Incoming: NBD

[Jonesie]

I've been bass-less for a few years now, which I think has been hurting my home recording efforts. I think there was just a mental break where I couldn't make a "real" recording because I didn't have a bass to add to the track.

I've been GASing over a couple of basses for the last few months, specifically a Fender Vintera 50's P in Blonde. However, none of the online music shops offered more than 6 month financing on them, so I had to hold off.

I was looking through some basses on Sweetwater yesterday morning and saw that they had a demo G&L Tribute L-2000 with the teeniest scratch available for $75 off, which brought it to under $30 a month on my Sweetwater card. Consulted with my wife, and I pulled the trigger on it. It shipped out yesterday and is scheduled to deliver on Saturday (originally it was Friday... )

I've only ever played one G&L bass, and it was my buddy's American SB-2, which sounded and played incredibly. I know this is going to be a whole different beast with the MFD Humbuckers and a chunkier and wider neck, but I'm pretty pumped. Should be able to get a bunch of versatile tonez out of it for my recordings.

And now the initial eye candy. Sweetwater was of course nice enough to forward me pictures of the actual bass.





More pictures to follow when it actually shows up in "real life".

[HNB]

That is pretty hot looking!

[HNB]

Cool mild flame in the contour also.

[Jonesie]

Cool mild flame in the contour also.

I noticed that and am a fan of it too. The only wish is that it had a pickguard or control plate or something. There's just so much wood...

[mbene085]

Congrats. Going from being bassless to having a G&L is like going from 0-100 in under five second. Those pickups in there are fantastic and I can't imagine a better or more versatile bass for recording.

[countertext]

Dam-a-lam. That is beautiful.

[Jonesie]

Congrats. Going from being bassless to having a G&L is like going from 0-100 in under five second. Those pickups in there are fantastic and I can't imagine a better or more versatile bass for recording.

I'm in general an MFD fan. I played an ASAT Special a while ago and I was just amazed by the sound. One of the coolest sounding pickups I've ever heard. The tone has haunted me since.

There was someone on the OSG who had a Jag with MFD's too, and I always thought it looked cool as hell.

[marqueemoon]

The correct number of pickups for a bass is 1, but otherwise I fully support this.

[Larry Mal]

Great basses... I had an L-2k for a couple weeks, loved it, the neck was twisted so it had to go back.

But it's a legendary bass for a reason, as you'll come to see. I would have a hard time imagining a more versatile bass for recording.

[mbene085]

There was someone on the OSG who had a Jag with MFD's too, and I always thought it looked cool as hell.

I've got MFD Z-coils in my Bullet Mustang and they're as great a design of pickup as I've ever encountered. All of the advantages of the ASAT jumbo MFDs with no noise.

[Shadoweclipse13]

That orange with a maple neck I've never played anything (guitar or bass) with MFD pickups, but I'm quite curious to see how they sound.

[Larry Mal]

They are very powerful pickups, low noise, great dynamic range, very good frequency range. I have virtually no experience with them on guitars, but on basses MFDs will give you all the tones you could want, you can dial in a simple P-bass thump there, although that's not really what they want to do and it's a little work in the way of twisting knobs a bit.

But if you want a sound that will cut through, they'll do that in spades. Think of the bassist from the Stranglers and the sound he got, MFD pickups on basses get to that sound very easily (although that song was done with a P-bass). Take that with a grain of salt since that's also a bass sound that I like and gravitate towards.

They'll do anything you want, but like I say they are powerful pickups and can easily overpower other things, think of a car that has such a powerful engine that you have to make it obey the rules of the road more than you have to coax it into going fast.

That being said, though, G&L makes those pickups do different things. My L-1000 (the best bass ever designed in my opinion) uses the MFD pickups, and it will do very low and throbbing fundamental bass notes if you want. My SB-1 is more or less a very robust Precision bass with a little more growl on tap, and my L-1500 wants to be a very aggressive bass but you can tame it down to do so low end dub throb if you want.

I can't speak to the L-2000, though, which has its own unique circuitry, pickup placement, and design. All of the basses I've mentioned aren't variants of each other with more or less features, they are basses that look very similar but are actually completely unique designs that get very different sounds by applying design philosophy to the same basic ingredients.

There are a lot of great bass makers out there, G&L is the best in my opinion. I'll be happy to hear what this bass turns out to be.

[Jonesie]

The bass ended up delivering yesterday, which was a nice surprise. I've been playing it for the last 24 hours, and I really enjoy it! I had to work with my cheap GK Backline 600 and 1x15 to get a tone I liked, but I mostly thing that's because it's a cheap-ass amp with a cheap woofy cab.

I find myself gravitating towards three sounds, Neck Series / Neck Parallel / Neck + Bridge Series. The preamp is nice to have, but I'll likely end up leaving it off most of the time. I don't love the bridge pickup by itself, but it has its use. It does the really growly Tony Levin / Music Man thing really well.

People weren't kidding about the neck being chunky and wide. It's been a while since I've played a bass, but the neck on this seems especially spacious. Out of the box the setup is great. Part of that has to do with the Sweetwater setup, I'm sure, but it was nice to take it out of the box and have it ready to go. It was in perfect tune too.

The fit and finish is great on this thing. I got this as a demo model from Sweetwater, the reason was a small finish crack on the treble side of the neck pocket, and what they called a "ding" in front of the neck pickup. The "ding" looks like someone marked the wood with a red marker though, and there's a perfect X there, there's no scratch or anything. It's pretty funny to me, honestly. Here are some home pictures of it. I'm getting a new strap for it this week, it temporarily has my narrow leather acoustic strap on it.

[sessylU]

I'm of the mind that pretty much everything that isn't a Jazz Bass is The Wrong Bass, but that looks awesome. I would absolutely play that.

The "ding" is amazing.

[tribi9]

Im down! Sweet that you got a discount. Those "blemishes" wouldn't mean fuck all to me...

Would love a pickup like that on my Mustang bass.