I received this guitar now more than a week ago and it's long overdue to post a report on it.
The Charlie Christian Ltd is a series of Special Edition guitars commissioned by Martin Music Guitar in Memphis, TN. So far about 15 have been built. When Jamie posted about this model on this site, I ordered mine. I had to wait a couple of months for it to come in but with all the stuff happening, that was not too much of a problem.
I picked the only double bound then available (CLF070054):
It gives this guitar a very classy and old-timey look. In the interim, another double bound guitar was built (CLF070038), this time with a pearl guard. People seem to like the Charlie Christian pup in a bound body. Guess it's the white trim on the pup matching it all.
Talking about that pup, I was wondering how it was mounted. When the Charlie Christian first appeared on the Gibson ES-150 now almost a century ago, it had a 3-point mounting bracket to fit it in a hollow body. You see that on this G&L, it has gotten a measured pickup rout and just has 2 mounting screws.
The DC-impedance of this Jason Lollar pup, wound on nearby Vashon Island, is remarkably low at 3.11kΩ with the narrow-bobbin ASAT Classic bridge pickup coming in at 5.72kΩ.
The electronics uses a .047μF Orange Drop cap for tone control, which was a bit hard to photograph, but you can see it in the left pic (click on it to see it bigger):
My guitar came without a spec-sheet. MM has requested one from the factory and I hope that one is on the way. However, although the neck pocket is pristinely clean, all specs can effective be found on the neck heel:
For translation: 'AC Blues' is for ASAT Classic Bluesboy (although Bluesboy is dropped in the listing name), 'Tob sunbrst' is for the Tobacco Sunburst finish, 'BWB' is the Black-White-Black pickguard, 'BB' is the body binding, and '315620-10' most likely is the order number (315620) with possibly the rank number of the guitar in this order (10) after the dash. At least that would jibe with the original listing of 10 guitars. The most interesting note however is '* see spencer for info' referring to Spencer Brown, General Foreman ta the Fullerton factory.
This guitar has a beautiful rosewood board and the headstock is as usual:
So how does it sound? On the bridge pickup, you have your classic Classic, although the tone taper is different with the used cap. The neck pup gives you absolutely gorgeous bell-like tone, especially for the low-E string on mine. You'd be thinking Bill Frisell right away: little reverb, some echo maybe, turn the tremolo on, start playing nice chordal runs and you'll be in sonic heaven. Cannot compare it with any other pup on an ASAT, although the S-500 neck pup on my maple bodied pre-BBE ASAT III comes somewhat close when dialing it in right. With such a mismatch between DC-impedance one might think the middle position is unbalanced. However, that turns out not to be true. Very nice tones. In all, this guitar is great for lower volumes with at most a little break-up in the tubes. Not that you cannot slam the neck pup through an overdrive or fuzz pedal; I would just claim there are better alternatives than the Charlie Christian pup for that purpose.
- Jos
I love double bound guitars. Lots of pickup options out there and it is great to see ASAT's with different pups. Share some clips when you can. I don't have a lot of Charlie Christian pup experience, so sound clips would help me decide just how soon I "need" to put one of these on my GAS list. 
