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G&L Club Part 7

#2,883
SlugThrower said:
Wish Chef's returned bass at Bass Place had a used resale price! 1,800 isn't pocket change.
Click to expand...

$1800 is not pocket change.
For that coin, I pretty well expect it to work for me straight out of the box...which it didn't.
The Fender American Jazz Deluxe is a way better bass, IMO. At least, for me.
 
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#2,884
You want -bigger- strings?
Man, that DA XL170 .130 B string felt wildly out of place on that narrow neck, to me.

wrench45us said:
I've got the mj5 via fed ex yesterday late afternoon.
I agree with the blend switch acts as a 3 way switch. I read that some feel the m2500 also works that way and I don't find that the case with the m2500.

I do have the buzzing and haven't played under haeadphones yet where this is the Most annoying, but much like the Aguilar hum cancelling single coils, if I reorient where the bass is facing and the angle, the EMI goes away. It is worse than my other jazz bass, but I had that copper foiled.

So interested to hear the cavity circuitry may not be properly grounded to the shielding that is there.

I think I can live with it if I get it under control as much as the othe Jazz.

I also think this bass is just aching to have some bigger rounder strings. Like DM Helix I have elsewhere. The strings it came with sound kind of thin.

Very interested to hear if jmlee put the Blue Steels on and how the
MJ5 responds

I have a 14 days to evaluate, but I don't want to be making a lot of changes if I lean toward returning.

In general I don't think I have the refined sense of what I'm looking for in a jazz bass and I really love the fit And feel of the satin G&L 5 string neck. And this body is alder and so lighter and more comfortable than the Korean Zon RT that's maple.
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#2,885
not bigger diameter, but bigger sound
on the m2500 I start to run into B string issues with .130 and above, so .128 is about my limit

but this MJ5 didn't have the same sustain issues I had with the M2500 above the 5th fret on the B string -- that sent me on a string search

so I was thinking the same strings that worked well on the M2500 would sound better on the MJ5
DR Fatbeams, Dean Marley Blue Steel or Helix -- medium light -- others have mentioned other similar strings that worked well for them on the MJ5
 
#2,890
David Jayne said:
So we lengthen 1k to wunkay then shorten mahogany to hog? : D
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As I understand it, we (whoever "we" is) shorten L-1000 to 1K for the thumb-talkers who don't have time to type out L-1000.

And we shorten mahogany to hog to preserve the self esteem of those who can't spell mahogany.

At least that's what they told me when they showed me the secret Gleo handshake.
 
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#2,892
So...still annoyed with the hum from my MJ-5, I opened up the control cavity again and remarked on the use of conducting paint to shield the cavity, but the complete failure to ensure it connected with the foil on the inside of the cavity cover. The result, of course, was an incomplete Faraday cage. Then I took and ohm meter and measured some resistances between the bodies of the various pots, between the pots and the conductive paint, and from point-to-point along the conductive paint. One would hope the resistance would be near-zero between these points because they should all be grounded together by the paint. Wrongo! I got resistances between about 150 and 400 ohms depending on where I put the probes. The take-home is that the conductive paint shielding is likely crap because the paint is (well...) not all that conductive. Tomorrow I'll try putting a couple of paint tabs up over the lip so that the cavity paint connects with the foil shielding on the cover plate to see if there's any hum reduction. I'm doubting there will be due to the lousy conductivity of the paint, but I'll report back. I've been corresponding with wrench45us who is having the exact same experience with his MJ-5, and we're both looking at a copper foil job to get this done right.

It baffles me how a company like G&L can take such care with many details of their instruments and do such a crappy job of shielding the control cavity—all the while marketing the instrument as being hum free. [It also begs the question of why Ed Friedland's didn't hum, at least according to his review of the instrument.] If I can confirm that the instrument hums (even with blend at 50:50) and that the conducting paint doesn't work in a few minutes, why couldn't they?

MJ-5Plus1.jpg
 
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#2,897
In terms of QS necks, sometimes you get lucky when you order a standard G&L neck. I received a QS neck on two separate basses when they weren't spec'd as such. I think they just grab whatever is available when they're running low on standard necks, and every so often people get lucky.
 
#2,899
My L-2500 hums so bad when you take your hands off of it that I can't stand it anymore for practice at home. Live, it kind of disappears. Got fed up and ordered tape from StewMac. Going to try my hand at a foil job. Only thing is mine is a Marty Bell Sparkle finish, so the cavity has some run-over paint and glitter which might make the job difficult. We'll see. Not sure about the pup cavities.
 
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