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G&L Club Part 7

#28,222
Ricky Rioli said:
Trying to hold the image of tobacco burst, two tone sunburst, old school tobacco burst, and honeyburst in my head simultaneously is making me sleepy.

I know that Old School Tobacco is basically my favourite. The LB-100 that I bought and returned last year was a very pretty OSTburst Fullerton Deluxe with a good piece of tort.

And its neck had a much fuller feeling in my hand than my two BTOs. I sometimes wonder if, for balance reasons, Empress bodies get paired with necks that have come out at the skinny end of G&L's broad tolerances for neck depth. (Have you ever noticed that, @RocketMusic?)
Click to expand...
Here's my build sheet.

20230714_092319.jpg


John
 
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#28,223
metron said:
I never measured the mfd singles but Ive owned two of the first gen SB2 and a handful of the second gen pj versions. The bridge pickups are different. Each single from the first gen worked well solo and it was a pretty potent bass overall. The single from the pj seems weaker and doesn't solo well.

I dont know how well a new mfd single would pair with a kilo but it might look odd with the single an inch or so wider.
Click to expand...

Might the positioning of the bridge pickup have a bit to do with that, though? 1st gen is much closer to the neck; 2nd gen closer to the bridge…
 
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#28,226
metron said:
Yeah that certainly has an effect on the sound but the output difference is also significant.
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This is incorrect. The output of the two generations is similar and really too close to call.

1st gen is 3/8" closer to the neck than 2nd gen. Neither have nearly as much output compared to the (L or Kilo) humbucker in single coil mode and I doubt would ever work well together. That's comparing my '83 Sb2 & '88 Lynx to Sb2 '03, '07 & '12. BTW the L2K humbucker bridge poles are only 1/16" closer to the neck than those in a 2nd gen Sb2 bridge pickup.

1st gen neck and bridge pickup are identical so yes, position has much to to with fullness and amount of bass. With the bridge PU a little closer to the neck in the 1st gen it's more useable than a 2nd gen but as a stand alone it's still not a lot to rave about.
 
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#28,227
svtbass said:
This is incorrect. The output of the two generations is similar and really too close to call.

1st gen is 3/8" closer to the neck than 2nd gen. Neither have nearly as much output compared to the (L or Kilo) humbucker in single coil mode and will never work together. That's comparing my '83 Sb2 & '88 Lynx to Sb2 '03, '07 & '12. BTW the L2K humbucker bridge poles are only 1/16" closer to the neck than those in a 2nd gen Sb2 bridge pickup.

1st gen neck and bridge pickup are identical so yes, position has much to to with fullness and amount of bass. With the bridge PU a little closer to the neck in the 1st gen it's more useable than a 2nd gen but as a stand alone it's still not a lot to rave about.
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Excellent. Thanks for sharing the first hand knowledge.
 
#28,229
jglunt said:
They are now offering that 4-string humbucker pickup for sale with a white cover. I hadn't seen that offered there before, though I was able to purchase just a white cover from them a few years ago.
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I would love a white pickup cover for my L1k, but don't really need to buy another HB pickup for it.
If I were going to do that, I'd opt for getting a white cover MFD to try out. (Although I really love the sound
of the alnico hb.)
I also didn't realize the covers are removable, thought they were an integral part of the pickup housing.
 
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#28,231
Attention, the pickups are often potted and the bobbins are wound very full, potentially touching the covers. The combination of these two means you risk breaking windings forcefully extracting the bobbins from the covers.

The solution would be heating up the pickup before doing it and softening the wax/paraffine/whatever they use as potting compound
 
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#28,236
jglunt said:
I ask because, when I was thinking of adding an SB-2 single coil MFD bridge pickup as a neck (or middle) pickup on a Kiloton, I was advised that it would be too weak to work. That led me to believe that the original SB-2, which had a pair of single coil MFDs, was either a very weak bass or the pickups were different back in those days. I never did go ahead with that mod. I have a Kiloton (though I was going to buy a Tribute for this mod) and an L2500. While the MFD humbuckers on those are strong pickups, I actually don't find them overpowering. In fact, I have at least one other non G&L bass with a stronger pickup.
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You are comparing a dual coil to a single coil for output.
 
#28,237
/\/\3phist0 said:
You are comparing a dual coil to a single coil for output.
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Yes I understand that, but it wouldn't be the first bass set up that way. And I planned to put a set of stacked pots in for the volume controls, so there would be a way to balance them. It's a moot point anyway since I've been talked out of it by wiser minds than mine, and i appreciate that. I'm thinking, as Nedmundo said, that single coil pickup--at least the current version of it--is designed to be nothing more than a tone control for the split coil, so it's really just a one trick pony.
 

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