My guitar collection - G&L
Introduced in 1996, the ASAT Deluxe is a hard rockin’ machine. Only about a 100 of them were produced with a 3-bolt neck attachment before G&L moved to a 4-bolt configuration. The model shares some elements with a Gibson Les Paul Standard: a solid mahogany body, capped with a gorgeous (non-carved) flame maple top, here in Honeyburst finish, pearloid binding around the top, and humbuckers. In the neck, one finds a Seymour Duncan (SD) ’59 (SH-1N) and an SD JB Trembucker (TB-4) in the bridge. These were the default pickups used until 2008 but over time other sets were used, either as default and/or as an option, as can be read here. The hard-rock maple neck has a 12” rosewood fingerboard, Dunlop (Medium) Jumbo 6100 frets, and 1⅝” nut width. It is further equipped with a Saddle-Lock bridge, rear-loaded 3-position pickup selector, volume control, tone control, and mini-toggle switch to split the humbuckers, and chromed, G&L branded Schaller closed tuning machines. Still in production, one can find the current specs here:
ASAT Deluxe (3-bolt)
The story behind this guitar
Year:
Serial number:
Neck date:
Body date:
Strings:
Notwithstanding the omission of a Deluxe in Greg Gagliano’s outstanding collection, I am of the opinion it is an integral part of the ASAT family. It took quite a while before my first ASAT Deluxe was acquired, as told on its page, but I was always on the look-out for the rare 3-bolt ASAT Deluxe with the standard SD pickups. As the first guitar of 2018, this wonderful specimen was bought from Alan Hyatt (no relation to Dale Hyatt) and it comes with a good story. Apparently this ASAT Deluxe once belonged to Rob Rizzuto, currently the Vice-President of Sales at BBE Sound, Inc.. In 1999, when Rob was still national sales manager at G&L, he was in need of a good DAT recorder. Alan happened to own a high-quality one and the trade was made. The guitar has never been gigged and basically sat in its case for all that time. Although the pocket has no visible date stamp, and the day of month is hard to discern on the neck heel, the original hang tag has the ’10-11[-1996]’ completion date on it. In contrast to the Deluxe on the next page, no adjustments to the amp were needed; the SD pups sound good right out of the box. One interesting observation: whereas the DC-R value for the bridge pickup in split-coil setting typically is about ½ of the full value for all other ASAT Deluxes, here it is more like ¼, i.e. 4.12kΩ out of the full 15.67kΩ, an expected result if each coil has a value R, and hence 2R when in series and ½R when in parallel. But when played, you do not notice that. The sound with split-coils is pretty good. But the full throttle, thick bucker sound is what I like most.
The story behind this guitar
1996
G049873
OCT ?? 1996, marked ‘ASAT #1’, ‘DELUX’, ‘D’
none, marked ‘E’
