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Thunderbird Club

#264,824
GBassNorth said:
I have P basses and Tbirds and I’ll be the first to say that some of my Tbirds do in fact pull off a very accurate copy of my P bass sound. I also have many more that don’t. The useful bit of information in that for me is that I know I can mothball or off my P basses (which I don’t get along with as well from an ergonomics standpoint) because I have that sound covered with some of my better fitting Tbirds. So yes, under some circumstances (like mine) it’s very useful to know if I can duplicate the sound of one with the other, that gives me the info needed to sell off or mothball redundant sounding basses if desired, which I have done.
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Well, a 'Bird can sound like a P. But, you got to deaden it down to get it to sound like a P with worn out flats. Which brings up the point that the strings make a big difference in the sound you get. All these shoot-outs are beginning to get tedious, since there's all these variables that make a massive difference, but they all get glossed over all the time. None of my 'Birds are likely to sound like yours, especially when I play mine and you play yours. Then there's the amp the bass gets played through to make things just that much less definite.
 
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#264,825
JJR58 said:
That little Micro Peg sounds awesome!
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Nikki uses one too! White Bird Wednesday!
IMG_3311.jpeg
 
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#264,826
Gaolee said:
Well, a 'Bird can sound like a P. But, you got to deaden it down to get it to sound like a P with worn out flats. Which brings up the point that the strings make a big difference in the sound you get. All these shoot-outs are beginning to get tedious, since there's all these variables that make a massive difference, but they all get glossed over all the time. None of my 'Birds are likely to sound like yours, especially when I play mine and you play yours. Then there's the amp the bass gets played through to make things just that much less definite.
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Yup. It can never be stated enough.
 
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#264,827
Speaking of amps, for when I need to be relatively silent, I've been using a Fender Mustang Micro headphone amp. It's really great. You can stream music to play along with via bluetooth and hear it all via headphones you plug in. I'd rather wireless headphones, but this might help reduce interference. I had terrible luck with Boss' super expensive WAZA Air. And I find the '65 Deluxe amp setting on it sounds great with the Thunderbird. The thing has been rock solid and also has excellent battery life.
 
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#264,828
BklynKen said:
Speaking of amps, for when I need to be relatively silent, I've been using a Fender Mustang Micro headphone amp. It's really great. You can stream music to play along with via bluetooth and hear it all via headphones you plug in. I'd rather wireless headphones, but this might help reduce interference. I had terrible luck with Boss' super expensive WAZA Air. And I find the '65 Deluxe amp setting on it sounds great with the Thunderbird. The thing has been rock solid and also has excellent battery life.
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I usually just use the headphone Jack on my Mesa. But I have one of these I use when traveling sometimes.
Vox amPlug 2 Bass Headphone Guitar Amp
They’ve really gone up. I bought mine a long time ago for $30. It works fine for what it is. And has an aux in for playing along with music. But since neither my current iPhone or IPad have a phono jack, it’s kind of a pain finding the adapter, etc.

That Fender looks pretty cool. It has Bluetooth and a USB-C interface. Another thing to tell the family they can get me for Christmas. Thanks for posting about it Ken.
 
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#264,829
MCF said:
I usually just use the headphone Jack on my Mesa. But I have one of these I use when traveling sometimes.
Vox amPlug 2 Bass Headphone Guitar Amp
They’ve really gone up. I bought mine a long time ago for $30. It works fine for what it is. And has an aux in for playing along with music. But since neither my current iPhone or IPad have a phono jack, it’s kind of a pain finding the adapter, etc.

That Fender looks pretty cool. It has Bluetooth and a USB-C interface. Another thing to tell the family they can get me for Christmas. Thanks for posting about it Ken.
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My amp has a headphone jack, but I find the Mustang a much better solution for my situation because all my music is on my desktop Mac. I practice along with a waveform editor so I can see the music visually and be able to move around in the song.
 
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#264,830
BklynKen said:
My amp has a headphone jack, but I find the Mustang a much better solution for my situation because all my music is on my desktop Mac. I practice along with a waveform editor so I can see the music visually and be able to move around in the song.
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Technology is wonderful. This is what I’ve been looking for. Not cheap, but certainly reasonably priced for what it does. Especially with USB C interface.

I’ve found that I’ve been using Chordify a lot to work out songs. Streaming audio from the iPad into this while watching the progressions will be super cool.
 
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#264,832
Roger W said:
Japan has distinct regional accents too. In the Kanto Plain, the area around Tokyo and Yokohama, they tend to slide over the ‘u’ in words that contain the su syllable. So the city we lived in, Yokosuka, was pronounced Yokos’ka by people in from that area. People from other areas think it’s very rude.
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And yet when I was there-as a 'guest' of the USN-everyone in the Navy called it Yokooska. IDK why.
 
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#264,833
GBassNorth said:
As interesting as I thought the video was, I was left wondering the same thing.

Unfortunately they never truly made any obvious attempt to answer the title of the clip “Can a Tbird sound like a Precision”.

To answer that question they should have recorded the precision in three different on board EQ’s (Tone full off, tone half up, tone full up) then they should have messed around with the Tbird on-board EQ and pickup blending to see if they could replicate each of the three P bass recordings.

Comparing a Tbird with the tone all the way up to a P bass with the tone all the way up tells me absolutely nothing other than this one can get brighter than that one. Pretty useless info as far as answering the question at hand. Basically 3rd grade science fair stuff.
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Plus, IMO, the riff he was playing was too fast to really hear tonal differences.
 
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#264,836
GonePlaid said:
Plus, IMO, the riff he was playing was too fast to really hear tonal differences.
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I am waiting for one of these comparisons where the player plays a scale and not much else. That's it. Then you can focus on what the bass sounds like instead of thinking about what the player is playing. There's still technique differences between players, but if the strings are the same, the player is the same and playing a scale, and it's run DI into the interface, then you might actually get some useful information about the sound.
 
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