Former G & L owner needs advice and help to identify model

[gst]

Howdy folks , I'm Aaron

a while back my house was burglarized and my my ASAT was stolen

I'm hoping maybe there's some G & L experts who can help me get an idea of what kind of ASAT I had so I can attempt to replace it

I loved the twang and sharp brightness of the stock pickups on my G & L .It was also perfectly suited for the strange tunings I often threw at it. I'm trying to get as close sound/feel wise to what I had before.



I don't know the exact year/serial # although I remember looking it up once and if I recall one site led me to believe it was early-mid nineties (1994) perhaps, but I also read things that seemed to contradict this as well
I have misplaced my serial # info

I bought the guitar for 350$ somewhere around 1996-99 and would assume it had to have have been made before 1995, because the case had a sticker from a Guitar Expo that year

I do not know the type of wood of the body or neck, but the thing was sturdy as hell, it was pretty heavy too
as you can see in the picture, it was the red/orange burst type color and the pickguard was whiteish with those opaque multi-color mother or pearl looking flake stuff. The neck was fairly thin and one of the lighter varieties and the grain was very visible on the back side, and was bolted on through a sort of rounded triangular piece of leather which I believe also had the G & L logo stamped in.

I've been looking online for a while now and haven't yet seen one exactly like mine, I'll see the color scheme, but not the same neck or pickups. I haven't seen any G & Ls with the same neck and pickup set. given the apparent scarceness, I'm not concerned with finding an ASAT with the same color scheme, only trying to match things that are integral to the overall tone and feel of the guitar (wood, pickups, neck etc)

any help on identifying my model as closely as possible would be greatly appreciated.

please take a look at the picture. I know someone out there must have some ideas


Thanks a lot
-Aaron



EDIT:
(non rambling version I should have initially posted)

[darwinohm]

Aaron, sorry to hear about you run of unpleasant events. You have an ASAT Special. This site has a registry and if it had been registered here, the particulars of the guitar would have been on record. If you get a new one, I hope you register it here. Good luck on you search to recover it. -- Darwin

[gst]

thanks, Darwin I most certainly will do, hindsight is definitely 20/20 and there are many things I would do differently, I once had a record of all my serial numbers and cant find them for the life of me

does anyone have any guesses on the year of the model or woodtypes?

was there much variation from one special to another?

anyone have an idea of the price range one would expect to pay for one of these (used of course)?

do they still make them? has the quality held up?

are there any issues with the model one should be aware of when shopping around?

-once again thanks for any info

[astutzmann]

here's the website, they still make them.
http://www.glguitars.com/instruments/US ... /index.asp

they are alder body and there are lots of options on them, your's looked like a special with maple neck.

I have one and its a special deluxe, mahogany body with maple cap, ebony board



There are used one's around and I would say the price depends on how many options you have on it. Mine used would be expensive, :^)) due to being special deluxe with ebony board and SS frets.

Here's what's for sale on ebay right now,

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=g+l+asat+special

NOTE, these are made in USA models and NonUSA models called Tribute. THe tributes are considerably cheaper being made off shore, different necks but the same hardware and pups.

[gst]

thanks Alf...whoa yeah apparently the U.S models are not so cheap.
I started thinking it might not be so bad when i saw a bunch of similar looking models for under a G, now I realize they were all tributes..bummer!

what's the consensus (if any) or opinions on the ones being made now in contrast to the ones like mine (which I assume was made in the 1990s)?

[Craig]

thanks, Darwin I most certainly will do, hindsight is definitely 20/20 and there are many things I would do differently, I once had a record of all my serial numbers and cant find them for the life of me

does anyone have any guesses on the year of the model or woodtypes?

was there much variation from one special to another?

anyone have an idea of the price range one would expect to pay for one of these (used of course)?

do they still make them? has the quality held up?

are there any issues with the model one should be aware of when shopping around?

-once again thanks for any info

The ASAT Special in your photo has the Cherry Sunburst finish on a Swamp Ash body.

The body woods are Alder for Standard finishes and Swamp Ash for Premier finishes.

Without knowing the serial number it is not possible to tell the build year.

See the G&L website for current specifications and options.

Check Zachary Fjestads' Blue Book of Electric Guitars 13th edition for price ranges.

Yes, they are still in production and the quality has risen even higher (IMO).

No issues that I am aware of.

As noted by Alf, there is also an import version (made in Indonesia) and they come with the same pickups
as the USA model, the hardware and electronics are off shore built. They are high quality low price
instruments and you can get a new one for about the same price as a used USA model.

Hope this helps.

[gst]

yes it does, thanks Craig

and thanks everyone else

and anyone with anything else to add, by all means please do as I will continue to pop in

[KenC]

Aaron,

I'm better with info on the mid-80s ASATs, but I'll share what I can. As others have mentioned, yours was an ASAT Special. This name is a little bit misleading, as the headstock decal wouldn't have "Special", just "ASAT".

The three-bolt neck plate (which was coated steel, although these are sometimes mistaken for leather) makes it no later than a '97 model. The chrome trim became common around '88. I'm not sure when the cherry burst finish became available, but I think it would have been sometime in the early 90s. You can find color options for each year listed in some of the old catalogs in the G&LDP Gallery. I know I've seen a cherry burst on an ASAT Bass from '91 or '92. The pearlescent pickguard would have become available sometime in the early 90s. Judging from the photo and your comments, I would put this one sometime in the early-to-mid 90s - let's say between '92 and '96.

There have always been a lot of options for G&L neck shapes. You'll probably need to get each instrument into your hands to know for sure whether it's a good match. The pickups should be pretty much identical on any production ASAT/ASAT Special since the first ones in '86. Hand-winding will cause some differences between pickups, and in my experience the pickup height makes a tremendous difference in how an ASAT sounds. A slight adjustment can turn it into an entirely new guitar.

The ASAT Special in your photo has the Cherry Sunburst finish on a Swamp Ash body.

Wasn't alder used under some transparent finishes before 1998? I thought that was the year that swamp ash became standard for premium finishes...

A maple body could also have been possible up to the early 90s, but would have been very unlikely after '88 or so.

Yes, they are still in production and the quality has risen even higher (IMO).

I agree. 1980s G&Ls outnumber BBE-era instruments in my house by a margin of 6:1, but those 90s and 00s models have a better fit and finish than my earlier ones. You can still find some amazing values on Leo-era ASATs, and IMO the tone and feel of an early production maple-bodied ASAT beats the newer ones in terms of pure vibe and mojo.

Ken

[gst]

thanks for the info Ken, not certain but I do believe when I looked up the serial # a while back, it was identified as a 1994 model.
if anyone has any good links to places that regularly carry/sale G & Ls id love to know, they're obviously not as
easy as finding a strat especially in my neck of the woods, and especially so when you start to get particular.
I do know the pickup at the neck rested pretty low into the body, and the one at the bridge was a bit higher, I
never had any reason to adjust them as I was always satisfied with the tone. I'm gonna look and call around and
try to get my hands on some until i find the right feel and tone, may have to make a trip to Austin, which is much
more of a guitar town (I'm in Houston) I often look on ebay, but I hate blindly buying anything as important as a guitar I plan to use often from there.

[KenC]

Aaron,

With any G&L prior to 2008, the serial number can only give a rough approximation of the build date. The neck plates (or bridges in the very early days) were pulled at random out of a bin when a guitar or bass was built, so it's not uncommon for two instruments built on the same day to have serial numbers that are apart by thousands. The only way to tell the dates for sure is to remove the neck and check the stamps. I do think 1994 would be a best guess for your ASAT.

Pickup height adjustments are just a couple of turns of a screwdriver, so FWIW I would find an ASAT that looks and feels good and then tweak in the sound.

Ken