G&L L2000 P-UP Height informal survey

[Babaghanoush]

Hey All,

Thanks to everyone who contributes to TB. This forum has been absolutely invaluable to my bass guitar playing (which admittedly, I'm still pretty green).

I'm trying to accomplish a setup on my L2000 that I feel good about and right now I'm concentrating on the p-up heights.

I bought my bass new and the p-up were way lower than the adjustment specs in the manual which are 1/16" (G), 1/8" (E), rhythm and 1/16" (G), 3/32" (E) lead when fretting at 21st fret. In an attempt to decipher the insane number of tonal possibilities of this bass and to find the setup that I'm happy with, I adjusted the p-ups back up to the manuals specs. Not surprisingly it made a pretty big change in the sound and pumped up an already hot signal.

My questions are:
1) Where are your L2000 P-ups? Are they set at G&L's spec's or at a different height?
2) Are they different because they came that way or did you adjust them and why?

Thanks in advance for the info.

[GroovinOnFunk]

is rhythm the neck pup and lead the bridge pup?

[lowfreqgeek]

The settings on my L2500s are way different from "factory" because I found that having them any closer than they are caused the magnetic field to interfere with the lower (B/E) strings up higher on the neck. I'm one of those freaks that uses almost the entire fretboard at *some* point in gig-dom, so I require clean, clear, articulate notes up high on the neck from time to time.

So, my neck pickup is about .16" on the B-string/.15" on the G and the bridge is about the same (I need to adjust it a little, though). These are with each string fretted at the 21st fret.

I used my Peterson tuner and my ears to set the pickup height. The tuner allows me to see where the pickups start to pull on the strings, then I adjust with my ears from there. Also, my settings ensure that chords stay in tune because none of the strings are being pulled out of tune.

Works for me.

[lug]

Mine are dropped as low as they can go. It gives me the sound that suits me best.

[GroovinOnFunk]

Interesting...

Do you really think that hundreths of an inch make a big impact on the sound? I thought mostly what I was going after was just making sure that the magnets didn't interfere with the strings...

[lug]

Originally Posted by GroovinOnFunk

Interesting...

Do you really think that hundreths of an inch make a big impact on the sound? I thought mostly what I was going after was just making sure that the magnets didn't interfere with the strings...

For me it did. Of course if the magnetic field was actually strong enough to effect the string vibration, one could argue that alone would significantly impact the sound. To my ears, the bass is more "punchy" with pups set higher and to me it's already plenty "punchy" where I have it now. The best reason to drop the pups is that they are so hot to start with, they overwhelm some preamps when dimed.