Custom Shop ASAT HG-2R Summer 2021 update!

Part I

Those of you who know me have been aware of this little pipe dream for years. Slowly but surely,
it is becoming more and more of a reality.

For those of you who don't know the backstory, a quick recap.

-in 2006, I ordered the guitar in my avatar. It's a now-defunct "ASAT special deluxe" in the now defunct baby blue. Sound aside, I fell in love with the oddly shaped soapbar pups with the quirky standoff pole pieces. I loved the clean, modern look of the rear mounter controls.

-in about 2009, I discovered the G&L Cavalier. I was so thrilled to know there were humbucker versions of these quirky soapbars, and even more thrilled they were offset/slanted. I don't know why, but I became obsessed with the look of those pickups. My dream became clear. I wanted a solid blue triple bound Rear mount ASAT with those slanty humbuckers with white covers. That vision has stayed in my head for over a decade.

-my 2006 ASAT would act as a prototype of sorts. I found someone who sold me a Cavalier bridge pup. My luthier installed it, and I(stupidly) tried to spray paint it white. Below is the "mark I."



-Right off the bat, I noticed a couple things. For one, the ASAT special's cavity is angled steeper than the cav. Cavalier routes are approx -11 degrees. The ASAT special is closer to -30. Also, the ASAT special bridge pup is elongated to compensate for the tilt and string spacing, so there were extra little holes on either side. Most importantly, I started noticing the main problem and the reason I don't think Cavs are around/coming back any time soon. That pickup doesn't sound very good. More on this later.

-my avatar is "mark II." I learned the only person in the world who offers a commercial product that's a humbucker that fits in an ASAT special cavity is a boutique builder called Rio Grande pickups. The pickup is the "tallboy" for ASAT. He solved many of the inherent problems with the cavalier pup, mostly by using traditional narrow slugs and making the coil very tall, hence the name. The pickup sounds really good, but has always been a temporary fix for my ultimate dream of having a slanty rear mounted ASAT HH. The project languished like this for years.

-I decided to resurrect the project, and got to work on reverse-engineering new pickups that look indistinguishable from cavalier pups, but solve the design problems of the HG platform. MFD pickups in general are an interesting, but crude technology. They are meant to be subtractive. pups are usually either high DCR/high inductance, or low DCR/low inductance. the former are loud and hot with a lot of bass and mids but attenuated highs. the philosophy here is that high frequency content is ADDED in gain staging. As you add saturation and drive, the upper harmonics are excited, giving you a balance and presence in the later gain stages. Cleaner pickups that shimmer and spank are the latter low-inductance, low DCR. Quieter and weaker but with much of the high frequency content intact so the pickup shimmers like glass while wide open.
MFDs are weird in that they're high-inductance, low DCR. powerful magnets make the pickup loud and hot, but the low winds keep the high frequencies. If you notice your ASAT special or L-series bass clip your input signal a lot, this would be why. Usually, pickups that are that trebly aren't that hot/loud. But there's the thing! Leo's PBD system was designed alongside the MFDs. It's essentially a SUBTRACTIVE system! It gives you more bass and treble than you'll need in most cases, and you sculpt to taste subtractively. This was right before active preamps really rose to prominence. It was kind of an abandoned taxonomic clade of modern electric guitar technology. this is why ASAT specials, L-series basses, etc, sound best when you roll a little treble and bass off. They are usually unusably spiky and clippy while wide open.
Anyway, the Cavalier pups face several problems. They have with them the high inductance/low DCR of all MFDs, but with the added strain of needing two coils to fit in the same dimensions as an ASAT special neck pup. The first solution was coil height. The pups are about 2/3 taller than ASAT specials.


However, this still left not nearly enough room for wire. The thick standoff pole pieces only allowed for a tall coil with very little wire, as opposed to the ASAT special's short, wide bobbin. Thick pole piece, but plenty of room for wire(even though it uses a relatively low wind as well.

Combine this with two giant ceramic magnets, and the result is a loud, quiet pickup...with a tone like an ice pick. I tried to like them and use them, but the cavalier bridge pickup has a transient response in the highs that just HURT. They cut your head off. If you roll the treble off, they immediately sound dead and flat. The only way to make them sound musical is with careful EQ sculpting with a graphic EQ and some careful gain staging. With some surgery and love, they can work, but they're unwieldy and do not possess a naturally music voice.

Continued in part II....

Part II

I began to ponder how I could accomplish my goal of getting a more modern, usable tone out of something that could be indistinguishable from Cavalier pups.
In the looks department, I sent old Cavalier pickup covers to get professionally scanned and 3d printed.





I didn't get the glossy injection mold look, which is ideal, but this is definitely a solid result. I'm currently waiting for new prints in a higher grade resin for the final result.

Next, the design of the pickup itself. I came up with a wacky idea for a pole piece design. The goal was, make it look exactly like MFD standoffs and grub screws on the outside, and retain the adjustability of the pole piece, but allow for more area inside the pickup itself, as well as allow for more coil height. I could not make the total pickup taller, because then it would route too deeply and interfere with the vibrato cavity. The cavalier is pushing it as it is. Also, there is a downside to the magnetic field going up through the coil on a humbucker. On an ASAT special it's cool because you just have the one field, and you can get the broad, fat field that Leo intended. On a humbucker, especially a small one, the two opposing fields pushing up through the coils can cause phasing/polarity issues. So, I factored that into the design as well, and opted for a thru-width magnet, like a traditional humbucker magnet.

here is my original design.



I ordered several custom sized magnets. Since none exist in the dimensions I need, I had to get them custom cut/custom ordered which was...not cheap. But I persevered and got a set of Ceramic 8, SimCo, and the weakest of the neodymium. They are all thinner than typical magnets, and the idea was, the added gauss of the more powerful magnets would compensate for the decreased mass, leaving more room for coil.

Next, the pole piece. I literally hired a machine shop to make me this bizarre part. I sent them a sample standoff and set screw from G&L, and sent them my drawings and goals, and they punched up this cad drawing. Here is a document I made showing them the revision i needed. The first version still had too much standoff, and didn't transition into the "golf tee" quickly enough.



After one revision, they nailed it.



Success! While you can't take the pole piece grub screw out too far, you have a few millimeters of play, which, combined with adjusting pickup height itself, is plenty of adjustability.

The final step(for the pickups anyway) was finding a builder. The builder needed to a) make awesome pickups of course, b) have the proper tools to make precise bobbins with all these parts, and c) be able to take the project on and help me iterate without the price going into the stratosphere.

The first lead I got was ESI guitars. We exchanged a long email thread. He was extremely informative and has himself figured out ways to re-engineer the problems in these pickups. He's also a bit...eccentric and opinionated. But I'm sure those of you reading this probably get similar vibes from me, so I kind of respect that . However, it wasn't quite a fit, mostly due to a difference of vision and lead times, so I continued my search.

Most builders turned me away out of hand. It was too much work and they didn't have the means/desire to fabricate the bobbins.

But I stuck to it, and finally found Revel Pickups. Besides taking the job in the first place, I knew he was the one based on how much he warned me about the numerous ways my design/idea can go wrong. This told me he really knows what he's doing. The downside?... I was on the waiting list for OVER a year!

But good things come to those who wait... continued in part III

Part III

Jessie from Revel Pickups is UNBELIEVABLY helpful, extremely good at what he does, thorough, and fair. He worked with me for four days straight, iterating on prototypes, and helping me get to a voicing I was looking for. I wanted to go from the strange very loud but trebly series DCR of 4.5 with the Cav pups, to a more traditional semi-hot mini humbucker, something like the St. Vincent. What we arrived at was an 8.7 K 43 AWG bridge pup with the ceramic, and a 6.7K 42 AWG neck with ceramic. when I say they sound dynamite, I really cannot overstate it. I have audio samples, but I'm going to wait until the guitar is done to show how it sounds. That will be many months from now. Believe me when I say, it was worth every penny.






With the pickups FINALLY done, now all that's left to do before sending all this to G&L's custom shop is a final little touch. I made a "model logo" from a sample generously sent to me by G&L. the early 80s, in my opinion, was when the graphic design for the model logos were at their best. The L series basses and CLF research stuff still use it. I also like small technical text on headstocks, like the late 60s strats that say "with synchronized tremolo" in small text. I dunno. something about it appeals to me.

My idea was to make a Model Logo that is indistinguishable from something that would have been made in the early 80s. I did a reverse lookup of the font they used, which apparently is a popular designer font from the 1960s called microgramma. I bought the font and then did all the text underneath by hand using photoshop, after using calipers to measure the sample and match the size to the pixel.



The name, ASAT HG-2R, is what I believe this would have been called were it made back then. The "HG-2" was a simple guitar with two non-slanted MFD humbuckers. The HG-2R means "humbucker guitar, 2, righthanded."

In this sample there is also a preview of what's to come, a sister bass with a similar logo. But I won't be able to afford that for quite some time.

The final product will basically be an ASAT HH RMC with these one of a kind pickups, a "paddle headstock," and the custom model logo. Here is a rough drawing of the thing that's been in my head for over a decade.



With any luck, it'll be finished in about six months.

Thank you everyone for following me on this journey. I can't wait to show you all the final result. I have now been working on this project for years. I have spent a small fortune on all these custom parts, but i have learned a lot, and I now have made this dream guitar a real thing, with the help of some amazing talented professionals. Stay tuned!

fascinating stuff, neutralomen, and impressive persistence and innovation on your part!
can't wait to see/hear of the final product!

fascinating stuff, neutralomen, and impressive persistence and innovation on your part!
can't wait to see/hear of the final product!

Thank you so much! lol I figured if anyone in the world would give a rat's behind about this, it would be this community!

Love the progress, been wanting to see updates! Post more pics and keep all informed.

When are you taking orders!

Gotta say... you're a bit nuts, in the best way . The concept, work, and perseverance are really awesome. Looking forward to seeing the result. I'm sure the McLarens are as well.

Gotta say... you're a bit nuts, in the best way . The concept, work, and perseverance are really awesome. Looking forward to seeing the result. I'm sure the McLarens are as well.

BELIEVE me, I'm well aware lol

Dang, I'm impressed!! You really put a great deal of thought, time, and money into this vision. I eagerly await the final product, sound samples, etc.!!

I agree with you that the Cavalier pickups are too spiky and can tear one's head off. As noted in the Fender book, Leo put his favorite version of this pickup in production without telling anyone, even though a less strident version garnered wider approval from test players.

I'm going to sell my Cavalier this summer. I'm glad I tried it, and I would like to hear one with a warmer mahogany body, if the chance ever arises. But I have other guitars that occupy the top slots for me.

Dang, I'm impressed!! You really put a great deal of thought, time, and money into this vision. I eagerly await the final product, sound samples, etc.!!

I agree with you that the Cavalier pickups are too spiky and can tear one's head off. As noted in the Fender book, Leo put his favorite version of this pickup in production without telling anyone, even though a less strident version garnered wider approval from test players.

I'm going to sell my Cavalier this summer. I'm glad I tried it, and I would like to hear one with a warmer mahogany body, if the chance ever arises. But I have other guitars that occupy the top slots for me.

Thanks for your support!

Take it from me, the body wood of a solid body electric has very little bearing on the tone. The pickup is a little microphone, and the strings are singing into the poles. Not much opportunity for the wood to get into the signal like that. You definitely want enough mass for the strings to act against, but alder, mahogany, basswood, etc, they're all more than hard and dense enough materials.

Besides, my ASAT special deluxe is a mahogany body(and it weighs a ton), and I swapped out my cav pup because it was every bit as harsh as when it's in a cav. The problem is the pickup, not the body wood. trust me.

That said, if this project goes well, Revel may start making these as special orders, but no guarantees there. This is all uncharted territory. I'd also have to get covers made without all the PAT PEND and model text on them. That was just for my own personal guitar so it has that "authentic" flair. I don't think anyone would put covers like that into production if they're not G&L. But I digress. I REALLY wish G&L would make new molds and re-release those covers!

You might want to leave the Pat. Pend. makings on the covers and look into applying for your own patent. You may have done enough of your own novel engineering to make your pickup design patentable. Perhaps if G&L likes the custom guitar you are building, I could see them make an Espada or Skyhawk bodied "Cavalier II". Who knows.

Wow! So impressive. The work has paid off and soon will be a reality. I have been following your desires on this forum for years. I remember when you would have been satisfied with just solid white covers for the Cavalier pups. You have taken that to a whole new vision that I believe will reap some nice results. Good work sir, mad respect!

Tom

Hey, Happy Independence Day!
Been a while. What's the update on this build. Different post for it, gimmy the link.
Hope all is well,
Tom