I have a beautiful 4-string Ernie Ball Musicman Stringray, but I'm not crazy about the stock pickup. I LOVE the MFD pickup and passive electronics in old G&L basses such as the L-1000 and L-2000. Does anyone have experience installing a G&L MFD pickup in a Stingray? Do you anticipate any issues replacing the Stingray's active electronics with the passive electronics from a G&L? Your advice is greatly appreciated.
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Installing G&L MFD pickup in EB Musicman Stingray
- Thread starter demackay
- Start date
Does the Sabre have the same pickups as a Stingray? How was the fit, physically? I heard that MFDs are slightly smaller than the Alnico Stingray pickups.
Thanks for your reply!
What is it about the stock EBMM pickup that you don't like? What eq does it have, 2- or 3-band?
Sabre pickups are slightly smaller than Stingray pickups, and slightly larger than MFD's, hard to tell, but:
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G&L MFD's
You wouldn't be able to [nicely] install smaller pickups in a Stingray, unless you get a custom pickguard that will cover the excess space in the original pickup route.
Before you go and try to morph a Stingray into a G&L...why not sell the Stingray and buy a G&L?
EDIT: note how much the Sabre resembles the L2000; bridge, control layout...
Sabre pickups are slightly smaller than Stingray pickups, and slightly larger than MFD's, hard to tell, but:
Invalid Link Removed
G&L MFD's
You wouldn't be able to [nicely] install smaller pickups in a Stingray, unless you get a custom pickguard that will cover the excess space in the original pickup route.
Before you go and try to morph a Stingray into a G&L...why not sell the Stingray and buy a G&L?
EDIT: note how much the Sabre resembles the L2000; bridge, control layout...
sabre and mfd pickups are the same size with slightly different shaped casings (which can be swapped.) if you swap the platic pickup cover, the sabre and G&L pickups are interchangeable.
However the stingray pickup is quite a bit larger than both the sabre and G&L so it won't work.
I have a few stingray covers with no pole piece holes so if you want to rig up the G&L pickup inside of one of those pm me. With some foam and springs you can hide a G&L pikcup under a stingray cover with no holes in it.
However the stingray pickup is quite a bit larger than both the sabre and G&L so it won't work.
I have a few stingray covers with no pole piece holes so if you want to rig up the G&L pickup inside of one of those pm me. With some foam and springs you can hide a G&L pikcup under a stingray cover with no holes in it.
Fair enough....
Funny you mention not liking the tone of your 3-band.
I have a 3-band Stingray, which I stopped liking the tone of a whole ago. It made me evn consider selling or trading it up for something else...but I couldn't bring myself to do it because I love how it plays.
After much deliberation, I went and got a Seymour Duncan STC-3M4 preamp for it. A lot of people say that upgrading anything on an EBMM is really not an upgrade at all...mostly a downgrade. But when it comes to THIS preamp issue, nothing could be farther from the truth.
The SD preamp, from what I have read here & there, is that the engineer at SD who designed it, looked at all the best-loved 2-band preamp versions that MM came out with (pre EB) and pretty much through the electronics, took the best features and put them into a 3-band version, while trying not to insert the worst features of the old 2-bands.
Even before I read this, I was listening to a lot of clips of early 2-band Stingrays and came to that conclusion my self, that the SD preamp is voiced to sound like the 2-bands in a 3-band configuration. The beauty is, that you can also make it sound like the original 3-bnad by simply boosting the Mids of the preamp.
I have encountered only one issue regarding the installation of the SD pre, because I used the original EBMM pickup. SD recommends using their MM replacement pickup....and here's why.
The SD MM pickup is a 4-wire + shield design. There is a bare wire that you connect to ground, and it shields the pole pieces. The EBMM pickup is only a 2-wire with no shield. Only one hot, one ground. When I installed the preamp, I was getting some hum and noise, especially when I touched the pole pieces. I thought about the lack of a shield, and after calling SD tech support, they confirmed my reasoning.
A simple fix was to cut thin strips of shielding tape and place them over the poles in the underside of the pickup, and then run a wire connecting the tape to a solder ground in the control cavity. All noise is now gone, and it's a simple modification that is easily reversible.
kind of like this (not my pic):
Wondering why the original preamp didn't have this problem, I sort of looked at the PCB and where the pickup wires connect. The black wire does not come directly to ground (white is hot, black is ground); it comes in contact with resistors and capacitors within the PCB which may cancel out the noise.
But anyway, after all that long-windedness, I do have to say that changing the preamp did wonders for the bass' tone. It has more "chunk" and has a lot more frequency variation to it than the original does. I recommend it.
Hi! nice to found this thread..
I’m going to mod my sterling bass (3 band eq stock preamp) with 2 GNL L2500 pickup & standard 5 way switch pickup selector.. do you guys have a better complete wiring diagram i can use?
I’m going to mod my sterling bass (3 band eq stock preamp) with 2 GNL L2500 pickup & standard 5 way switch pickup selector.. do you guys have a better complete wiring diagram i can use?
Has there been any progress on this front? Im intrigued by the idea of an mfd split in the spot that shall not be named…
