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G&L Love
- Thread starter edfriedland
- Start date
With an L-2K on the way from TB Classifieds, I'll ask: anyone ever added a blend, or separate volumes per pickup? Thinking about stacked volumes, each pickup with its own series/parallel/single switch (since I wouldn't need a selector at that point...)
All totally reversible, about 30 mins. worth of work at the soldering table...
All totally reversible, about 30 mins. worth of work at the soldering table...
All you need to know is available here: Dual Concentric Volume for G&L L-2000 - Has anyone done this? | TalkBass.com
Hey Ed. First I love your videos and am glad to read that you are staging a comeback of sorts. They have been truly helpful to me in deciding to purchase on more than one occasion so thank you!
As for your post/rant, I agree. I think G&Ls are fantastic instruments and I am surprised quite frankly, that they are not more valued and revered, especially considering their provenance (Leo, George, etc).
Exactly 20 years ago when I graduated from college and was playing music a lot around NYC, I decided I needed to move from my jazz-bo geek arsenal of fancy ERB stuff and start playing a couple of classics. The two I identified and acquired- an EBMM stingray and a G&L L2000.
And guess which one got all the gig time?!
And my interest was resurrected when the Tributes came out because I was floored that the company could produce such quality at that price. And more impressed that they were ok releasing it knowing it was every bit as good as teh USA made stuff. But it seems to work so good for them.
Anyway, look at that. You haven't filmed a review yet and you've still made my want to go out and get a Tribute L2500!!
Rock on....
As for your post/rant, I agree. I think G&Ls are fantastic instruments and I am surprised quite frankly, that they are not more valued and revered, especially considering their provenance (Leo, George, etc).
Exactly 20 years ago when I graduated from college and was playing music a lot around NYC, I decided I needed to move from my jazz-bo geek arsenal of fancy ERB stuff and start playing a couple of classics. The two I identified and acquired- an EBMM stingray and a G&L L2000.
And guess which one got all the gig time?!
And my interest was resurrected when the Tributes came out because I was floored that the company could produce such quality at that price. And more impressed that they were ok releasing it knowing it was every bit as good as teh USA made stuff. But it seems to work so good for them.
Anyway, look at that. You haven't filmed a review yet and you've still made my want to go out and get a Tribute L2500!!
Rock on....
It's going to be a couple of weeks before I shoot a demo for the MJ5. I've been slaving away at an 8-week video course on walking bass that will be available soon at scottsbasslessons.com… got 7 weeks shot and edited, one more to go and I can get back to product stuff. But I have been playing the MJ5 a lot, and really, really like it! It sounds just like you want it to… versatile too. Feels great to me, just like my L and M 2500s. It's a winner!
i ordered a custom lpb g&l sc2 electric guitar for grunge! I love my guitar, and I have a ton of g&l love (especially for leo's mfd pickups that are on my sc2)...but as for bass? no, i dont like fender basses. the sb2 is what i would take if I had to, but no. 
Just wanted to check in on this thread with something new that made me happy. I've a handful of G&Ls (l1k, l2k, SB1) and especially with the SB-1 always had a love/hate relationship with the MFD pickups - being that they're so hot and bass-strong. I also have always played nickel strings.
Recently I bought a set of Dunlop Super Bright Stainless strings and loaded them on to the SB-1. ｡◕‿◕｡ These strings mate really, really well with the SB-1 pickup and I'd encourage anyone and everyone who is trying to work things out with their MFDs to give this combo a go. The "edge" on the sound is in just the right place.
Recently I bought a set of Dunlop Super Bright Stainless strings and loaded them on to the SB-1. ｡◕‿◕｡ These strings mate really, really well with the SB-1 pickup and I'd encourage anyone and everyone who is trying to work things out with their MFDs to give this combo a go. The "edge" on the sound is in just the right place.
Yes, the MFD's are super hot. I have L-1505's. I lower the pickups and adjust the pole pieces. It's tedious for me because I have to listen to it in context of a song or riff but it's worth the effort. These two things allow me to mellow them out. I've found that I can shape the tone of hot pickups easier than otherwise.
Hi Ed, funny to see this post, as I have been away from TB for a year or so doing sessions etc and forgetting about the site. But the L2000 has always had a place in my heart. Just a monster tone, and awesome bass. It's like a music man/J bass hybrid and it the tonal possibilities are almost overwhelming. Really love them a lot.
Just ordered a new MJ-5, vintage white with matching headstock, maple fingerboard and quarter-sawn neck. Sooo itching for it. My 4th G&L instrument.
BTW, while I like the 4+1 headstock, the 3+2 design keeps wood and that last tuner closer to the body. That's a long moment arm out to the final tuner, so it *will* reduce neck dive.
BTW, while I like the 4+1 headstock, the 3+2 design keeps wood and that last tuner closer to the body. That's a long moment arm out to the final tuner, so it *will* reduce neck dive.
Please post your impressions when you receive it. A recording would be fantastic as there are none in the wild that I have heard anyway
Thanks
According to a comment in this link below, G&L is preparing to release a JB 5er this summer...
(Source : bassesbyleo • View topic - 5-String JB This Summer...?!
(Source : bassesbyleo • View topic - 5-String JB This Summer...?!
Chef
In Memoriam
Just received my new MJ5 last week, first gig last Thursday. Will post pictures and a report.
OK, here goes. New custom-ordered MJ-5 arrived last Tuesday, well-packed and in a vintage-type black tolex case (not the former impact plastic type, and with some shedding fuzz inside). Got very nice service and price from Portland Percussion who are the closest US dealer to me here in Nova Scotia, Canada. I had ordered it in alder, vintage white with matching headstock, and quarter-sawn neck. Fit and finish were excellent all around, your usual G&L job, and I really like the colour with the maple neck. You can see the colour best in the pictures below on the table. The headstock just has the plain G&L logo, no model name. The maple in the neck is nicely dense-grained and quarter-sawn as requested. Nice texture in the fingerboard maple. Tuners are the same aluminum shaft light tuners as in my L2000. So all that's good.
The bass shipped with what I take to be D'Addario XL nickel rounds which didn't, in my view, really do anything for it. I swapped them out for Chromes which I used on my only gig so far, but I'm convinced that TI flats will sound best on this bass for my purposes (classic rock, blues).
The electronics are sort of interesting. As you can see below, the preamp is on a single circuit board that's soldered at one end to the three tabs of the volume control. It cantilevers from there. There's only two wires running to each pickup, so it's certainly not a classical humbucking design. There is a bridge ground wire. I was interested that the control cavity was shielded with graphite paint and the covers with foil; however, there isn't any sort of tab of the graphite paint to make good contact with the cover shield and complete the Faraday cage. I'll likely add that. The pickups are very quiet but not completely hum-free, even when the balance is in the middle of its range (both pickups on). I have dimmers in my quiet basement which are a good test bed for such things. It takes two screws to open the battery compartment, not my first preference. The pickups are good, but not "holy crapoly" good; while the sound is clean and articulate, I don't find a great deal of unique character. [I've A/B'd this bass against my Fralin/Audere J-bass and my G&L Tribute M2000 which shares a similar preamp. Both have more individual character.] When the bass arrived, the pickups were balanced well in terms of neck/bridge volume; however, when set perfectly horizontal the D and G strings were too hot, so I've had to set them higher on the B end and lower on the G end to get optimal balance. It's curious that the blend control doesn't do much blending. On my Tribby M2000, there's a lot of room to tone-shape by varying the blend control. On this instrument, you get the two-pickup "jazz" tone when the blend is indent-centred, but a small rotation either side pretty much takes you into all-neck or all-bridge with very little room for fine shaping. You can get that effect you get on a passive J-bass of rolling one pickup volume back a little to what I call the sweet "choke" point, but that's about it. The treble/mid/bass control each have a very wide gain range and that's good.
In terms of the biomechanics, weight is a reasonably comfortable 9.6 lbs. I expect it'd be a bit heavier in ash. Balance is good, little to no neck-dive even with a smooth strap. The neck has a deliciously smooth satin finish that feels lovely while playing. [My hands don't sweat when I play, so I'm not a great judge of the sticky factor.] The neck certainly has some substance to it, and when I first picked it up, I thought it was bigger than I would like. As time's gone along, though, I've found it very comfortable indeed: more P-bassish in depth than J-bassish. String spacing is 9 mm at the nut and about 17.5 mm at the bridge. I'm not a slapper, so I won't comment on that aspect. The bridge is the usual G&L locking bridge, top-loading only. Very comfortable to play with a pick and palm-mute. Not a sharp edge anywhere. The bass arrived well-intonated but it took some fiddling to sort out relief and string height with either string type. The Pleking allows very nice action set-up, and no bad frets anywhere. Fretwork was very good, but a bit more by way of sharper edges up above fret 17.
First and only gig so far was a classic rock band evening in a mid-sized bar. I usually use my L2000 with this band, so the comparison was interesting. I'm one of these guys who spends hours fiddling with the details of set-up on a bass, but once I'm playing I'm almost completely insenstitive to the details of the mechanics except when they get in the way of what I'm trying to do. C'est la vie. I found the MJ-5 to be very comfortable in performance, nice under the hands and with excellent access up the 22-fret neck. [And, yes, I do like that extra fret.] As Ed Friedland noted in his review of the MJ-4, this bass is *very* articulate and it captures very fine details of what you're doing with your hands, more I think than my L2000. Harmonics ring and string-to-string balance (after the pickup fiddling noted above) was excellent. The B-string is firm and massive in effect. [Of course, with the Chromes it really *is* massive.] Playing higher positions across the B-E-A strings gives a satisfying unity of character string-to-string. Very good to excellent sustain and clarity of individual notes in a chord. Again, I found the overall character of the pickups to be unremarkable—and here the L2000 is a different story with its MFD pickups. In the course of the night, I used the bass in the three settings you could actually achieve with the blend: neck, both, bridge. The neck pickup is satisfyingly P-bassish; the both setting had a bit of a curious volume drop and was Jazzish but not so interesting; the bridge pickup was a treat—very punchy without any annoying honk. Adding some mids and bass to the bridge pickup gave a very articulate, focused tone that was a big winner for me on-stage. On another note, the preamp is not particularly hot and I didn't need to use a pad on my preamp input in passive mode.
So, overall impression? Nice bass. Very pretty, comfortable biomechanics, and with some very nice and usable tones. The pickups are not particularly interesting in terms of their overall character, and the preamp blend implementation is disappointing. I don't find that Chromes have much distinctive character to them (fond of them as I am on some of my basses), and I think that the TI flats will really help this instrument out. I'll report back when I get them on and take them out to inflict noise on the public.
The bass shipped with what I take to be D'Addario XL nickel rounds which didn't, in my view, really do anything for it. I swapped them out for Chromes which I used on my only gig so far, but I'm convinced that TI flats will sound best on this bass for my purposes (classic rock, blues).
The electronics are sort of interesting. As you can see below, the preamp is on a single circuit board that's soldered at one end to the three tabs of the volume control. It cantilevers from there. There's only two wires running to each pickup, so it's certainly not a classical humbucking design. There is a bridge ground wire. I was interested that the control cavity was shielded with graphite paint and the covers with foil; however, there isn't any sort of tab of the graphite paint to make good contact with the cover shield and complete the Faraday cage. I'll likely add that. The pickups are very quiet but not completely hum-free, even when the balance is in the middle of its range (both pickups on). I have dimmers in my quiet basement which are a good test bed for such things. It takes two screws to open the battery compartment, not my first preference. The pickups are good, but not "holy crapoly" good; while the sound is clean and articulate, I don't find a great deal of unique character. [I've A/B'd this bass against my Fralin/Audere J-bass and my G&L Tribute M2000 which shares a similar preamp. Both have more individual character.] When the bass arrived, the pickups were balanced well in terms of neck/bridge volume; however, when set perfectly horizontal the D and G strings were too hot, so I've had to set them higher on the B end and lower on the G end to get optimal balance. It's curious that the blend control doesn't do much blending. On my Tribby M2000, there's a lot of room to tone-shape by varying the blend control. On this instrument, you get the two-pickup "jazz" tone when the blend is indent-centred, but a small rotation either side pretty much takes you into all-neck or all-bridge with very little room for fine shaping. You can get that effect you get on a passive J-bass of rolling one pickup volume back a little to what I call the sweet "choke" point, but that's about it. The treble/mid/bass control each have a very wide gain range and that's good.
In terms of the biomechanics, weight is a reasonably comfortable 9.6 lbs. I expect it'd be a bit heavier in ash. Balance is good, little to no neck-dive even with a smooth strap. The neck has a deliciously smooth satin finish that feels lovely while playing. [My hands don't sweat when I play, so I'm not a great judge of the sticky factor.] The neck certainly has some substance to it, and when I first picked it up, I thought it was bigger than I would like. As time's gone along, though, I've found it very comfortable indeed: more P-bassish in depth than J-bassish. String spacing is 9 mm at the nut and about 17.5 mm at the bridge. I'm not a slapper, so I won't comment on that aspect. The bridge is the usual G&L locking bridge, top-loading only. Very comfortable to play with a pick and palm-mute. Not a sharp edge anywhere. The bass arrived well-intonated but it took some fiddling to sort out relief and string height with either string type. The Pleking allows very nice action set-up, and no bad frets anywhere. Fretwork was very good, but a bit more by way of sharper edges up above fret 17.
First and only gig so far was a classic rock band evening in a mid-sized bar. I usually use my L2000 with this band, so the comparison was interesting. I'm one of these guys who spends hours fiddling with the details of set-up on a bass, but once I'm playing I'm almost completely insenstitive to the details of the mechanics except when they get in the way of what I'm trying to do. C'est la vie. I found the MJ-5 to be very comfortable in performance, nice under the hands and with excellent access up the 22-fret neck. [And, yes, I do like that extra fret.] As Ed Friedland noted in his review of the MJ-4, this bass is *very* articulate and it captures very fine details of what you're doing with your hands, more I think than my L2000. Harmonics ring and string-to-string balance (after the pickup fiddling noted above) was excellent. The B-string is firm and massive in effect. [Of course, with the Chromes it really *is* massive.] Playing higher positions across the B-E-A strings gives a satisfying unity of character string-to-string. Very good to excellent sustain and clarity of individual notes in a chord. Again, I found the overall character of the pickups to be unremarkable—and here the L2000 is a different story with its MFD pickups. In the course of the night, I used the bass in the three settings you could actually achieve with the blend: neck, both, bridge. The neck pickup is satisfyingly P-bassish; the both setting had a bit of a curious volume drop and was Jazzish but not so interesting; the bridge pickup was a treat—very punchy without any annoying honk. Adding some mids and bass to the bridge pickup gave a very articulate, focused tone that was a big winner for me on-stage. On another note, the preamp is not particularly hot and I didn't need to use a pad on my preamp input in passive mode.
So, overall impression? Nice bass. Very pretty, comfortable biomechanics, and with some very nice and usable tones. The pickups are not particularly interesting in terms of their overall character, and the preamp blend implementation is disappointing. I don't find that Chromes have much distinctive character to them (fond of them as I am on some of my basses), and I think that the TI flats will really help this instrument out. I'll report back when I get them on and take them out to inflict noise on the public.
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Every time I try an active J or a J with non-single coils... this is how I feel too
I was so close to getting a MJ-5 but I just liked passive single coils better & went with a MIA J V Standard. I didn't like the MIA J Deluxe V for that same lack of character even in passive mode. (Theres a reason you see a TON of deluxe models up for sale)
I'd be REALLY interested in G&L making a LB-105 that sticks to passive. I love my LB-100
