I may or may not have been influenced by Ed Friedland getting a L-2500 750 a few months back, but after owning an G&L SB-2, I decided it was time to check out the last member of Leo Fender's bass designs. The L-1000, L-2000, and L-2500 are not nearly as famous and ubiquitous as the Precision and Jazz Bass designs, or the Stingray, but there are some who swear by them, and they are definitely a bit of a unique take in terms of pickup and preamp design. It's also got the G&L "Saddle lock" bridge, which has a set screw on the side that presses the saddles together, and the bridge itself has a protrusion on the bottom that sticks into the body.
The electronics on the bass are mostly passive, with a take on the G&L Passive Treble Bass system, which are the three knobs. Top switch is for the pickups, center switch is for series or parallel wiring, and the bottom switch is an active preamp buffer, which is off, on, or "treble boost". It's mainly designed for signal integrity over long cable runs, and with it on you do get a bit more bass. However you don't really NEED it in most situations, as the output from the MFD pickups is MASSIVE. I used to have an SB-2 years ago, and like that bass, I need to have the "active" switch turned on to avoid clipping out the preamp of my bass amp. All the sounds are usable, and are somewhere near a p-bass and a stingray in a way. In the series mode the sound is quite aggressive, while the parallel mode is more scooped, and there is definitely more of a variation than I get on my Stingray 5H, which has the series parallel option as well.
This has the "old" headstock for G&L 5 string basses, which has a string retainer for the A string, something I DEFINITELY want. Makes it so much easier to really dig in on the open A string without worrying about nut buzz. I also really don't like their current headstock for the "CLF Research" line that they have now, which looks pretty much like a bloated fender headstock. I also like having the little "spike", which is distinctive to G&L. I had through about getting the three colored switch tips, but decided against it.
