Installing G&L pickup and wiring harness, advice needed.

[Yok]

Hey there.

What I have gone and done is purchased a brand new G&L MFD bass pickup and wiring harness to make one of my basses like an L-1500. The wiring harness is the standard design for an L-2000.

My housemate has done some wiring work on guitar, but nothing this intricate (He's used to simple passive or EMG) and gave it a good go, but he's not sure where it went wrong.

The problems:
Volume drop out
Signal distorting
Signal VERY underpowered
Low tone for a hot pickup.

We figure it is something very simple, but just out of reach of our knowledge. But that's sometimes the risk of experimentation!

He based everything from a hand-drawn diagram of L-1500 wiring and the 'official' diagram for the L-2000 and may become unstuck from there.


Anyone who has had experience with this kind of wiring and this kind of signal malfunction, your advice would be GREATLY appreciated!

Cheers!

 

[Technicality]

It could be lots of things, such as a short somewhere, a broken wire that is barely contacting, a problem with the preamp, one of the pots or the output jack wired incorrectly or faulty, a faulty or wired backwards pickup coil etc.

If it's the L2000, you should have a switch that disengages the preamp, so you can probably rule out preamp issues if the switch position doesn't make a difference. From there I would probably take a multimeter and check for shorts between the hot and shielding. From there you are going to have to isolate bits of the circuit until you find the problem.

 

[Yok]

Well, that sounds like an absolute ball-ache.
Now to find a multimeter...

Cheers for the advice.

 

[Killed_by_Death]

Wait, you did all that work w/o the advantage of having a multi-meter?


You can get them at Harbor Freight for peanuts.

 

[Yok]

We don't live in a country that has such a store.

Let's say the guy doling it was pretty sure of his abilities, until now. Hahaha.

 

[Yok]

NEW QUESTION: I purchased a single MFD humbucker and wiring harness for an L-2000, how would I go about making it an L-1500 and what is the best diagram or help online out there for it?

 

[Killed_by_Death]

When I was in Thailand, I bought a Chinese multi-meter for $3. It's still working (ten years later), and my only analog meter.

G&L Wiring Diagrams and Schematics

 

[Yok]

Cheers, I'll compare the two diagrams.

 

[Technicality]

NEW QUESTION: I purchased a single MFD humbucker and wiring harness for an L-2000, how would I go about making it an L-1500 and what is the best diagram or help online out there for it?

I'm pretty sure the diagrams on bassesbyleo.com are legit. I've used them before as a reference when messing about with my L2000. It looks to me like the circuit structure is pretty much exactly the same, but without the pickup selector switch (because there is only one pickup).

From what I can see the L-2000 circuit is laid out like this:

pickups -> series/parallel 4PDT switch -> pickup selector DP3T switch -> passive bass/treble -> preamp & preamp bypass switch -> output jack

and the L-1500 goes like this:

pickup -> series/parallel DPDT switch -> passive bass/treble -> preamp & preamp bypass switch -> output jack

So to convert from one to the other you would ideally remove both the series/parallel and pickup selector switches and add a DPDT switch. You could re-use the DP3T switch as a DPDT and I think it would still work (with the middle position muting the pickups).
[edit: or you could actually also use one half of the 4PDT switch, which makes a bit more sense]

Everything that happens once the signal reaches the treble pot stays the same.