USA or NOT!?

[jacobhdylan]

Gentlemen - Got a question about a guitar I'm looking at.

It's a friend's of mine that lives in California. I received pictures of the guitar and it's a pretty neat ASAT Special, however here's my two areas of concern.

The headstock decal does not say anything about where the guitar is made. It only says "G&L ASAT"

Then the serial number is B052658.

Can ANYONE help me tell if this is an american guitar or that Tribute stuff?

[jacobhdylan]

Also, i'm concerned because it does not say "made in USA" or tribute anywhere on the headstock. It seems like it's just missing something!? Am i wrong?

[yowhatsshakin]

Hi Jacob,

Correct me if I'm wrong but the guitar should be a 3-bolt. This has several implications.

First, although a S/N starting with 'B' was intended for basses there are plenty of examples in the Registry of guitars having a 'B' S/N. G&L was not know to be all too strict with using neckplates for the right instruments and/or in order. If a neck plate was still available, they'd use it. Hence, I found 61 instruments with a S/N between B52000 and B53000, none of them a bass! Unfortunately, B52658 is not registered (yet).

Secondly, that instrument is produced before 1997. In that year, G&L transitioned to a 4-bolt neck with the S/N starting with 'CL' (and shortly thereafter 'CLF') stenciled on the back of the headstock .

Finally, the US model have no 'Made in USA' anywhere, they just are! So don't worry about it, that guitar should be US made.

Here a couple of headstocks showing the different ASAT decals I have in my collection, as well as the different style of truss rod which would be another indicator of the age of the instrument. The one on the left is pre-1992 whereas the other 2 are post-1992; 1998 on the left, 2004 on the right (which has the 'Guitars by Leo' under the 'G&L' decal).


Also check out this page on Serial Number significance in the Knowledgebase and Greg Gagliano's G&L web pages which has a wealth of pictures you can compare yours to.
Hope this helps,

- Jos

[Craig]

First, although a S/N starting with 'B' was intended for basses there are plenty of examples in the Registry of guitars having a 'B' S/N. G&L was not know to be all too strict with using neckplates for the right instruments and/or in order. If a neck plate was still available, they'd use it. Hence, I found 61 instruments with a S/N between B52000 and B53000, none of them a bass! Unfortunately, B52658 is not registered (yet).

Just to clarify, the reason some of the 3-bolt guitars had "B0xxxxx" serial numbers was due to the vendor who supplied the serialized neck plates made an error and stamped them with "B0" instead of "G0" and G&L decided not to waste these parts and chose to use these guitar neck plates. Bass and guitar 3-bolt neck plates were not interchangable.

Hope this helps.