G&L ASAT

G&L’s best-known model appeared in 1985, and it looked a lot like Fender’s legendary Telecaster, with it’s single-cutaway, slab-style body, angled bridge pickup, oblong control plate and six-on-a-side tuner configuration.

Leo Fender even tried to name it Broadcaster, but the Fender company objected. Fender historian Richard Smith suggested ASAT, which was military jargon for an anti-satellite missile (it was not short-hand for After Strat, After Tele).

After Fender’s death in 1991, BBE Sound of Huntington Beach, California, continued the model, and it is offered today in over a dozen variations.