I had that one here from GC a couple months back. The pre was shorting out at that time. Love the green swirl I had a red swirl SB2 for a long time. Would have kept it but I have a great SB2 and no room for duplicates. Nice score.
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I had that one here from GC a couple months back. The pre was shorting out at that time. Love the green swirl I had a red swirl SB2 for a long time. Would have kept it but I have a great SB2 and no room for duplicates. Nice score.
Good to know, thanks! They either fixed it or it's intermittent. No issues at this point. If it starts acting up Ill get out the loppers and just chop it off
It definitely clipped. IMO the mod was fairly useless. An SB2 with the L-1000 PTB system would kill although turning the bridge pup slightly down from the P like many do provides one of Leo's greatest sweet spots. That tone is almost like having both my '56P and '62P in one bass. Almost.
Interesting. You may have been having some intermittent connection with it because I'm not able to get it to clip with some tests I ran last night. I thought I might be initially but thats my interface. This is with a fresh 9, new strings, pickups about 4/32" from the strings. I can overdrive my interface with the gain set as low as it can go without hearing the preamp pop.
Picking and slapping as hard as I can obviously isnt a realistic use case though. Thats not to say it isn't possible to clip, or wont as the battery drains. Time will tell on that, but I do like the mod quite a bit anyway. Boost is fun
PTB is a great idea, but that can only roll off content already present from the pickups. It excels with humbuckers and their unruly bandwidth.
Interesting. You may have been having some intermittent connection with it because I'm not able to get it to clip with some tests I ran last night. I thought I might be initially but thats my interface. This is with a fresh 9, new strings, pickups about 4/32" from the strings. I can overdrive my interface with the gain set as low as it can go without hearing the preamp pop.
Picking and slapping as hard as I can obviously isnt a realistic use case though. Thats not to say it isn't possible to clip, or wont as the battery drains. Time will tell on that, but I do like the mod quite a bit anyway. Boost is fun
PTB is a great idea, but that can only roll off content already present from the pickups. It excels with humbuckers and their unruly bandwidth.
I was confused about that clipping part because it came from someone other than metron. I felt like I was on a train but had no ticket. Many G&L players (including me) back their MFD pickups down somewhat because they're so powerful. I haven't heard anything about that negatively affecting tone. I certainly haven't noticed it. Maybe some other players here using MFD equipped G&Ls could weigh in on that. Yes, boost is fun!
I crank mine up. My SB-2 is probably the hottest of all of mine. Using a Cafe Walter headphone amp my JB-2 I set the input to about 1 o'clock, SB-2 about 8:30, L2k about 10.
SB-2 is the punk rock bass.
With my SB-2 Tribute, backing off the neck pup volume acts like it would with a Fender. There is a treble roll off (as you would expect with any passive pickup). The difference is there is not all that much of a loss of volume as compared to treble roll off. I checked my amp gain at a few settings to be sure there was no compression. It gets darker much faster than loss of volume unlike a P bass.
The bridge pup is such a noise maker that I'm not sure how much treble loss there actually is.
Depending on the room, the bass is pretty noisy 60 cycle wise. Anybody ever make that size bridge pup as a humbucker? I'm thinking it probably would not make that much difference in tone as is has far less output than the neck and one could adjust the height as a coarse volume control to get in the ball park.
Thoughts?
The bridge pup is such a noise maker that I'm not sure how much treble loss there actually is.
Depending on the room, the bass is pretty noisy 60 cycle wise. Anybody ever make that size bridge pup as a humbucker? I'm thinking it probably would not make that much difference in tone as is has far less output than the neck and one could adjust the height as a coarse volume control to get in the ball park.
Thoughts?
I'm actually having one of my SB-2s shielded because of that single-coil noise. At times I've had a noise gate on my pedalboard. Lately I've been turning my chair to find a position with the lowest noise. It's surprising how much difference the angle makes. My house is weird.
Whether or not G&L could make a similar pickup in a noise-canceling configuration is kind of academic since they never will. I would guess not, since by design it's fairly low-output and trebly, and making it a split-coil or dual-coil would likely darken it and change the overall character of the instrument. But who knows.
Whether or not G&L could make a similar pickup in a noise-canceling configuration is kind of academic since they never will. I would guess not, since by design it's fairly low-output and trebly, and making it a split-coil or dual-coil would likely darken it and change the overall character of the instrument. But who knows.
Sorry, I wasn't clear in what I meant by "backing the pickups down." What I meant was actually physically lowering the pickups with the screws on the ends. The magnets on these MFD pickups are so strong they can affect the string vibration, so I've found I get a smoother and more accurate sound if I back them down. (I still wouldn't describe the sound as "smooth". The pickups are still very aggressive--just slightly more softly aggressive.) Experimentation is the key here. And we all play different styles of music and are looking for different sounds, so I'm not saying you should do this. I'm just saying it's worth considering, especially in this situation of possibly overdriving the front end of a preamp. Also, if anybody was interested in mellowing out the "P" pickup, I wonder what would happen if you rewired it into the volume pot in parallel rather than series as it comes from the factory? I haven't tried that. Has anybody?
It's not just your house. I find the bridge pup on an SB2 to be much more noisy than a J bass which is the only other single coil in my arsenal. Perhaps you are right that that noisemaker is partially what make the bass so unique.
Please report back on shielding and how well it worked out.
I tried and failed to find a noiseless replacement for the SB-2 bridge pickup. I even ordered a custom-sized noiseless pickup from Nordstrand and designed a 3D-printed cover for it. But it didn't play well with the neck pickup. Developing a suitable replacement will require research.
Knowing G&L, it doesn't mean it will actually happen. That company…they seem to have such good ideas but very little follow-through.
IvanBassist
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That statement seems familiar! I do think it was on my podcast.
Here's the link to it:
Steve Araujo | Coffee With Iván - Ep.10
Thanks for this! You just saved me a bunch of time.
Well, I'm sure it's doable, you just need to approach it differently. Your best bet is an experienced custom pickup builder who you can visit in person to co-develop the thing—because it's you who will ultimately judge if the pickup sounds and behaves right.
Yeah, concerns over the bridge pick-up's noise are why I had went with the SB-1 and hoped that some day they'd make an SB-2 revision with a noiseless bridge pick-up.
I love my split-coil MFD so much that it swayed me to order my (still months and months away) 35'' Sandberg with a single pick-up configuration, because if and when I want to put in an MFD in it I wouldn't have to drive myself crazy trying to pair a bridge J pick-up with it.
I love my split-coil MFD so much that it swayed me to order my (still months and months away) 35'' Sandberg with a single pick-up configuration, because if and when I want to put in an MFD in it I wouldn't have to drive myself crazy trying to pair a bridge J pick-up with it.
