Gaolee
Official leathers tester and crash dummy
I played a White Falcon guitar more than ten years ago. It was way out of my price range and league then. It has only gotten moreso.
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Thunderbird Club
- Thread starter TBird1958
- Start date
-
- Tags
- club thunderbird
- Mar 13, 2008
- 18,898
- 142,256
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist Mike Lull T Bass pickups, The Bass Shop, Seattle WA.
Jelly! Fun little amps. I always wanted one. Where's the bass version?
Gaolee
Official leathers tester and crash dummy
Yes, of course. Why would you ask?
Gaolee
Official leathers tester and crash dummy
I vote green. You already have two white 'Birds.
Gaolee
Official leathers tester and crash dummy
Thing is, I still want one. Not enough to pay what one costs, though. Maybe if Brian Setzer suddenly inhabits my fingers it would be different.
Last edited:
Ok did the surgery.
New pots and cap
Went with modern wiring
Original A500k tone pot audio taper
The original wiring harness
New harness
***process notes:
2x500k Tocos 10% tolerance Linear taper pots
1x250k Tocos 10% tolerance Audio taper pot.
1x.047 cap.
Skipped shielding , mainly because I ran out of tape which comes Friday , but did not want to wait.
Wired traditional “modern” wiring.
Made all wires only as long as necessary.
The shafts are US spec, so the holes in the body needed to be opened up.
The original harness used shielded TINY gauge wire coax.
Replaced with thicker fine strand tinned high grade silicone jacketed wire at all points.
Reassembled, assessment:
The pots have a pleasing amp control like smooth resistance.
With the new knobs this feels particularly solid.
Tone:
Audibly not much/no tonal change all controls dimed, no surprise.
The stock pot did little to nothing most of the rotation , even fully shut it was still too bright.
Start to dim the tone, and the taper cuts treble smoothly to about 6/8’s of the rotation after that it progresses a bit faster. The .047 cap shaves off more of the treble, but leaves the mids alone till about that same 6/8’s and then starts to pull down high mids. Exactly as I wanted it!
The volumes:
There is SO much more range, blending the pickups works more effectively. The volume drops smoothly: when one pickup employed, and the other shuttered.
Bring up the turned down pickup, and almost immediately its influence can be heard.
The loading from the other pickup becomes more evident at about the 3/4 to full volume.
With the stock alpha pots, there was SO LITTLE room at the end of the rotation, that it was fiddly to find the sweet spot.
Now there is 1/4 of the turn to blend !
That’s all for now.
New pots and cap
Went with modern wiring
Original A500k tone pot audio taper
The original wiring harness
New harness
***process notes:
2x500k Tocos 10% tolerance Linear taper pots
1x250k Tocos 10% tolerance Audio taper pot.
1x.047 cap.
Skipped shielding , mainly because I ran out of tape which comes Friday , but did not want to wait.
Wired traditional “modern” wiring.
Made all wires only as long as necessary.
The shafts are US spec, so the holes in the body needed to be opened up.
The original harness used shielded TINY gauge wire coax.
Replaced with thicker fine strand tinned high grade silicone jacketed wire at all points.
Reassembled, assessment:
The pots have a pleasing amp control like smooth resistance.
With the new knobs this feels particularly solid.
Tone:
Audibly not much/no tonal change all controls dimed, no surprise.
The stock pot did little to nothing most of the rotation , even fully shut it was still too bright.
Start to dim the tone, and the taper cuts treble smoothly to about 6/8’s of the rotation after that it progresses a bit faster. The .047 cap shaves off more of the treble, but leaves the mids alone till about that same 6/8’s and then starts to pull down high mids. Exactly as I wanted it!
The volumes:
There is SO much more range, blending the pickups works more effectively. The volume drops smoothly: when one pickup employed, and the other shuttered.
Bring up the turned down pickup, and almost immediately its influence can be heard.
The loading from the other pickup becomes more evident at about the 3/4 to full volume.
With the stock alpha pots, there was SO LITTLE room at the end of the rotation, that it was fiddly to find the sweet spot.
Now there is 1/4 of the turn to blend !
That’s all for now.
Last edited:
Was totally offered in jest, based in the stuff I read on the internet. So must be true, rite?
they were....also a total liability LOL..
by no means could you legally ship this thing today, notice the lack of power/isolation transformer directly exposing the user (usually youngsters ) to bare rectified mains...
...cheap and nasty, notice the half (not full) wave rectifier....ripple hum at 60Hz? no worries, the cheap output transformer and ckt bandwidth does not extend under 100Hz so who cares?...
So cool. My guitar buddy who I played with from 7th grade through high school had one of those. He had a few different guitars, including a Strat, but when he played the Silvertone through a blackface Super Reverb, he was known as Twango.
Gaolee
Official leathers tester and crash dummy
I don't know what that means, but it sounds like a pretty good population control device.they were....also a total liability LOL..
by no means could you legally ship this thing today, notice the lack of power/isolation transformer directly exposing the user (usually youngsters ) to bare rectified mains...
View attachment 7221382
not even fused for starters...
