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Thunderbird Club

#232,742
Stealth57 said:
First pass on the guts of the Ashdown doesn’t show anything obvious to me. Some funky paste on some areas that looks like it is meant to prevent things from moving around. Anyone with better knowledge see anything strange?

View attachment 4921719 View attachment 4921720 View attachment 4921721 View attachment 4921722 View attachment 4921723
Click to expand...

Chucky will give the definitive opinion - but yes, that yellow goop is used to stabilize things from moving around.

Here's my Ashdown 550 Spyder Twin Tube Preamp -

upload_2023-1-2_10-51-40.jpeg
 
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#232,751
GBassNorth said:
By “BaCH pickup”, do you mean the Artec that came standard in the BaCH Tbird, which looks like this…
View attachment 4921748
If that’s the one you’re talking about my very limited experience with it (only one pup on one bird) is…

Kinda cheap looking (plastic chrome, squared edges, screw cutouts). Dirt cheap to buy (even less than Chinabuckers IIRC, but the Artec sounds a bit fuller). Actually very comfortable to play, the screw cutout ends up being the perfect thumb rest for me. Sound wise, not bad at all. I’d rank it as more aggressive than the modern Gibson Tbird pickups, a wee bit less aggressive than the VP pickups, more low mid focused that typical Eppi pickups. Overall, a bargain at the sale price and as good or better than any Chinabuckers I’ve tried.
Click to expand...
Yes.
 
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#232,753
JIO said:
Couldn't agree more - I think if people could have seen/heard Jaco play live they would have a different opinion. I was lucky enough to attend a Weather Report show in '76 promoting their new LP "Heavy Weather" which was the 1st full LP & tour with Jaco on bass. Saw WR the year before with Alphonso Johnson - a totally bad-ass player also. Joe Zawinul was a bass player in his early days so he always got the cream-of-the-crop players on bass. Jaco used the legendary Acoustic 360 (two actually), and I feel because it was a very physical rig - it moved big air. He was a people-person and pushing those two 18" speakers would tump against your chest in the audience. Also, that setup is generally dark sounding due to the big speakers, so him using his bass settings & style on the treble end, he was able to bring definition to otherwise pillowy-tone bass. That definition was needed to express his otherworldly rhythmic drive and beautiful lyrical expression. His bass precursors weren't upright jazz players who were so dark sounding it was more a texture - listen to Scott LaFaro for a player who made his (upright) bass sing.

If you want to be blown away by a fresh-on-the-scene Jaco playing his fretless bass with pin-point accuracy and rock-solid in-the-pocket playing - check out this live vid from '76. When bass players (pro's) caught wind of playing like this - they all went back to the woodshed. It was similar to when Townsend set up a meeting with Clapton to discuss "this new guitarist on the scene who would change everything" - Jimi Hendrix.



Bill Evans trio w/Scott LaFaro on bass -
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to this day, I cannot believe my luck in being a freshman at UM in 83...will never forget the Bachelors III in Ft. Laud (owned by Namath and two other pro footballers) where Jaco was the house bassist and if you wanted to play there you had to kinda ditch your bassist for the duration of the contract.....crazy...he would then go repair woodwinds at Las Olas Music during the day....
 
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#232,755
Count Bassie said:
Pickups question time:

Some of you guys may remember Fixer- aka Mike... He left the club a few years ago, not sure why. Anyway, he'd sent me an old pair of BaCH p'ups. I'm looking to do something with them, and I've got a black-&-maple Peavey Foundtion, 90s era, here that's a good player. It had an alignment problem between the nut and the bridge- the string travel was closer to one side of the neck than the other and it bugged me- so I put a Hipshot bridge on it and moved it over an eighth of an inch or so to fix that. It's my spare, really, one I'd bring to an open jam or a keg party, etc. I do like playing it since I decided it wasn't worth it to sell it... the Peavy-ness is now compromised, and it's just not so sellable anymore.

Anyway, the p'ups in it aren't bad really, but maybe I'd swap in these BaCHs if they had something to offer in heft, or were a little more aggressive.

So who's got some experience with these? I'm all ears, THaNKs!
Click to expand...
:laugh:..
these are the exact ones you have;
upload_2023-1-2_11-58-37.png


prior to being replaced by these...
GetAttachmentThumbnail


Not bad sounding...pretty flat and decent dynamic range, definitely not as hot as the TBuckers that replaced them, don't care much for the cheesy plastic covers...
 
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#232,757
Chucky Stiletti said:
:laugh:..
these are the exact ones you have;
View attachment 4921835

prior to being replaced by these...
GetAttachmentThumbnail


Not bad sounding...pretty flat and decent dynamic range, definitely not as hot as the TBuckers that replaced them, don't care much for the cheesy plastic covers...
Click to expand...
They're replacing cheesey 90s Peavey Foundation p'ups, so there's that.
 
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