware. The slightly flame hard-rock maple Bi-Cut neck with 7½” maple fingerboard looks beautiful on this thing. Notwithstanding the black hardware on the body, it has G&L branded, chrome plated, Schaller closed tuning machines. Since so few were produced, it has gained the Rarebird status and a page can be found at:
http://www.guitarsbyleo.com/AUTOREG/Rarebirds/ASATCSTM.php3.
ASAT Custom w/Maple Fingerboard
The story behind this guitar
Year:
Serial number:
Neck date:
Body date:
Strings:
Yes, that S/N on the black powder-coated neck plate is correct. It is one in a batch of guitar neck plates stamped with an incorrect “B” prefix instead of “G”. Not wanting to waste materials, G&L still used them so you can find plenty of guitars with serial numbers between B052000 and B055000. This little quirk was an added reward after being able to find one on the first place. And it is not the only peculiarity. The neck is for an ASAT Classic, as indicated by both decal on the headstock as well as the pen scrawl on the heel, instead of for an ASAT which would have had the large block logo. Finally, the thermoplastic case is void of a logo too. All the “deviations” may be explained by it being one of the first built in the series, the NAMM guitars were built late-November/early-December, or by the neck having been swapped out, which in turn would explain why no black hardware was used for the tuning machines. Does not make one iota of a difference for its sound, strong and assertive as is the case for so many ASATs. And an esthetically more proper ASAT Custom was added to the collection 5 years after this one.
The story behind this guitar
1995
B052602
SEP 18 1995, marked ‘#2’, ‘ASAT cl’
DEC 10 1995 (year not very legible, might be 1996)
