Just realized it has a truss wheel, nice!
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NAMM standout - McGrath basses
- Thread starter BGroovy
- Start date
CormacBass
Commercial User
She’s been dressed and now I’m dialing in pickup heights. Setup wise the bass came pretty dialed in. Intonation was perfect and I haven’t needed to adjust anything after its first week back in dry Colorado. The neck is right up my alley and I’m loving these deep and thunderous sounds with a narrow nut width. The neck has a very light finish if you’re into satin this will be right up your alley. I may hit it with a thin coat of gun oil and wax since it’s a light colored maple and I don’t want my dirty mits to totally discolor it.
Pickup wise the EMG J is a bit thin for my taste, but I raised it pretty high and now the J options are much better. My preference would probably be to drop an overwound Lollar in the bridge.
The tbird + P is still going to be my focus with this bass. It’s what drew me to it and I’m really enjoying that tone. This will likely slot in as my super P with that combo.
After adjusting the pickup heights the three pickups blended are actually a fun sound as well. I’ll have to spend more time exploring that.
A few people have asked about in between blended options and from a cursory exploration I’m finding that there’s a very narrow range on the volume controls for blending. Seems if you go below about 7 on a knob it sounds like the pickup is dropped out. May need to explore pot values for more range if you’re a blender. For me I’m only going to run these pickups fully on in different combos.
Next up is getting my pedal board dialed in - primarily the empress compressor. I mainly play active basses so I’ll need to do some gain staging to get this ready for rehearsal.
Having a good time with this one and just getting started
Pickup wise the EMG J is a bit thin for my taste, but I raised it pretty high and now the J options are much better. My preference would probably be to drop an overwound Lollar in the bridge.
The tbird + P is still going to be my focus with this bass. It’s what drew me to it and I’m really enjoying that tone. This will likely slot in as my super P with that combo.
After adjusting the pickup heights the three pickups blended are actually a fun sound as well. I’ll have to spend more time exploring that.
A few people have asked about in between blended options and from a cursory exploration I’m finding that there’s a very narrow range on the volume controls for blending. Seems if you go below about 7 on a knob it sounds like the pickup is dropped out. May need to explore pot values for more range if you’re a blender. For me I’m only going to run these pickups fully on in different combos.
Next up is getting my pedal board dialed in - primarily the empress compressor. I mainly play active basses so I’ll need to do some gain staging to get this ready for rehearsal.
Having a good time with this one and just getting started
Last edited:
And carbon rods. This thing would be a beast in BEAD and I may cut a new nut to try it out.
the thunderhorse looks really badass! Are thw McGraths offer any solid colors? As in non-stained?
CormacBass
Commercial User
Totally, its got two dragon plate carbon rods. I made the nut slot a standard size so a Graph Teh Model 3834-00 wont need much work to fit nicely. A drop of CA glue and you're good to go.
CormacBass
Commercial User
I have recently strated working with a new paint guy so get more solid colors. In saying that I like the wood grain look, it really resonated with people at Namm too. I am going to do a a lot more alder bodies going forward for weight reason and the grain on those is not as pronounced.
Impromptu drop in to lay down some bass on a few dub and hip hop adjacent tracks. Brought the Thunderhorse along for some deep low end. Works great into my synth pedalboard, spent a lot of time running it through the Doom2.
Next up I’m going to dial in a “Ramble On” JPJ tone with it.
Next up I’m going to dial in a “Ramble On” JPJ tone with it.
I've been going back and forth on my plans to make the Thunderhorse active. Nice thing is I could do a full build on a second pickguard and swap pretty easily if I need to. I'm going to wire something up on a board with long alligator leads to connect the pickups and see how it sounds before I start hacking into the pickguard.
I have an old 18V Bart NS2TMB out of a Zon that has the 18V buffer so it does well equalizing passive pickups with different impedances. I've been playing my Stingray Special a lot and am very comfortable with a 4 knob Vol/Treb/Mid/Bass setup.
I thought about using a rotary or strat style selector but would have to choose my favorite pickup combos OR it would need to be a 7 way selector to cover every option, and I'd never be able to switch between songs and figure out what's engaged.
My current thinking is to just lean into the already over the top nature of this bass and go full switchblade do it all. 4 Knobs + 4 Mini Toggles
Knobs:
At least it would be symmetrical with 4 knobs and 4 toggles
Noodling on the layout. Might put the mini toggles between the P pickup and volume knob.
ALSO - I got another 2 hours in with the Thunderhorse last night and it is quickly going to become my primary P bass. I've said it 10 times in this thread, but there's something about this Thunderbird + P combo that I'm finding extremely pleasing to slot in for my usual P tone.
The PJ sound is fine, I'm not much of a PJ guy, the all three pickups I think could be something but this Jazz pickup needs some beef, I don't think the passive EMG Jazz is adding as much as I'd like.
I have an old 18V Bart NS2TMB out of a Zon that has the 18V buffer so it does well equalizing passive pickups with different impedances. I've been playing my Stingray Special a lot and am very comfortable with a 4 knob Vol/Treb/Mid/Bass setup.
I thought about using a rotary or strat style selector but would have to choose my favorite pickup combos OR it would need to be a 7 way selector to cover every option, and I'd never be able to switch between songs and figure out what's engaged.
My current thinking is to just lean into the already over the top nature of this bass and go full switchblade do it all. 4 Knobs + 4 Mini Toggles
Knobs:
- Volume
- Treble
- Mids
- Bass
- 3 two way mini toggles to on/off each pickup individually
- 1 three way mini toggle for the frequency elector on the Bartolini (i love the 800hz mid freq on the bart preamps)
At least it would be symmetrical with 4 knobs and 4 toggles
Noodling on the layout. Might put the mini toggles between the P pickup and volume knob.
ALSO - I got another 2 hours in with the Thunderhorse last night and it is quickly going to become my primary P bass. I've said it 10 times in this thread, but there's something about this Thunderbird + P combo that I'm finding extremely pleasing to slot in for my usual P tone.
The PJ sound is fine, I'm not much of a PJ guy, the all three pickups I think could be something but this Jazz pickup needs some beef, I don't think the passive EMG Jazz is adding as much as I'd like.
I’m glad you had fun at NAMM, I may be there next year. Congrats on the new bass. 
Black and gold Thunderhorse got here today. Looks and feels great. Super nice instrument. Cormac does really good work. Only got to play for a few minutes but it sounds really good. Lots of distinctly different tones and doesn’t sound like any other bass I’ve owned. And that’s part of what I was looking for.
Kind of bad lighting right now. Will try to get a couple good pics tomorrow.
Kind of bad lighting right now. Will try to get a couple good pics tomorrow.
The black and gold is awesome. Ebony board? I'm a sucker for an ebony board.
Yep. My first bass with an ebony board. It’s killer. Going to lower the action just a bit and may raise the J pickup a tad, but that’s about it.
I’ll let you start the McGrath Bass club thread as you were the first. Maybe in a year or two it will be hundreds of pages long.
raising that J pickup definitely helped balance it. I still may swap mine for something overwound to compete better with the thunderbird, but as you can tell from my posts I can't help modding things...
I probably will only use the J every now and then for certain songs. That Thunderbird-P pickup combo is something else though. It sounded good at first when I was playing normal finger style. Then I grabbed a pick and dug in and it just sounded beastly.
try that pickup combo with palm muting. Then add some octave + fuzz and you're in another dimension
CormacBass
Commercial User
Thank you! Glad it got to you safe. I hope you love it.
The mods begin next week. Staying passive to start. Changing volume pots to push/pull for pickup selection. Putting a set of DiMarzio Relentless pickups in the P/J slots.
Neck may got a Lollar (in gold of course), but starting with the P/J swap as the EMG JHZ is the weak point in the pickup set.
Moar gold, moar tone.
Neck may got a Lollar (in gold of course), but starting with the P/J swap as the EMG JHZ is the weak point in the pickup set.
Moar gold, moar tone.
Mr. Cormac, saw a cool Thunderhorse NAMM shirt on the Facebooks. Can you PM me if you have any of those left you’d be willing to sell?
Thanks.
Thanks.
