Hello everybody!

[JoeDukeJSD]

Hi all, I am quite a G&L novice (frankly I don’t know a ton about equipment at all) and I’d love to learn more about the Legacy CAT I bought about a year ago at Alley Cat in State College, PA.
Mark, the owner of the store told me that he designed this particular model and Rob Rizzuto (VP of G&L at the time) did a limited run of them for him.
Bridge and neck pickups are MFD and middle is an S500.
I’m under the impression that mine is one of less than 22 of these designs on a strat body (there were about 40 made on tele bodies). He did a push/pull thing with the knob so neck and bridge pickups can activate together.

Given this information, I was wondering if anyone could tell me 2 things:
1. What year was my guitar built?
2. How do MFD and S500 pickups wear over time/should I be thinking about swapping them for new ones?

Thanks in advance for any help and information!
Joe

Serial number (?) on the headstock is CLF61213

[Grumpy Bill]

I can only answer your 2nd question.
Pickups don't "wear"...unless they come in contact with a strong reverse (or alternating) magnetic field, which could partially demagnetize them.

[Craig]

Hi all, I am quite a G&L novice (frankly I don’t know a ton about equipment at all) and I’d love to learn more about the Legacy CAT I bought about a year ago at Alley Cat in State College, PA.
Mark, the owner of the store told me that he designed this particular model and Rob Rizzuto (VP of G&L at the time) did a limited run of them for him.
Bridge and neck pickups are MFD and middle is an S500.
I’m under the impression that mine is one of less than 22 of these designs on a strat body (there were about 40 made on tele bodies). He did a push/pull thing with the knob so neck and bridge pickups can activate together.

Given this information, I was wondering if anyone could tell me 2 things:
1. What year was my guitar built?
2. How do MFD and S500 pickups wear over time/should I be thinking about swapping them for new ones?

Thanks in advance for any help and information!
Joe

Serial number (?) on the headstock is CLF61213

Welcome to our site!

I sent your serial number to one of my contacts at the G&L factory to have him look up the factory log details on this guitar.
I believe there was only one run for the LegacyCat Special Build and that was done in 2014.

Regarding G&L pickups:

They are all wax-potted [Leo Fender patent D4885970 and over time the wax can dry up which might cause the pickup to go microphonic,
so you might need to have the pickup re-potted. There are other reasons a pickup could go microphonic,
so see this post: My MFD went massively microphonic! Suggestions?.

More info on the Special Build instruments for Alley Cat, see these posts:
Seen At My Local G&L Dealer
ASAT Cat and Legacy Cat Sample Sounds Video
Re: New ASAT Cats?

Hope this helps and stay tuned for build of your guitar.

Please do post some photos of your LegacyCat ... it does not exist without photos!!!

[Craig]

I just got an email from Memo on your guitar:

Hi Craig,
The black Legacy was an ALLEY CAT build, completion date is October 12th 2015.
The body is pine, the maple neck is a slim C, 1-5/8” nut width and a 12” radius.
I was told there might be only 20 of them built, all the best.

Please do add it to our G&L Registry.
Both the ASAT Cat ACM Special Build and the Legacy Cat ACM Special Build model names are listed in the G&L Registry model name list.

Hope this helps.