Wednesday 4/25 Lunch Report

[Ken Baker]

Hump Day!

It's good to be the king.

Lunch is to be determined, but will likely be inhouse. Probably a chunk of leftover T-bone, a slice of rye bread toast, and water.

Who mods their instruments? Replace pickups? Add a preamp where one didn't previously exist? Vice-versa? How about making minor changes to the circuit, such as swapping out caps or pots? We can even talk about the dreaded barrel jack (there's a mod for that!).

As a follow-up to all those questions: First; why do you mod; what does the mod give you that the original did not? Second; are your mods reversible, or does it not matter to you?

I've modded my USA L-2500 pretty extensively. It has a fully active 3 band preamp system, an Aguilar OBP-3. It also has my bridge mod, which uses machine screws and nuts to anchor the bridge plate to the body. Both of these mods can make major changes to the instrument's sound, yet the bass remains true to its MFD-powered heart and clearly has the G&L sound. Both mods are totally reversible.

So what you got cooking? Mod-wise, that is.

[louis cyfer]

i like that bridge mod. very clever. i mod all my guitars, but the bluesboy is the least modded one, only the pups and the control plate has been changed, and of course it has no pickguard and no screw wholes. my standard strat mod in changing the nut to delron cl5oo, adding a villex midboost jack, polishing the saddles, resurfacing the mating surface of the trem block and the bridge plate, changing the pots to a bournes low torque linear volume pot, a push push 250 allparts tone 1 pot(expander switch) and a high torque bourns audio taper tone 2. scott henderson mod with superswitch for the 5 way, tone controls are out of the circuit in position 2 and 4 on the switch. also i change the cap to a pio .022 or .1 depending on the pups used. the bridge pups in on tone 2 and the mid and neck on tone 1. i do the fezz parka mod to the tone circuit instead of a treble bleed. i also add an aluminum plate under the pickguard, i have a few original 59-60 aluminum plates from fender that my friend bought from forrest white after he left fender, and i use those or the callaham ones. they get shielding if don't already have it. i also put in a quick connect between the jack and the pickguard for easy removal. of course the pups get changed, at least so far they have on every guitar. i think that is it for the basic mods i always do.

these mods hep the guitar to do what i want from it, flexibility and tone wise. i get the tone controls to work the way i like them and change the tone for the better at least for me.

[KenC]

Ken,

I don't mod my G&Ls, period. Then again, the majority of my G&Ls are over thirty years old and have for the most part escaped any modification by previous owners. It just wouldn't feel right changing anything on them this late in the game. I may be more inclined to customize a recent instrument if I ever get one. I could see converting a recent ASAT or Classic to match the SC-1 circuit.

I have modified a couple of guitars I owned prior to catching the G&L bug, but it's been to address problems with the original design or construction. I replaced the nut and tuners on a 70's Japanese Strat copy (which otherwise couldn't be tuned), and changed the jack location and control layout on an ~1980 Epiphone Genesis (since the original top-mounted jack design was known to break out of the wood and destroy the instrument).

The other case I'm generally OK with some modding is when I salvage a guitar from parts. My son and I have been working on a badly mangled MIM Duo Sonic, which we will repaint and probably use aftermarket pickups on. I have another box of mid-60s Duo Sonic parts that will come back together with Duncan pickups, just due to the cost of originals. The bass I've been playing since high school is a collection of vintage Fender and Dimarzio parts, which otherwise would have been thrown away by a couple of guitar shops in the early 80s.

Ken C

[westsideduck]

I'm more into restoration then modification with my old G&Ls, I do have a 82 S-500 I got on the cheap and it was already routed for some Duncans so I'm fitting it with a NOS set of blade pups and turning it into a S-500 Special, I did refinish it and I am moving the controls down a notch and putting the jack in the side because I do sometimes hit the volume knob while wildly strumming.

[asphalt-abate]

I don't mod, mainly because I don't have the time. Any spare time I get I use to pactice. But I have modded in the past and I'm usually not happy with the results. Back about 1980 I put a Bill Lawerence twin blade in my Electra MPC. I really wish I hadn't done that as the guitar is worth more with the original pickup. My main player right now is a 2009 Am Standard Telecaster, which is a guitar ripe for modding, at least a pickup change. I know I wont keep it for more than a year or two so it's easier for me to keep it original and sell it original. I did replace the nut but only because Fender put a nut with mis-aligned string cuts on it. Modding ain't my thing, at least not for the time being.

[darwinohm]

I'm a day late but have been under the weather.

I am not much for modding and generally leave them alone. I did put the "Ken" bridge mod in my L2500 and a good one it is. I have three restos which I should get back into but I have to bee in the mood. By the way Duck, that is a cool S-500 resto. -- Darwin