Epiphone Thunderbird Pickups

[dido__15]

I realise this topic has been covered before, but all the threads are pretty much dead now and I haven't found a definitive answer so here goes.

I love the look of my thunderbird but I'm less than happy with the sound and want to replace the pickups.

I realise that there are few if any drop-in replacement pickups for the epiphone thunderbird, however I recently saw one that had been modded with two £20 eastwood single coils, and so I had the idea to turn my bird into the ric I've always wanted. I plan on replacing the pickups with a set of Seymour Duncan SRB-1's, but need to come up with some sort of mounting ring. The simplest way would be to use the covers for the stock pickups, but that cancels out any chance of re-selling them.

Does anybody make pickup shrouds for the thunderbird?
Has anybody else tried this?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Dido

 

[dog1]

Well, the resale value of the stock pups may not be very high. The truth is, there may not be much of a market for them at all. Maybe you should just modify the bass the way you want it and worry about selling the spare parts later.

 

[Webtroll]

Well, the resale value of the stock pups may not be very high. The truth is, there may not be much of a market for them at all. Maybe you should just modify the bass the way you want it and worry about selling the spare parts later.

+1 Older Gibson TBird PUs go for a lot of money and are uncommon, but not the Epiphone pickups. Used Epi TBirds can get pretty cheap and I've seen a number of them with replacement PUs so you're not the only one who doesn't care for them.

As far as the SD Rick PUs are concerned I've only owned a couple of Ricks and had a hard time getting them to sound good, but that could be related to my not knowing about the extra cap so I'm going to give one another run. My last Rick had SDs and not only didn't it sound like other Ricks but I didn't care for it. I'm not trying to talk you out of the PUs, just warning you it prolly won't give you the Rick sound you are after. Maybe if you find actualy Rick PUs (assuming the spacing will work)?

Oddly enough I've heard a couple of good sounding TBirds with J style PUs and at one point I came close to pulling the trigger on one with Bartolini J PUs (I don't remember what I got instead).

 

[dido__15]

Many thanks for the replies, are there any other good quality ric replacement pickups? The duncans are the only ones I've seen and the price that actual ric ones go for is 3 times what I paid for the bass so I don't fancy going for those

Dido

 

[Dave Vader]

I've got a set of SDs in my Tokai Ric clone, they're not brilliant, but neither do they suck. Won't sound like a Ric, due to being Humbuckers not Single coil, and the spacing will be all wrong. Try Kent Armstrong soapbars, they're close looking, and not as ugly sounding as the epis, plus they're relatively cheap.

 

[Mark D]

Ive been using the Epi t Bird for 3years now, and have had no problem with the sound or tone of the pick ups, to be honest I even found them to be better sounding than the original t-bird, as the build and electronics are much better, maybe you should look at what type of sound your looking to achieve and get a bass that will allow you get the sound you need, as the T-bird is a real rock bass, solid bottom end and deep tones, I even have trouble trying to get the bird to distort!! if you were trying slap/pop on these axes, well that aint gonna happen! Happy hunting dude!