Yep, my '79 t-40 which I got back in '02 seems like perfection to me. At least as perfect as a big heavy bass can be. It's Rock solid, almost never needs a setup and sounds great. It's got the toaster pups which are thick and warm and round. It doesn't quite have the attack of the later blade models but I really like it. When soloed, The bridge pickup is plenty clear and the neck pickup sounds like a better version of the mudbucker telebass. When fender finally released the two pickup mudbucker telebass I had always dreamed of I plugged it in played it for a few minutes and immediately realised there wasn't a thing it could do that my t-40 couldn't do better.
The '45 sounded very solid, much like a powerful, slightly thicker p-bass. It was of course a blade model pickup and had some of the boomyness but it was still a fairly clear sounding pickup. A toaster pickup in a mid position (was never produced AFAIK) would definitely end up on the muddy side of things. As for mine, when I got it the neck looked like it might be developing a ski jump. A local luther straitened it right out but it was always in the back of my mind that it might happen in the future so I parted with it when I got my Carlo. I already had a P-bass and when I played it I just didn't see when I would rather take it on stage than my T-40, DS frankenbass or my Carlo. That made it easy to let it go as my more recent standard for instruments is would I (assuming I was playing out again) ever take it on stage? It was a fun bass, but if I ever buy another 34" mid-humbucker bass (unlikely at this point) it will be an L-1000. They're both good but I think the 1000 is a better sounding and noticably lighter bass.
As to the G&L's, the numbering is slightly confusing. L-2000 is as you have seen, the L-1500 is basically an L2000 without a neck pickup and the L-1000 has one 'bucker in the middle aproximately in the P-position. I prefer the 1000 to the 1500, but you don't see to many 1500's around. I think folks who want a 1500 just go to for the 2000 for added flexibility.
Thanks for the notes on basswood. I've thought for several years that many of the cheap basses made with basswood sound quite nice and though I'm still comparatively young -and despite my love of the t-40-, I am really coming to appreciate the comfort of a lightweight instrument. When I got my Carlo (basically a 4-94 with 35" scale) the swamp ash body was so incredibly light and comfortable that my weighty 55-01 almost immediately went on the block.
Lastly, here's a neat comparison of the T-40 and T-45 bass pickup positions. There is almost no -perhaps no- overlap between them (see that the -45 has one more fret than the 40).
I don't know what kind of insanity the wiring would be but it's hypothetically possible to build a bass that would have the sonic possibilities of the 40, 45, and alot of other variations in the same instrument!
Thanks! The two I built are similar but very different sounding for a few reasons. The Teiscobird (it looks black but it's a colour called "hand rubbed bronze metallic") body is mahogany from the mid 60's (original MIJ Teisco or Silvertone), the RI Guild Darkstar is a single-coil and the bridge is top-load. The TeiscoT45bird has a basswood body, is string-thru, and has the T-40 pu in the original Gibson T-bird II position. (4" to center from the neck-butt) Everything else (necks, tuners, electronics) are the same. The Teiscobird pu position is more like a Stingray or G&L L-1000. So they both are big sounding, but the T-40 has that thicker hum-bucker tone and the single cuts through more in the mid-range and has the hum with the treble up. To my ears I like them both, but the T-40 gets a bit boomy on its own and needs more volume to fill its place in the mix. For my particular playing style - I'm playing right over the Darkstar where as I'm playing below the T-40. Another player will find their right hand closer to the neck and over the T-40 pu. Both basses weigh about the same (light!) but the basswood TeiscoT45bird is more resonant unplugged. This is partially due to it being string-thru, but the basswood was just more naturally resonant when I did the knuckle-clunk test on both unassembled suspended bodies. Add in a natural difference between mahogany and basswood - the 50yr old mahogany is a softer wood than the (recent) denser basswood. Both necks are maple/rosewood, both basses are strung w/medium rounds, both basses have 500k pots and .047f caps. It's been cool having two basses so similar but due to subtle differences are so different.
Speaking of which, a heavy bass (over 10lbs) is a deal-breaker for me so there are a few basses out there (like the T-40, the Ibanez Black Eagle, the Ovation Magnum and Ampeg Scroll bass to name a few) that I've had interest in but due to the weight I've never played/owned. But I do like the T-40 pu's and just bought 2 more so eventually they'll end up in a nice light body!
