Thunderbird Goth pickup

[snaggletooth]

I've got an Epiphone Goth Tunderbird wich is gonna get some modifications.
I usually plays an Epiphone Eb and uses the mini humbuker (bridge) for overdrive bass-sound and it sounds just the way i want it.
The thunderbird diden't sound as good at all with the same setup (using the bridge pickup offcourse). Way to "blurry"/"muddy" and lo-frequent.
Therefore i changed to a Cimar P-bass single coil I stole from an old crapy bass i've had laying around.
This sounded a lot closer to what i wanted but the feedback is completly horrible. It feeds even a little while i'm playing (cheep pickup afterall).
It diden't feed so bad in the Cimar so i guess it's somthing with the sustain in the extremly light maghogny wood in the goth thunderbird.

I'm gonna buy a proper pickup. What should i go for?


Will all singe coils feed in this bass bacouse of the sustain or did I just get a cheap **** pickup from the Cimar. They got som nice single coils on that site but they all seem to be high-gain modern pickups (recomended by seymour duncan for metal and such) or Jazz-bass picups (wich realy don't fit the bass because of they're size)
Then the've got the Höfner pickups wich is real vintage stuff but this beeing a normal humbucker might bring me back to the issue with the original pickup (blurry, muddy distorsion due to lo-frequent sound)

Any suggestions may help...thanx

[kyral210]

I have an Epiphone Les Paul guitar, and I have turned it from crap into gold dust. It now plays in comparison to a £2k PRS! In some ways I actually prefer my Les Paul. The same mods will apply to your bass.

1) New pickups. I STRONGLY recommend EMG 35DC pickups, two of them. I am 99% certain you will need to route out the cavity to fit them, but lets be honest, the Epiphone bass is very cheap. get a guitar tech to fit these for you. That will get you a long way closer to that magic tone. plus, you only need to change the batterys (2 for 18v) once every 2 years with normal playing.



2) New Saddles. The string is going to vibrate from this all the time, so get some Graph Tech String Saver thunderbird saddles. They are a little rare, but not too hard to come by when you go mail order. This improves the tone no end.

3) New nut. Get a guitar tech to do this for you. Again, get a Graph Tech Trem Nut as they sound awesome! make sure your tech sets the nut to 0.4mm clearance on the E string and 0.3mm clearence on the G string. He will know what your talking about.

4) Get a pro setup. As your guitar tech is doing all of the above for you, ask him to do a Pro Setup. That is setting the string height, action, relief ect.. perfect.

5) D'addario Pro Steel strings bring out the growl in any bass, buy them and nothing else!


If you need any help, i STRONGLY recommend the book 'How to Make Your Electric Guitar Sing'. it is an incredible book and teaches you how to be a guitar tech!

I hope this helps.