Upgrading G&L Electronics

GreeneKing · Saturday at 13:56

At the risk of being accused of sacrilege I decided to look at ways of altering my lovely US L2500 CLF's electronics. I found that the treble cut did nothing to my ears. My ears aren't great but I've read that others have had similar issues. I had checked everything through a couple of times and it was all that it should be.

I didn't want to do anything that wasn't reversible. This is an expensive instrument. It sounds really great given that I can't significantly roll off the treble with onboard controls. I love it!

I spoke to John East. A Uni Pre 3 knob would have done the job well but it would need to be modified to accept a single input (I want to use the existing 3 position pickup selector) and the 3 knob version has no passive tone control.

The EMG BQC Control seemed to be suitable. It is a 3 EQ +/- preamp with sweepable mids.

I sourced a 250K/250k concentric pot (Allparts) and set it up as volume over tone, no treble bleed circuit and a 0.047uf tone capacitor. I replaced the 3 way active/passive switch with a 2 way. The passive volume and tone output switches either to the jack socket or via the BQC. I put a 10M resistor across it to mitigate any 'pop' on switching. It works to a large extent.

There was a lot of wiring and soldering involved. I had to turn the series/parallel switch through 90 degrees to get everything to fit. I checked connections as I went along but I suspected it would need some fault finding when complete. It worked straight off the bat! Given that the volume was back to front, easily sorted.

I'm really pleased. The passive tone works subtly but as I expect. It's always in circuit. The active treble control is again subtle but useable. The bass and sweepable mids are stronger but nothing silly.

The active pre gives hardly any noticeable boost. The ability to roll off the treble is what I want and I have it. Adding a variety of mids is also very useful.

The EMG knobs are awful. I'm sure that they used to be a nice moulded rubber. These are a horrible plastic and the top catches on the bottom.

So a success. Everything added and nothing taken away - except for those knobs.