My guitar collection - G&L

 
 

Another beautiful G&L ASAT Deluxe with a solid mahogany body, capped with a highly figured quilted maple top. The natural wood binding around the transparently finished top provides a nice framework to show off the color and grain. The pickups on this Deluxe are somewhat of a mystery and will be discussed below. The extraordinary Bird’s Eye maple (post-1994) #4 neck with 4-bolt attachment has a 12” rosewood fingerboard, Dunlop (Medium) Jumbo 6100 frets, and 1¹¹⁄₁₆” nut. 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. For more information on this production model, see this webpage:

http://glguitars.com/product/asat-deluxe/.

 

ASAT Deluxe (4-bolt)

The story behind this guitar

Year:

Serial number:

Neck date:


Body date:

Strings:


This is my first ASAT Deluxe. The model did not have a high priority but I intended to bite if one came along that complied with 4 conditions: reasonable priced, solid body, beautiful color and top, and old enough to have a Bi-Cut neck. That last factor, the age, is very relevant to me. An older Deluxe tends to have a Bird’s Eye maple neck. But since the transition to the non-compression truss rod, these necks are not as frequently used as before. And as can be judged from their abundance among my G&L’s, I like these necks! All that was needed was some patience to find the right specimen. And here she is, my first purchase of 2011 and just what the doctor ordered. With the rarer quilted top, instead of the more common flame, a beautiful Cherryburst finish and matching headstock, she is certainly a beauty!


By default, this model comes equipped with a Seymour Duncan humbuckers. But as shown in the pictures below, the pickups on this guitar lack both the “Seymour Duncan” logo on the top as well as the stamped logo and/or code sticker on the baseplate. Instead, the stamp on the back seems to indicate the pups were produced in October, 2005. That year also jibes with the date stamped on the CTS tone pot of its wiring harness, ‘0516’ or the 16th week of 2005, pointing to a major overhaul of this guitar in the last quarter of 2005, including “fretwork” on the neck. My current guess for the pickups? A G&L AW4370B, just like on the ASAT HB, with a DC-R value of 15.29kΩ/8.19kΩ (humbucker/split-coil) for the bridge pickup and a G&L AS4250B for the neck pickup with a DC-R value of 7.52kΩ/4.56kΩ. But whatever the origin of the pups, they sound pretty good! Even though humbuckers are supposed to add more warmth, this puppy still has plenty of top-end snarl. Starting out from my favorite amp settings for the single-coil ASATs, some EQ changes are needed to make it sound perfect. And the single tone control on the guitar will do the rest. The split function does wonders too, adding more chime to the tone. Surprisingly, the pickups are not overpowering but rather wonderfully balanced.

The story behind this guitar

2002/2005

CLF25570

none, marked ‘CHU. HD.’, ’Fretwork 2005’, ‘#4’, ‘NECKWORK 2002’,

‘ASAT Dlx’

APR 11 2002

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