I'm looking at putting a pair of G&L pickups in a bass and I'm wondering what the difference is between the M and L series humbucker?
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G&L MFD pickup differences?
- Thread starter Will_White
- Start date
L series pickups are hotter. M series are underwound by 12%, providing less output but a more bright sound.
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Somehow I missed that in my googling, so for a two pickup bass would an M series neck and an L series bridge work well? Also how well do they do a Musicman-ish tone, I'm planning on pairing them with a DIY 2-band stingray preamp with a master series/parallel switch.
Sorry, I didn't see this. Unfortunately I am not well-versed in electronics. I will sic some G&L club members on you, surely they will help better than I.
@lowfreqgeek @TinIndian @TDR1138
Hmm. That's an interesting idea. Since the MM pre is boost I wonder if an L pup May be too hot with it even in the bridge. I think it would really interesting to try it and see what happens. Curious if the other guys have some thoughts on it.
At one point, I built a 2-band MM preamp copy and put it into an L-1500. It worked, but not as well as I had hoped. As I later learned, the L-series pickups have a resonant peak that's higher than what I felt lended itself to a good tone. The L-2000s and L-1000s address this with a .001uF cap in the circuit, to lower that resonant peak, but the L-1500s do not. I think this may be a reason that some people don't bond with them as well. Anyway, two points to this - 1) if you use an L-series pickup, you might want to add that cap and 2) the M-series pickups don't use/need this cap.
I'd agree with this statement. The M-series pickups were designed specifically to be a preamp-friendly MFD. The L-series pickups were designed to be hot as hell passively. That's not to say that people haven't had success with preamps and L-series pickups, but I'm not sure how they'd combine.
If you want the best resource, Paul Gagon (the guy that designed the M) has a forum page over on the bassesbyleo website. And he's friendly and likes people who want to experiment.
I'd agree with this statement. The M-series pickups were designed specifically to be a preamp-friendly MFD. The L-series pickups were designed to be hot as hell passively. That's not to say that people haven't had success with preamps and L-series pickups, but I'm not sure how they'd combine.
If you want the best resource, Paul Gagon (the guy that designed the M) has a forum page over on the bassesbyleo website. And he's friendly and likes people who want to experiment.
