Yeah, me too, the TBII especially. I've given up on that though. The reissues are not the same and the originals are so pricey and prone to breaking (or already broken). I was looking at the Epiphone Thunderid Classic IV Pro though. It's neck thru, uses the same hardware and pickups as the Gibson models, looks and sounds pretty nice by the demos and reviews online. About $500 new, I've seen a couple used in good condition online for about $100 less or a bit under that. I could afford it if I wanted to pull the trigger, but I always have a hard time spending money. I could justify it by the fact that I've never owned a Thunderbird at all, so it's not overlapping anything I already own.
My name is David and I have a problem.
Really, I don't get GAS too bad these days, but there's always something. For this garage, no-fi project I'm working on, I really wish I had more than just a cruddy fuzz pedal. I'd like to at least get a cheap delay and a cheap trem of some kind.
I used to have a '76 Gibson Ripper. I loved that bass. Many years later I had two (at different times) of the Epi reissues (which really weren't much like the original Rippers at all.) they had bolt on necks (which I prefer) and a P/J pickup configuration.
I actually liked the Epi reissues better than the old "real thing" Rippers.
When I first started coming back to this thread regularly I had tax return $$$ and was shopping for a bass. Looked all over for an Epi Ripper re-ish, couldn't find one (or maybe saw a couple on Reverb, etc. but they were way overpriced) and I ended up with an MIM P bass (which I since had to sell--but I would have figured a way to hold on to the Epi Ripper!)
Anyways, like the next damn day I was looking at the classifieds here and @Pelham Bleu had just listed a natural finish Epi Ripper at a price I could have afforded.
Broke my weak-@ssed heart a little.
In other news, re: the recording project, it's going very well. Gets better all the time, methinks. We have 15-20 songs in the can, the last round awaiting mixdown. It's really a blast and I think we'll be pretty prolific since the entire aim of this is to be grumpy old men playing snotty, fuzzed out, trashy garage rockish stuff with little thought to sound quality and most everything done in one take with minimal overdubs.
Mostly been done on ancient cassette 4 track machines, but me and the other guy do use some digital for overdubs and sometimes a little less hiss and murk, but he and I inserted a few of our tracks into playlists of old garage punk from the era and sound-wise and content-wise they fit right in pretty seamlessly. Not trying to be totally retro and 100% authentic, and our stuff varies from some covers to pretty rocking originals to instros of the nominally surf and spaghetti western variety.
Eventually I'll post some tracks here or a link to Bandcamp when that's up and running. Working on pressing some very limited vinyl 7"s and we are gonna release on tape too. What the hell. If we sell anything (and we'll also have t-shirts and other merch) we'll probably get a few hunnerd 7"s pressed up.
The stuff we're doing sounds so rough and lo-fi compared to the bands you guys on this thread have...there's a lot of pro-level bands and material from some of the folks here. We are not that. But it's a different thing--we are aiming for trash. Our view is that rock and roll isn't supposed to be nice...it's sinful music for a garbage mind made by ugly people in ugly circumstances. Our stuff sounds like it was birthed in a dumpster behind some bloodbucket bar. It is awfully, awfully loose though. We leave mistakes in most of the time.
Anyone here the least bit interested in that kind of junk?
