Dang! Don’t think Anja and I will be able to make this one.
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Thunderbird Club
- Thread starter TBird1958
- Start date
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- Tags
- club thunderbird
How can you not love the look of a tuxedo black and white P bass with a maple fretboard! And fretless to boot!!! I’m sure it sounds wonderful.
I have a roasted maple/rosewood fretless neck on order that will be mated to a semi hollow walnut reverse Tbird body in a few months. Just looking for some extra special pickups for it right now. Hopefully it and my current JazzWick Tbird build will be done in time for this years GTG, if so I’ll bring them along with my ‘68 tribute, ThunderCaster and BlingBird builds. All very different from any Tbirds you’ve played in the past yet still very familiar in look and feel.
Gaolee
Official leathers tester and crash dummy
That inspires me to put in a little time reassembling the fretless 'Bird today. I get distracted...
My EBO and Ripper have a lot of dings and finish wear. The gold bird was in good condition except for the poorly done repair I would see everytime I looked at the headstock.
I think you’re right about the vintage bird asking prices. A lot of those are probably in resellers hands vs owner/player hands. As such, they can ask ridiculous prices and sit on that price for years until the market catches up. Most owner/players that list a bass for sale hope to sell that bass in weeks or months not years or decades.
Investor speculation markets always drive prices out of the hands of normal users and into the hands of collectors. Will there be a correction in the market? Who knows, depends on the economy and the growth or decline in the base of potential owners/players. The more players there are out there the higher the potential demand and therefore the more solid the asking prices. Fewer players equals a diminishing market and softer pricing as the speculators look to cut their losses.
Very similar to antique car (1900 - 1940’s) pricing vs vintage car (1950’s - 1970’s). Not many antique car buyers out there, the owner/driver base has dropped significantly so prices are very flat or less; but still lots of vintage car buyers (with available money) so prices continue to increase. That could all change in the next 20 or 30 years when there aren’t many of us (born in the 1950’s to 1990’s) vintage car buyers left or if the economy takes a long and significant down turn. The pristine investment grade stuff (cars or guitars) will become museum collections and largely off the market, the rest will still be expensive by todays standards, but won’t keep pace with inflation unless the owner/player base continues to increase.
Now for my next prediction - in the next thirty years life will be found on Mars (once we’ve landed there) and the lower gravity (about 40% of Earths gravity) will drive a renewed interest in heavy Fender basses made in the 1970s. A 10 pounder here will only weigh 4 pounds there! Speculation of lower gravity induced Tbird neck dive elimination will also drive bird sales through the roof, but most will be disappointed when the Tbirds arrive on Mars with broken headstocks due to the rough transport. This unfortunate occurrence becomes the catalyst for a merger between Gibson and Steinberger who will create headless Thunderbirds which overtake Fender sales on Mars. Sweetwater will be the major Gibson/Steinberger distributor and their interplanetary distribution facility on the Moon will be managed Alice Kramden.
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- Mar 13, 2008
- 18,894
- 142,196
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist Mike Lull T Bass pickups, The Bass Shop, Seattle WA.
I've been checking prices and I'm certainly glad I bought mine when I did, it's certainly not perfect but I've become quite fond of it, broken neck matters not. Chuck's looks quite a bit better than mine and I think he got it for a reasonable price as well.
You have actually thought through this future thing more than I had imagined. But I like it.
And she’s a beaut Clark!I've been checking prices and I'm certainly glad I bought mine when I did, it's certainly not perfect but I've become quite fond of it, broken neck matters not. Chuck's looks quite a bit better than mine and I think he got it for a reasonable price as well.
I think you and Chuck did good to jump in the vintage pond when you did. The really good deals are pretty much gone now, occasionally I’ll see an ok deal but for the most part it seems like the Bicentennial birds are now priced at what the vintage birds used to be priced at just a few short years ago. I suspect that pond will dry up too in a few years, by which time it’ll be pretty much impossible to find any used pre 2000 Gibson Tbird under $3000.
Word to the bird watchers out there - Get your Pixie Dust birds on the cheap while you can!
Some nice toys in this neighborhood.....never know what's behind garage doors.....discovered this 56 today......
yeah but mine is refinished.....bet you yours fetches more...beautiful bass.....I've been checking prices and I'm certainly glad I bought mine when I did, it's certainly not perfect but I've become quite fond of it, broken neck matters not. Chuck's looks quite a bit better than mine and I think he got it for a reasonable price as well.
Me and my wife 30 years ago! Car is long gone but we're still
going strong !
going strong !
Lt Chuck,
You ain't got no frets
- Mar 13, 2008
- 18,894
- 142,196
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist Mike Lull T Bass pickups, The Bass Shop, Seattle WA.
yeah but mine is refinished.....bet you yours fetches more...beautiful bass.....
I think yours was 500.00 more than mine, but it's unbroken and that's worth something to a lot of folks, including me. Honestly, if I didn't already own the one I have, I would have tried to buy the one you got. Mine was on Ebay, but not Reverb and it had both of it's covers and the mute, less the pads, I was afraid it would sell before I notified the bank I was going to be spending a lot of money and not to panic.
Back to ‘birds and tubes for tonight’s double header:
The last couple of shows I had used a couple of P-Basses and my Orange TB500 (class D) and two 1x12”s. While the TB500 rig is light, compact, convenient AND sounds great, there’s nothing like having a good tube head behind you, and a Thunderbird in hand!
The last couple of shows I had used a couple of P-Basses and my Orange TB500 (class D) and two 1x12”s. While the TB500 rig is light, compact, convenient AND sounds great, there’s nothing like having a good tube head behind you, and a Thunderbird in hand!
Glad to hear it! Nice T-Bird, by the way. The guy who taught my mom aerobatics in the late 1940's (we called him "Uncle Josh" when I was a kid) had a Black '57 T-Bird with a white detachable hard top & Continental kit; and the factory supercharged 312 cid engine. His wife hated it - to the point that she refused to ride in it. I loved it. I'm pretty sure that he kept it 'till the day he died - just to annoy his wife, as much as anything else...
40
Not bird related, but Azure Blue seems to be an acceptable topic these days. Building a 2U Rack for a new power conditioner.
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