NGD x2: S-500 & ASAT Special (Tributes)

[GeorgeB]

This week has been a happy week for me, received another two G&L 'gentlemen' guitars in tobacco burst with black pickguards and rosewood boards (one of my favorite color styles).



#1: ASAT Special, mahogany body.
Bought brand new from Thomann, currently they offer Tributes for very low prices so I just 'had to' jump. The setup was lacking (as expected) and the bridge needed a complete reinstall because it wasn't mounted flush (initially a bummer, but was easy to fix). After a 3 hrs. setup routine it's a perfect player now. Fit and finish were excellent from the start, neck pocket as tight as it gets, flawless fret job, perfect paint job on neck and body (3-piece mahogany). I did not know that there is no pool routing for the pups and was therefore impressed to see a solid block of center wood. Weight is reasonable, actually I thought it would've been heavier... nice. All I can say is wow! It's amazing how much of a quality guitar one can get for that little money. I'm really exited how it will fare on the amp compared to my boutique'ish ASAT Super which was about 5 times the price. Acoustic tone and playability feels to be on equal levels, though the Tribute neck is somewhat less beefy. The 9" radius feels just great, never played one before, heavy riffing is a lot of fun.

#2: S-500, swamp ash body (special edition).
eBay'ed this one for a good price. It's from 2012 and has the looks of the current models, albeit the body is swamp ash vs. mahogany. And it's a one-piece body which seems to be rather unique. Full setup for my preferred strings (11...56) is still due but again I'm amazed by the overall quality. I already have another, older S-500 Tribute which feels somewhat less refined than this one with a fret job not as good and less even sounding accross the fingerboard.
The neck carve is pretty much what I like, seems a bit wider and fatter than what's specified for Tribute necks (in direct comparison to the above ASAT it's quite noticable). The 12" radius helps troublefree bending even with very low action... which was possible because again the fret job is rather good.

Overall, I'm really impressed how good these Tribute guitars can actually be after the somewhat so-so expecience with the first S-500 (of course the excellent trem, pups and electronics made love the S-500 nonetheless).
Will try to make some hi-res shots... the finishes are really top-notch and would be adequate for any custom shop instrument.

[Fumble fingers]

nice pair !!

[GeorgeB]

Found the time today to do the setup on the S-500. Now I have the same fresh strings on both guitars, and general setup is extremely similar so I could compare the acoustic tone without additional variables. The S-500 has some tremendous output in the midrange and more sparkle on top. The ASAT Special has a higher self resonance and a bit more sustain in general, notably on the lower notes.

This is what I expected. I added dampening material inside the tremelo springs to avoid ringing picked up by the bridge singlecoil which always is a problem with strats played at higher gain. This dampening of course also eats up some of the string energy.... still the sustain is quite good for trem guitar because the unit is such a solid piece of metal. I'm impressed by the smoothness of the whammy action, guitar returns to 100% correct tuning even after heavy use, really within a few cent on my needle tuner, great.

It was necessary to properly file and lube the nut to get there. A graphtec string tree, seated higher above the headstock surface than the original metal one, helped tuning stability a lot as the orignal metal part on the Tributes is not up to the job, and the factory dressing of the nut also left much to be desired. Easy to be fixed, of course... I'm a happy camper now.

[jwebsmall]

George,

your S-500 is stunningly beautiful.

If you roll back the volume and adjust the tone knobs can you cover legacy territory?

John

[GeorgeB]

Have no Legacy to compare to (only a Sqier Strat and a PRS EG-3), but when I roll back volume and bass I get what I think is classic Strat tone, maybe a tiny bit darker. MFD's are known to react to string distance and tend to get very fat, even overdriving themselves, when too close... now I like them close so I can get that extra grit when digging in hard.

[john o]

Hi GeorgeB, I have the trib asat special and I have to agree, the quality of the build, playability and tone have exceeded my expectations every time I pick it up. Where is Thoman's.
Your s-500 looks fantastic.

[GeorgeB]

Where is Thoman's.

Thomann is the biggest retailer in Europe, they have an excellent online order service as well as a gigantic warehouse. I normally tend to support small local shops, but at this price point I could not resist.

Tomorrow is the day of proof, will take the ASAT to practice and maybe do a little fine tuning to the tone control... I typically mod the tone control to additionally work as an adjustable big treble bleed accross the vol pot, making the latter effectively a bass control when the tone pot is at 100%. When the tone pot is at 70% rotation all is back to normal, giving both normal volume pot function as well as standard treble roll-off from there down to 0% rotation. This is my standard practice on guitars with 1x Vol + 1x Tone controls, and it's simple, just one more cap plus replacing the 250kA tone pot with a 500kA if needed (which depends on the pups). I wonder why this isn't standard, it such a simple thing and extremely versatile.

[darwinohm]

Nice pair GeorgeB. The Tributes are very nice guitars and they are a couple of lookers! -- Darwin

[john o]

Where is Thoman's.

Thomann is the biggest retailer in Europe, they have an excellent online order service as well as a gigantic warehouse. I normally tend to support small local shops, but at this price point I could not resist.

Tomorrow is the day of proof, will take the ASAT to practice and maybe do a little fine tuning to the tone control... I typically mod the tone control to additionally work as an adjustable big treble bleed accross the vol pot, making the latter effectively a bass control when the tone pot is at 100%. When the tone pot is at 70% rotation all is back to normal, giving both normal volume pot function as well as standard treble roll-off from there down to 0% rotation. This is my standard practice on guitars with 1x Vol + 1x Tone controls, and it's simple, just one more cap plus replacing the 250kA tone pot with a 500kA if needed (which depends on the pups). I wonder why this isn't standard, it such a simple thing and extremely versatile.

interesting mod for the tone ctrl. with my asat i typically dime the tone when using the neck or neck-bridge combo. with the bridge pup, i roll the tone back a bit to 6-8 range. will be interested to hear if your mod is effective on this gtr.

[GeorgeB]

I will post the circuit in the technical section. It won't address your needs, though it is fine when you need to reduce the bass only, for a less muddy overdriven tone, depending on the amp.
One could add a push/push function to one of the pots for a fixed treble dim (or fixed bass dim), of course.... there's so many possibilites circuit-wise....

[GeorgeB]

I'm shocked! Test played the Tribute ASAT Special vs the ASAT Super last night on the amp and the actual difference was very small plus I slightly preferred the sound of the Special as it was more open and ringing while the Super had a somewhat stronger attack and the decay was richer in overtones developped. Same strings, same setup incl. pickup height etc, of course, to make a fair comparison.
Also I'm puzzled that the output of the overwound pups of the Super wasn't much stronger than the regular ones of the Special, the level increase is somewhere around 10% at most I would say, effectively neglegible -- when I bought the guitar and checked its sound against a Tribute Special Deluxe both the level and the sound difference was much bigger...
Acoustically, the guitars do sound different, with the Super being a hollowbody that is to expected, it had more bloom... but on the amp the difference wasn't all that much and no-one would ever notice it in a full band context. The Super has the edge when it comes to how the neck and the Plek'ed frets feel in my hand plus it is very comfortable because it's such a light guitar. There are weaker sounding spots along the neck on both guitars and the Super does a bit better there because those spots happen to be on less important (to me) frets.
All in all, the difference does not feel like 5x that the price point of the guitars would indicate. Those Tribute models, when properly set up, are really that good it seems.
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Right now I'm doing a 1-to-1 comparison between the two S-500 Tributes. Interestingly, while having essentially the same specs (apart from a one-piece vs 3-piece swamp ash body) the acoustic sound, again, is remarkably different.... on the amp I expect to hear little difference, after the above experience...