NBD: SG Bass Mod - Gibson "EB Thunder"

[Korladis]

I didn't mean it sounded bad or anything, sounded good, just I'm more into gross Ric-ish sounds for what I do. I don't really do active electronics, either.

Sounds a lot different with both pickups on than I would have expected. Do you have any overdrive on?

 

[DrSpunkwater]

I didn't mean it sounded bad or anything, sounded good, just I'm more into gross Ric-ish sounds for what I do. I don't really do active electronics, either.

Sounds a lot different with both pickups on than I would have expected. Do you have any overdrive on?

Well, I wasn't calling you out or anything. It's just me stating the obvious: That a bass has characteristics about its sound that can't be changed no matter what. You know, P gonna P. Jazz gonna jazz. Ric gonna Ric. EB gonna EB. All that stuff.

I didn't use any overdrive. Actually, I never use any effects when I play. All the fuzziness and grind is because of the mudbucker's 30K output and the thunderbucker's 13-14K power.

There's something funny I noticed. The tone control is much more useable than it was with the old pickups. I don't know why, but it seemed the tone knob did hardly anything. With these new pups, the tone control does something. Maybe Tom fixed it, I dunno.

 

[Korladis]

Maybe there are just more sounds to be gotten out of the new pickups. Perhaps the tone control didn't used to do anything because there was nothing for it to do?

 

[DrSpunkwater]

Could be. Maybe Gibson's just cheaping out on bass pups. I wouldn't be at all surprised.

 

[airfrank]

I'd like to add a thunderbird pickup to my EB3. Do you have any sound samples? The links have expired.
Cheers

What Gibson's EB3 should have become but never did.

In the neck position: Beautiful, glorious, juicy, thick MUD.

In the bridge position: Remarkable clarity and hard punch.

Last year I bought a Curtis Novak mudbucker with the intent to do an "EB3 mod" on my SG bass. But earlier this year I was seized by inspiration one night to put a Thunderbird pup in my SG. So to do this, I turned to none other than Steve Soar of Thunderbucker Ranch.

After some waiting, I got my Thunderbucker: a Thunderbucker MX Bridge. As soon as I did, I took the bass and the pups to my tech, Tom Pellerito. Great guy who does great work.

After about a month or so of waiting, he told me he finished it. The way he explained it, it was somewhere between a mod and a restoration. He has to route the bridge cavity and add a bit of wood as well to get the pickup just right. In the end, he couldn't have been happier with the way it turned out and I couldn't be happier too. Pellerito said he'd recommend the mod to anyone who brings a bass like this to him in the future.

The way these pups work with each other and complement each other is uncanny. The perfect mismatched tag team. The mudbucker is a wild untamed beast, while the Thunderbucker is super defined. Together they create a huge sound that steamrolls and cuts at the same time. These two pups are surprisingly balanced, and without much effort. I found I didn't have to raise the mudbucker's pole pieces anywhere near as high as I did with the SG bass pup. Ditto for the Thunderbucker, as with the old mini-humbucker I had to raise the pup until it was nearly touching the strings and even then the E pole piece had to be raised.

To put it bluntly: This is a remarkable improvement over the candy-ass stock pups.

Overall, super happy with the way this turned out. Tons of bottom end too. As soon as I plugged it in and played at home, my mother remarked that it was the best sounding of all my basses. I thought that was funny.

Short-scale naysayers, eat your hearts out.

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And a sound demonstration: