1. My heavily hot-rodded, semi-hollow G&L ASAT, complete with branded initials on the upper bout. 2. This spanky guitar has my two favorite G&L pickups:
A MFD (Magnetic Field Design) Z-coil at the bridge and an ASAT Special single-coil in the neck position. 3. With a Hipshot B-Bender mounted behind
the bridge and a trio of compensated, old-school brass saddles, this guitar is ready for snarling honky-tonk. 4. Branded initials on the headstock, too.
5. The legendary Roy Buchanan peers out from the f-hole.
I’ve always been someone who likes to
experiment on guitars. At a Texas Guitar
Show in 2002, I met a fellow named Mac
Whiteside who also liked to experiment on
guitars. I was a little leery of him at first ...
after all, he was from Texas, you know? But
we soon found common ground talking
about guitars, and after a few months, we
started collaborating on some of our ideas.
This guitar came from some of those ideas.
We took a semi-hollow G&L ASAT
Classic, installed an elongated ashtray bridge
plate, and stuck a Z-coil pickup in the
bridge position and an ASAT Special pickup
(minus the cover) at the neck. Then we
wired up a 4-way selector switch that allows
either pickup alone, both pickups in series,
or both pickups in parallel. In addition,
there’s a Hipshot B-Bender mounted behind
the bridge and three brass saddles that are
compensated to vastly improve intonation
without sacrificing that old-school twang.
I’d send Mac some guitar parts, he’d buy
other parts we needed, and we’d talk on the
phone about our plans. Then Mac went to
work at his shop in Austin. Before long, he
had shipped me the finished product. Mac
loves to have fun building guitars, and in
addition to burning my WR initials into
the hollow upper bout of the guitar with a
hot branding iron, he also cut out a picture
of one of my heroes, Roy Buchanan, and
strategically pasted it inside the f-hole so
that Roy’s eyes appear to be peering out at
me when I’m playing. Consequently, this
guitar is named “Roy.”
So how does it sound? This is a wonderful
guitar. It sports my two favorite G&L
pickups—they offer killer tone—and it’s
very lightweight and just drips attitude.
And most important, it’s really fun to play!
Thanks, Mac. You’ve done it again.
Bottom Feeder Tip #352: When someone
offers to build you a guitar, take ’em up on it.
You never know where it might lead.
Will Ray
is a founding
member of the
Hellecasters guitar-twang
trio. He also does guitar
clinics promoting his
namesake G&L signature
model 6-string, and produces
artists and bands at his studio in
Asheville, North Carolina. You can contact
Will on Facebook and at
willray.biz.