Thunderbird Club

[MCF]

That pic is from a while ago - most likely that ship has long sailed.

Yeah. He does that. He like to mess with us. Oh well.

 

[MCF]

Brass 4-40 inserts for the pickup screws are in place.

View attachment 7334181


View attachment 7334182

View attachment 7334183

The attention to detail is inspiring! If you’re gonna do it, might as do it right. Wow.

 

[MCF]

I’m aiming for 120 in reasonable health.

You’ve been reading (and writing) too many fantasy books.

 

[Miles_ONeal]

That person won't be anybody I know. That's pretty much guaranteed. For a lot of reasons.

We'll just see about that, young fella!

 

[/\/\3phist0]

Very cool - the '80s were a heady time for guitars like G&L, Kubicki, Steinberger etc. I was turned on to G&L by my good friend Reid back in the '90s. He's a hard-core G&L guy who owns a number of their vintage guitars & an L-1000 bass. The L-2000 9v pre is my favorite active harness. There's not a bad setting on it.

My Tele L2K is one bass that can do it all. It started out as an '06 Fender '51P RI that was one of the few basses I've bought new.

View attachment 7334497

It was a heady time, right out of high school some buddies of mine went to work at charvel.
I landed later on in OC, and applied at RIC, Fender, Carvin, charvel and G&L.
RIC answered first, took the job at G&L.

Playing the Hollywood circuit etc. yeah.

 

[Miles_ONeal]

You called it Irv!

I checked both my Burny Birds and both are wired from the factory as single coils. Whodathunk, a new design feature - single coil humbuckers.

Original wiring was about 3.3KOhms, now with the red wires capped off and the whites connected its about 6.6KOhms. But I kinda see why they did what they did. The pickups are fairly dark in the full humbucker orientation with the stock .022uf cap. So I installed a variable cap chip in place of the stock one and found the .016uf setting to be best for my amp/cab and tone preference.
Here’s a pic of the finished product…
View attachment 7334448

Interesting. I'd have expected a bit more of a difference in cap settings to be ideal. Bass magic!

 

[Miles_ONeal]

Nice rig!
I was lucky enough to see Robin Trower in '75 when James Dewar was the voice of the band, that man had an incredible, beautiful voice................

Still one of my faves.




This song.........

Dewar on an EB, that voice of his! Some people really know how to make a Strat sound good, Trower is one of them.

Yup. I always wondered where they went, then found out Trower just got fed up with the "Hendrix ripoff" label. I wish he'd just ignored people and kept going; that was an awesome band. A-list guitar player.

 

[MCF]

Seems like it at times!


I understand this. You know you are stressed when working but I didn’t quite realise just how stressed until I gave it all up.

Busy is a different kind of busy now.

The disappointment so far is not spending quality time in the shed. But that’ll improve with winter. I bought a couple courses Christmas before last that I’ll start working on when the weather turns.

I’ve already pushed renovating our koi pond back to spring. It’s funny how it goes like that. It takes me twice as long to do the things I used do when I was in my thirties and forties. Life.

 

[Miles_ONeal]

Heck with it. Go series!


Seriously love series wiring.
The boost in overall output is a big plus, employing 500k pots, balances the bass boost that comes with 4 coils in series, which can be DARK !!
More resistance in the circuit = shunting less high frequency to ground.

Except that's not a series schematic.

 

[TBird1958]

https://reverb.com/item/92425935-20...are&utm_campaign=listing&utm_content=92425935

That one looks good, the paint on white ones seems to wear and lose it's luster - FWIW mine looks way worse, lots more dings and wear.

I like chrome hardware and pickups a lot more, but I was indoctrinated by the likes of Uwe, Scott and George Carlston.

 

[Chucky Stiletti]

Except that's not a series schematic.

misleading yes, each L is the humbucker coils (2) wired in series instead off parallel....the drawing doesn't reflect....which begs the question..... @JIO .... 'member what vol pot value you used on the white BaCH II with the sidewinder?

 

[dagrev]

More on that flexible tone cap that I’m now putting in all my builds…

Selectable Tone Cap

Upgrade your tone cap with the Mythos Selectable Tone Cap Kit. This simple PCB gives you 5 different capacitor values that you can mix and match to give your guitar the perfect tone knob sound.

mythospedals.com

Runs about $15 and goes in the place of your normal tone cap. It has five toggles that you can use in any combination (it’s all additive) with each setting delivering the following nominal values…
All off - .0001uf
1 - .0022uf
2 - .0047uf
3 - .010uf
4 - .022uf
5 - .047uf

A quick guitar clip highlighting each setting (note the typo on the 3rd setting, it should read .010uf vs .001uf)


A great and cheap way to fine tune the tone palette on your bass.

Lakland's have such switching to set the mid freq. Always thought it a wonderful idea.

 

[dagrev]

and of course....WW.....
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Just gotta go there.... Man, that look good.

 

[Gaolee]

What about alternate tunings? Not esoteric things but going down to Eb. Because a recent post on Trower brought to mind that he tuned to Eb for his solo albums to allow easier bends on 11 gauge strings. Now that he's nearly 80, he tunes to D and uses 12 or 13 gauge strings.

I played with guitarists who love Trower and they always use standard tuning but I used to keep at least one bass tuned to Eb to learn and play Trower 70's material. I'm also inclined to cover ti in that way, but there aren't many people who want do dedicate a guitar to that tuning-- and you know it is a pain to change tunings in a gig because sometimes it takes a bit for the instrument to adapt and stay true to the new tuning.

Myself I don't like dedicating an instrument to a different tuning because I love them all and may want to play in standard tuning with it-

How do you guys feel about the alternate tunings? In some cases I feel that one should maintain the original recorded one because it sounds better, for example the 70's Trower material. And truth be told, in my humble opinion some songs sound better in certain tunings-

All of my bass guitars are standard tuning, but the ones I play most have a Hipshot X-tender that allows me to play in drop-D without retuning. The guitarist swaps guitars or retunes, I just flip a lever and use alternative fingering because it's now a fifth from D to A instead of a fourth from E to A. It's pretty straight forward once you get used to doing that. We do a number of songs in Eb. No problem at all for me.

 

[/\/\3phist0]

Except that's not a series schematic.

Crap, grabbed the wrong file.

 

[Gaolee]

https://reverb.com/item/92425935-20...are&utm_campaign=listing&utm_content=92425935

If nobody here jumps on that, we are pikers. A 2001 AND it is white? Gosh. I don't need another Thunderbird, but....

 

[RedVee]

The first album was under the name Icehouse in the United States in the early-80's. That one had that cool open window overlooking a sea of ice on the front cover. It wasn't until much later that here were some alternative versions under the name "Flowers", with different cover art, which I have a CD with that band's name.

The original release looks like this:

 

[RedVee]

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Looks like it. The guitarist looks to have a matching model.

Edit: although Maton did some funky looking electric guitars and basses in this period. They are a possibility.

 

[Chucky Stiletti]

Crap, grabbed the wrong file.
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yep....that would do it....

 

[RedVee]

On the Mama clip, was a young Fletch the drummer?!!! That was my first thought, though certainly not true.

Ha! No not Fletch.
Most likely Gil Matthews-“Rathead”. He was an Aztecs stalwart, not a very complimentary nickname! But then again Warren Morgan (keys) was known as “The Pig”.
Early 70s Australia is my guess explanation!

Billy & Pig did some side project stuff under “Thumpin’ Pig & Puffin’ Billy”.