The story behind this guitar

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Believe it not, this prototype was built by G&L for the one and only Keith Richards. Mr. Richards is of course famous for wielding 5-string Telecasters with illustrious names like ‘Micawber‘ and ‘Malcolm’, each of them with the neck single-coil pickup swapped out for a humbucker. After Pete Townsend so memorably inducted The Rolling Stones into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, Keith made headlines by thanking Leo Fender first in his acceptance speech since without Leo there would be no tools for a rocking guitar player. What most do not know is that Leo built him a guitar in return. It was hoped Keith would collect it himself by paying a visit to the factory but for reasons unknown this never happened. So this guitar, aptly nicknamed ‘Keef’, became part of the infamous “G&L garage sale”, a fire sale organized by soon to be retired Vice-President of Marketing and Sales Dale Hyatt just after Leo had passed away. Though not part of the initial inventory, Chris Neel, aka fezz parka on the Telecaster Discussion Page Reissue (TDPRI) forum and famous for the Fezz Parka mod, asked Dale whether any one-offs or prototypes were available. Dale showed him this guitar in a back room and it promptly changed owners. At that occasion the buyer also heard the story Leo rather would have used an F-100 or G-200 MFD humbucker in the neck position instead of the Schaller. But alas! Still, the neck humbucker technically makes this an ASAT Classic Bluesboy about a decade before that model was introduced by Tim Page! I bought ‘Keef’ from Jason Hieb (aka Katefan on GbL) who had bought it from Harry Spila on eBay in mid-2012. Hence, in his post, Chris must have misremembered the year he sold it and Harry basically just flipped the guitar and did not own it for long. Jason provided me with all the info, in part using his original correspondence with Chris. According to Jason, there have been some modifications to this guitar. Firstly, Chris had replaced the original tuners with Schaller closed tuning machines filling the holes for the location pin with wood putty. By digging out the holes, Jason put closed Sperzel tuning machines on it just as on the first picture he had seen of this guitar in Chris’ post on TDPRI. One of the pictures in Gabe Dellevigne’s review of this guitar in this GbL thread shows the difference in pin location between Schaller and Sperzel tuning machines. Also note Gabe’s reservations and critical remarks on certain issues. Secondly, the wiring harness originally was similar to the ASAT ’50, i.e. with a capacitor connecting the 2 potentiometers. However, that did not give the bridge pickup a lot of spunk and hence it was modified although not in a traditional way. Jason also mentioned the neck pickup was wired in as a single-coil which is supported by a measured DC-R value of 4.09kΩ, about half of the Schaller neck pickup on either Interceptor HH, Superhawk w/Kahler, or Superhawk w/LFV. So not a true Bluesboy after all? Yes, but it can be easily changed back. It is just that she sounds great now, with a beautiful balance between the 2 pickups especially in the middle position. It should be noted that while staying with Jason, ‘Keef’ already spent a lot of time with another rather famous pre-BBE ASAT Signature nicknamed ‘Char’ with her own fascinating story. Cue ‘Reunited’ by Peaches and Herb ...

The story behind this guitar

1990

G026677 (prototype)

FEB 21 1990

JAN 03 1990

D’Addario EXL110 Nickel Wound Regular Light (10-46)