My bass collection - G&L

 
 

The G&L ASAT Bass Commemorative Edition has a swamp ash body with belly contour and Cherryburst finish. It has a hard-rock maple neck with 7½” radius ebony fingerboard and narrow 1½” nut width, as is still standard on the ASAT Bass. Although without binding, on the upper bout the same decal is used as on the guitar showing Leo’s signature, his year of birth and death (‘1909-1991’), and a rose with gold petals. All hardware is gold plated, i.e. bridge, controls, switches, control cavity cover on the back, pole pieces of the Magnetic Field Design (MFD) humbuckers, bass tuning machines, and Maxima strings. The ASAT Bass has the same L-2000/L-2500 wiring harness with its Tri-Tone active/passive capabilities, fully discussed here. The gold-plated 3-bolt neck plate is engraved with “Commemorative Edition” and “#10 of 150”. No G&L webpage exists for this model. Even Greg Gagliano’s website is without a Commemorative Bass! So the only available resource is the Registry on the Guitars By Leo (GbL) website where you will find the ASAT Bass Commemorative Edition listed amongst the Rarebirds.

 

ASAT BASS Commemorative EDITION w/ebony Fingerboard

The story behind this bass

Year:

Serial number:

Neck date:

Body date:

Strings:


One should count their blessings when you have good friends. This is my second ASAT Bass Commemorative Edition, added to the collection many years after #13 with its maple fingerboard. Around 2013, I had an active conversation with GbL member labadoor, the second owner of this bass. And #10 was only 1 of 2 listed in the GbL Registry with an ebony board, the other being #21 which can be seen in the picture at the top of the Rarebird page for this exclusive model. This bass had been up on eBay, with labadoor asking a fair amount of money for it. And then it was like he vanished and I was never able to reignite the conversation. Years later, on an early-June day in 2017, I received an email from Mark Daigle, aka The Cajun Boy on GbL. He had visited a pawn shop on the way home, seen this bass, and done some research online finding this website indicating I was looking for just such an instrument. Voilà! Even though it did not come with the COA, final arrangements were made and the instrument came this way. Again a gorgeous looking instrument with a body dating back to October 1990, before Leo passed away! After the battery was replaced, all functionality is there and the bass sounds great. Nice!

The story behind this guitar

1993

10 (#10 of 150, but likely 25 or less produced)

APR 20 1993, marked ‘Ebony’, ‘MENDOLA ONLY’, ‘ASAT Comm’

OCT 22 1990, marked ‘CHI’, ‘Comm’, ‘3 2/8 lb’

Optima/Maxima Gold Strings Electric Bass Roundwound 2299 (45-100)