The bass was listed online as having a Honey finish, but the salesman thought it looked a bit orange. I think he was right, so for now I'm calling the finish Clear Orange. It's definitely darker than my Honeyburst L-2000. The body is very tightly grained swamp ash. IMO this is much more typical of the grain on the very earliest F-100s and L-1000s than what's common in recent production. This bass is very light - I'm guessing around 8 lbs - and has the best-feeling neck in the collection. These come standard with a 1.75" nut, but the 1.5" "Jazz" profile on this one is a perfect match for the body and sound. I'm still working on the setup. It arrived with a back bow, so I'm gradually working the neck to a buzz-free place.
It was getting too late to crank the amp up, but I was able to get a sense of the tones the L-1500 will produce. This model gets some criticism on bass discussion boards for having a very treble sound in active mode. The words "too aggressive" also show up on the web pretty often. With cheap generic roundwound strings, I'm getting a pretty good range of tones. There is quite a bit of treble with the pre-amp on, but it is not at all thin or tinny sounding. It reminds me quite a bit of the tone Peter Hook had with Joy Division and New Order. It's nice and meaty, but it extends nicely into the upper registers. It really seems to like wide intervals, like playing up around the 12th fret while letting an open string ring underneath.
The L-1500 also seems to be very sensitive to the style of playing (pizzicato, picking or slapping) and the right hand's position - probably more so than any of my other G&Ls. I tried a couple of random pedals before I had to turn down, just to see how they would respond. I think this bass will do very nicely with distortion (a Way Huge Swollen Pickle and an EHX Bass Muff tonight), and it really growled through a Moogerfooger Lowpass Filter. It made an EHX CLone Theory sound decent, so I'm really looking forward to hearing it through the Moog Cluster Flux.
More to follow as I explore this bass more over the weekend.
Ken
