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G&L Club Part 7

Anybody know if G&L has still been building at lightning speed? Just over the two week mark on my LB and wondering if I should expect it in the next week or so like I did with my ASAT

That's been the way it's going for 2-3 months now. With the usual summer slow-down in sales, I haven't been sending them as many orders recently, though, so my data set has shrunk a bit.
 
I have ruled out all but the bass. The humming stops when I touch anything on the bass. (Strings, knobs and bridge). Should I add a ground somewhere in the cavity?
As already posted it sounds like the bridge ground wire is not making good contact with the bridge. The wire is trapped under the bridge and over time gets pressed into the wood and also tends to oxidise.

To check the resistance plug a jack with an exposed metal plug into the output jack and measure the resistance between the metal plug case and the bridge.

If this is greater than about 1 ohm I would do the bridge ground mod, as detailed here - Bridge grounding
 
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Anybody know if G&L has still been building at lightning speed? Just over the two week mark on my LB and wondering if I should expect it in the next week or so like I did with my ASAT

I dont have it yet but its been two weeks since I sent my L2K order back for a new neck. It took about three weeks in the first place so... theres a mixed bag of info for ya. Positive may or may not be a takeaway.
 
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What if I do not have a jack with an exposed metal plug. Is there another way to measure before removing the bridge?
Take a known good jack lead*, plug one end into your bass and measure to the ground connection on the other end.

*If you want to be really precise measure the resistance of the ground conductor in the jack lead before you start and subtract this from any readings you make on the guitar.

Ok so I just measured as you said to do. When I took a reading from the bridge it was jumping all over. When I took the reading from the bridge saddle's it was reading around 2ohms. It was reading less than two on the strings. When I took a reading at the knobs it was all over the place. Not sure what that means.
This doesn't make sense, measuring between the jack and the bridge you don't get a solid reading but jack to saddle you do! The bridge, saddles, and strings (unless coated when all bets are off) are in as good contact with each other as you are ever going to get so jack to bridge/saddles/strings should be near as damn it identical.
 
So after trying to measure again this morning the bridge, strings and saddle's all read well below 5ohms. I forgot to mention that the humming starts up when I have the treble at 50%. Anything below that and you cannot hear it. But like I said it disappears when I touch the strings or bridge.

I'd be curious what the shielding is like inside your control cavity. Despite the quality of many things they do, G&L is haphazard about shielding their control cavities. Often there's little more than one coat of conductive paint in there that may or may not actually make electrical contact with any metal film on the inner surface of the cavity cover plate. It takes about 3 coats of that paint to get reasonable conduction of RF to ground, and there needs to be tabs of the paint brought up over the lip of the cavity to give good contact with the inside of the plate. I've re-done most of mine with copper (and cut myself repeatedly with the edges of the foil) to get the basses to be nearly silent with the dimmers in my basement. What have you got in there?
 
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I'd be curious what the shielding is like inside your control cavity. Despite the quality of many things they do, G&L is haphazard about shielding their control cavities. Often there's little more than one coat of conductive paint in there that may or may nor actually make electrical contact with any metal film on the inner surface of the cavity cover plate. It takes about 3 coats of that paint to get reasonable conduction of RF to ground, and there needs to be tabs of the paint brought up over the lip of the cavity to give good contact with the inside of the plate. I've re-done most of mine with copper (and cut myself repeatedly with the edges of the foil) to get the basses to be nearly silent with the dimmers in my basement. What have you got in there?

I can't remember where I read it, but this seems like a shielding issue instead of a grounding issue, as whatever article I read stated that grounding issues would start humming when you touch the strings, and shielding is whenever the opposite happens. I don't know much about G&Ls shielding process, but it was a problem for a frankenbass I made a couple of years ago, and it didn't go away until I lined the control cavity with copper tape.
 
So after trying to measure again this morning the bridge, strings and saddle's all read well below 5ohms.

I forgot to mention that the humming starts up when I have the treble at 50%. Anything below that and you cannot hear it. But like I said it disappears when I touch the strings or bridge.

5 ohms bridge to jack resistance is a little high IMO but I don't know at what point it starts to become a problem. If mine get to more than 1 ohm they get my version of the bridge grounding mod.

Without having your bass on my bench I am struggling to think what could be wrong.
 
5 ohms bridge to jack resistance is a little high IMO but I don't know at what point it starts to become a problem. If mine get to more than 1 ohm they get my version of the bridge grounding mod.

Without having your bass on my bench I am struggling to think what could be wrong.

The grounding is fine. That is quite obvious. The issue is a total lack of shielding.
 
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How do I shield the cavity? I have the copper tape.

Line it...

EC59E286-D7C8-4C09-AC5E-5FBE914AAE18.jpeg
 

You have to take out the controls etc. to do this. Then when you put them back in, making holes in the foil for the various shafts to go through the guitar, the control body/nut assemblies make electrical contact with the foil all the way around—and of course be sure to foil the inner surface of the control cavity cover so that a fully conducting, fully grounded chamber is created (Faraday cage). Make sure that there is full electrical connection across each of the overlaps in the foil.
 
I had a tribby SB2 a few years back that I modded with a stack knob setup on each shaft.
1) Vol/bal/pp for series of neck/bridge pups.
2) passive treble/bass cut circuit.

Hipshot ultralights and D-tuner.
It was fuel in the firesale to get my Dolphin.

It was super light, sunburst with a black guard. What a monster.

I have an 80s SB2 with the dual soapbar MFDs... I gotta take it out and fix the wiring.
Did you build that yourself while you worked there? Can you post a pic?

I wonder if it may have had any influence for this drawing (dating jan '89)
which was posted on CLF Research's FB page
30582151_572445416472105_1422149871699230720_n.jpg

Kinda funny, as I was thinking an SB/Kilo body with 2 M-series pickups and a simple passive wiring would be a damn cool bass.
Pretty cool they were already thinking about that nearly 30 years ago.

30571876_572445453138768_8626536281821675520_n.jpg
 
I would. When I had my Aerodyne sheilded I had the pickup cavities and the control cavity sheilded, and where the wire from the pickups passes through a bore, braided stainless sleeving was slid over the wire & soldered to the sheilding.

Its very quiet now, even when faced with high levels of RF from all the wireless mics at church & the house lighting dimmers.
 
Now should I also do the pickup cavities?

I've heard that that is recommended, but I didn't do mine. I was only having issues at my house and not the church where I regularly play, and doing just the cavity worked for me. I had the same issue as you at home (noise when I wasn't touching the strings) and would have kept going if I felt the need. But lining the cavity cleared it up. I never had a problem at church (well grounded) even before shielding.