G&L ASAT

Tele shape. Ash body. Beautiful birdseye maple neck and fretboard, jumbo jumbo frets. Not sure of scale. Two of the newer style G&L p-90ish pickups. My finish is kind of a Mary Kayish semi-translucent blond/white. Actually I am not fond of the finish. White pearloid pickguard.
Mine actually was custom-fitted with a tremolo unit, too.

I play in a surf-rock band, and the other guitar player uses Strats and Jazzmasters. I have always been looking for something different to play than his stuff. I have used Fender Teles, Danelectros, etc. I really like the simplicity and utilitarianism of Teles. I am NOT a country player or fan, so wasn't really after twang so much, just a good clean sound that also sounds good overdriven a bit.
I use a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe 1x12 amp, and this guitar sounds dreamy with the Fender amp.
The bridge position pickup is the most versatile pickup I've ever played. It covers a lot of sonic ground. I find that I hardly ever have to leave it for any song, it's so versatile. On most guitars you can't say that about a bridge pickup. If you want to play something clean, with more body, you move to a middle or neck position. Not so with the ASAT. It's a full sound, yet retains that bite you need in that position. Very impressive.
Middle position yields one of the two most beautiful electric guitar sounds I've come across (the other is the Danelectro middle position). It's glassy, full, "pretty", I don't know how else to describe it. Just wonderful. It's a very unique voice.
Neck position is more full and standard, what you'd expect, except much more body than a standard Tele neck pickup. For some reason, not as "pretty" as the middle position. This is a good thing. Each position yields incredibly different tones. So versatile.
Additionally, this guitar came with the tremolo bar. It's the only ASAT I've ever seen with one. It was used when I bought it, but I was told by the dealer that it's a custom order. Even the paint job is custom, pickguard, etc. Without the tremolo bar, I would have gone and looked for a different ASAT. But the bar iced the decision for me. It is, hands down, the most fluid, easy-to-use bar I've ever whanged on. Provides subtle Jazzmasterish 1/2-step bends for surf and fifties-type work, and yet can do amazing dive bombs and stay perfectly in tune. It feels fantastic. I guess this is the unit that goes in the other G&L guitar, the Legacy (Strat-body). The bar is twice as thick as a Strat bar, feels satiny-smooth, and slides into place. It also magically stays at the position you want it to for quick access. After years of messing with the Strat whammy bar, this is wonderful. I can't regale this thing enough!
One complaint on sound: I was pretty disappointed with the volume pot. I've never been a big fan of using volume or tone knobs to change tone or volume on the fly, but have been doing this more and more. To me, lowering the volume always seems to muffle the tone a bit. I expected this guitar to be built with the best pots available. Instead, it seems to deaden tone worse than my other guitars. Not a huge deal, I will probably replace this pot with another "best" pot.

I previously have owned 2 Mexican Telecasters, a Strat Plus, and currently own a Mexican Strat, Gibson Les Paul Custom, 2 of the new Danelectro reissues, and have owned many guitars. If you've picked up a really well-made, expensive guitar like a nice Gibson, or PRS, then you know what quality feels like. This guitar just feels incredibly solid, like my Les Paul. It's stinking heavy, too. But I love it.
The guitar seems to be set up perfectly. The huge frets are wonderful. The back of the neck is fascinating: the birdseye maple, when under good light, seems three-dimensional, like the grain is actually popping out of the wood, and yet it's the smoothest feeling stuff. In accordance with other reviews, this guitar is custom-shop quality for a much better price. It's obvious that a lot of care goes into their production.
As I mentioned, I am not fond of the strange white/blond finish. This does not diminish my rating, however. I would be nervous about doing it, but am probably going to strip and re-paint the guitar, perhaps a translucent black or a deep amber. I wonder if I could send it back to G&L for this work?

See above. I'm sure this guitar is ready for anything.

No contact yet. G&L, if you're reading, your website needs serious work. It's ugly and clunky. Not appropriate for the wonderful guitars you're making.

See my raves above. Looking forward to keeping and playing this guitar for years, for any styles that I happen to get in to. It's as wonderful as my Les Paul, and got it for far less money.

See below. Mine Maple neck with Maple blonde body (I am still not sold on the color after a year) This is the only prob with it

I play indie pop. I love the P90 type pickups. I have been using the bridge pickup as it give a better distirotion sound. I use a Mesa Boogie DC-5. The front pickup is really warm for clean but gets muddy with the boogie with distorion

Brought mine secondhand for cheapish. Came with case I use 10-52's and have no probs with it. I replaced the machine heads with sprezal locking type. I use these on all my guiatrs keeps them in tune better and much easier to change strings.(Although I hate teh sound of new strings)

Nothing has gone wrong with it.

Great guitar I went through the following in 3 years to get there. I have had it for a year one of my frinds is just about to buy one. Pity hers is a tobaco suburst.(Would like to change the color but do not trust anyone to sand and respray it) Maton Wildcat. (great neck made in aust in the 70's shit pickups.) This is a vintage in prime condition so I did not modify it. Gibson Nighthawk. Heaps of sounds but none I liked. Brought it new lost heaps on it when I sold it. Fender Musicmaster. I butchered this hepas. Lipstick in the front, hot humbucker in the back. New bridge. Sperzal loking machine heads. Just still was not what I was after.
Then I found the ASAT while looking for a freind. I brought it before she could. I have jsut butchered a Epiphone les paul junior as a second guitar.

Alder Body, Maple neck with Rosewood board. 25.5 scale with 7" Radius and 1 11/16 at the nut. Standard Tele controls. Pick-ups are a big departure from Fender. They're very large P-90 ish design.

The ASAT is great sounding guitar. It gets a very chink'n pick'n approved bridge twang although a bit darker and more compressed than say a 52' Tele. This pick-up can really rock out as well, remaining very defined when driven hard. The neck pick-up is the real magic here, for most Teles this is a sore subject. This pick-up is very P90-ish with a great bell-like Strat thing happening. For Blues and Slide this pick-up is just wonderful. My main Guitar is a 335 so over all the ASAT always sounds small to me but as far a Teles go the ASAT is a very beefy sounding guitar that can be a nice alternative to a Strat for Blues, can really get heavy, and still twang with the best of them.

The neck fit was fine and the finish was really great. Mine is a black swirl like a bowling ball. The action was a problem. It was partly my fault because I kept having it re-set as I went back and fourth between 10's and 11's. In the end I think I just needed a flatter neck. 7'' is very round neck if, like me, you're more of a Gibson guy. I did some rearranging with the controls: I reversed the order of things by having the Volume pot up front, followed by the the Tone pot, and the the toggle in the back. I also put in a more gradual volume pot for pedal steel type swells.

During my phase of going through multiple set-ups the nut at the end of the truss rod came off. Because this was very difficult to get at G&L sent me a new neck in a flash. Love that 10 year warranty, They were great over the phone. I've had it for 4 years now and I just put in the 3rd Jack after it took a dump mid set. I'm not crazy about this style of jack.

10 year warranty

Despite the problems with the Jack and truss rod, I love this guitar. It's my main 'round the house Guitar that I use for teaching and practice. It's also been used at hundreds of gigs. It's also been used a lot on session work with great results. The pick-ups are a little noisy so it takes a little bit of moving around in the studio, but it's not hard to get a great tone to tape, this may be due a little bit to the slight compression this guitar has. I'd highly recommend getting one.

Solid ash body (exceptionally light) 2 big-size "Magnetic field" single coils on a black pickguard. Blond finish, black hardware. PU's have creamic adjustable magnets. 21 frets, an innovative bridge design ("sadddle-lok" they call it, i think). A really dark, smooth fingerboeard that I would wager is ebony, even though all catalogs say rosewood. This is on a nice flamey maple neck with a "bullet" style truss rod and a 3-bolt joint. 1 vol. 1 tone knobs and a 3-way switch. 25 1/2 inch scale with a 6 or 7" radius, really comfy neck. Mine was made in the mid '80s and I bought it used, and I think it originally had a molded case... mine had a beat up old tweed reissue fender case. This is a Tele-type axe built to the specs of and by a company run by Leo Fender and George Fullerton... it's more Fender than Fender, folks. It does the Tele thing extremely well... but not too versatile.

Great for Blues, rock, country, ska... you know, that kind of thing. I play jazz usually, so it's not my best suited axe, but it can be used for Mike Stern type stuff... you can actually get a few useful contemporary jazz tones out of this thing, if you try. I use all old tube amps, my fave is a '75 super, and the 2 are a great match. Not too noisy, but if a little 60 cycle hum irks you, then the middle position is totally noise-free. Really, REALLY bright... even with neck PU and tone all the way down. Bright almost to a fault, except when you want this sound for country or Ska. The neck PU though, while leaning a tad toward the trebly side, is still very fat-sounding... this is a result of the stellar PU's. All in all, this is an axe that sounds really good for what it sounds good for and really unforgivable for what it sounds bad for (i.e. Jazz, Metal, you know... the extremes.)

I got this axe used, so everything was tweaked properly before I got it... it is exceptional, especially the action and the feel of the neck... this baby is the best playing guitar I own. No flaws that I was able to detect. Fabulous.

Again, not much can go wrong with just a tele slab, especially a good one. It's built to last, I have gigged with it without a backup. WHat can I say? Leo knows his guitars. Very Dependable.

Don't know, don't care

I've been playing for quite a while and own lots of gear, and this axe ranks right up there behind my beloved ES-347. I would definitely replace it with another ASAT if it ever grew legs and walked away. I love it's pickups and sound, I hate that it's almost useless for jazz and that it's, quite frankly, ugly as sin. I compared it with some new Fender Teles and this was superior in almost every way... especially the pickups. I think a phase switch would be useful so you could use the 2 PU's in-phase, but this isn't intended to be a feature-laden axe... it's a Tele for Pete's sake.