A lot of people run theirs in passive mode most of the time. I have seen quite a number remove the preamp altogether. Why, I don't have a clue, but they do.
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A lot of people run theirs in passive mode most of the time. I have seen quite a number remove the preamp altogether. Why, I don't have a clue, but they do.
Thanks for the feedback. I brought my L2500 to rehearsal 2 weeks ago and LOVED it. Last night's rehearsal I felt like I couldn't dial in a good tone to save my life. I'm blaming my amp on this one. It was just a rehearsal and I always just bring my small Hartke kick back. Towards the end of rehearsal I realized if I used the shape control on the amp, I could get what I was looking for. Also the room is rather "live" and everything sounds in your face. I hate that room.....and we're supposed to do a recording next month in there. Ugh!
Not at all. I run my L-2000 almost exclusively in passive mode. I love the tone and sound I get from it, have never seen much added value from active, don't use the treble boost, and don't have to mess with batteries.
...been doing that with L-series instruments since the early '80's. Many prefer it. I can't see the need to remove the preamp though.
Not at all. My favorite setting on my L-2500 is neck/series/passive, even more so since I replaced the Lo Riders I previously had on it with a set of D'Addario Chromes.
Thanks for bringing this up-- I remember when that book was released, but with work, family, etc., had forgotten all about it. Just placed my orderNew book inbound... While reading Fender: The Inside Story, I found myself hopeful that I could read a little on G&L history. Unsurprisingly, very little information was in the book about my favorite bass guitar builder. By complete serendipity, I found Guitars from George & Leo: How We Built G&L. I am reeeeally excited --and interested-- to hear George's word. Former Fender VP Forrest White painted him as a PITA. Now that I finally finished Fender, I can't wait to get my hands on Guitars. I never read, so this truly did capture my interest.
I'll let you know how it goes. By the way, I learned this book is out of print. For anyone curious...
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Lots of us do that--me included. The odd person takes the battery out or (God only knows why) the preamp itself. A good starting point for me is every knob at 70%, passive, series, neck pick-up. EQ the amp and go from there. Huge range to work with.
Yes, exclusively active and more traditional in terms of the preamp's functionality.
It's actually best to remove the opamp from it's socket rather than take the battery out or run the switch in passive. The opamp's inputs are still tied to the signal path and act as a diode voltage clamp if the signal gets too hot. That means distortion and a form of limiting. It may not be as noticeable in a live setting, but it's absolutely noticeable in more hi-fidelity situations, like a good studio or through a very clean amp.
FWIW, I've run my L2500 passive and without the opamp for most of the 7 years I've owned it. Better dynamics, and more organic sound.
Passive almost all the time, active in solos only and some tunes when it needs to be (and mainly with the bridge pickup).
My favorite setting is both pickups in series with a pick. Followed closely by the neck pickup, outer col in single coil. I always use the passive setting with all knobs about 69-70 percent.
The room is most likely the culprit. At the rehearsal place where we practice, sometimes we have to use a different room that is about three times the volume of our usual room. Same amps, same setup, but we end up being much too loud and it's impossible to dial in a good tone. The last time we were there, I had the settings photographed from the week before and dialed them up. By the end of the rehearsal they couldn't have been more different, all in an effort just to hear some definition.
Now, *that's* interesting. I must open up my L2500 and have a look. The image below is from the G&L site's store and the op-amp looks soldered in rather than being socketed.
Utilizing both pickups, treble cut at +0 dB (full-on) with pre on + treble boost, I get a convincing Jazz Bass sound. Try that set-up.
Wow. Thats pretty harsh cost cutting, .10 per socket. Then again that should allow them to put the IC in with a Dip inserter and the Axial parts on a VCD. Then you insert the wires before wave soldering the whole thing. snap it out and ship it. Probably saving more from the labor of hand placing the socket and later hand installing the IC in the socket. Still you're not talking much labor for that either.
Of course it makes it harder for repair then.
Ah, yeah. Mine is the older socketed version. The distortion is a problem I've experienced in very low-noise situations. I thought it was just the front-end of the amp overloading, but it was a problem on several different input devices, including my high-headroom DIs. On a little further investigation, I found it was the opamp itself, even though I was in passive mode.
It makes sense because of the way a BJT-input opamp works. If there's no rail voltage, the input is more or less clamped (through the input transistors) to about +/-0.7V, or 1.4V, give or take.
Just so I understand, are you saying that this phenomenon is the same for all G&L preamps when run with the switch in passive mode? Thx.
By nature of the design and the opamp itself, most likely so. The caveat is that a fresh battery will keep the rails high enough that you won't run into clipping, but that sort of defeats the purpose of running strictly passive if you always have to worry about the battery voltage.
I haven't tried it on others, but it's definitely a problem on my bass. I'm about to just flat-out pull the preamp and rewire mine for some other options, but I've run mine sans-opamp for most of the past 7 years.
Cost-cutting as a reason to not socket the Op-Amp? Why do they still do through-board soldering instead of going for a surface-mount design?
