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Thunderbird Club

Today was the day of 'the great organ transplant'. More later.
Ok. We think the organ is a Hammond X5 "portable" stage organ. Portable in inverted commas as the thing with the stand is ~75kgs. (And a pain in the arse lol). Plus the Leslie was fairly heavy, not too bad though.
The keyboard part was about 1" too wide to fit across my boot (my car is the same body as the Chev SS for NA readers) and about 4-5" too long to fit in the other orientation. We managed to fit it between the seats vertically. The Leslie was about 1cm too tall to get into the boot, do that went onto the back seat.
The stand and pedals went into the boot as well as the Korg synth that fit on it, as well as the box that allows plugging them in to the speaker.
The Roland MP600 electric piano was a bridge too far and has ended up in my garage... shhh!!!

One thing I've learnt, don't get in a fight with s keyboardist... they must get serious muscles lugging these things around. I'd hate to be breaking it down and packing it away at stupid o'clock after a gig.

Pics or it didn't happen?

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Plus the MP600 - anyone know anything about these? Worth hanging onto if Cuz doesn't want it?

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It might even be sloped dovetail... but I kinda like Sloved Dovewing - it could be a colourful character in a detective novel ... "The gold letters on the fogged glass door read Slove Dovewing, Private Eye - I had come to the right address"
The vintage Gibson Thunderbird stood on a stand in the corner, covered with memories. It's once shiny chrome dulled with age till it now matched the .38 in the lower desk drawer. The bass was a gift from a female client many, many years ago. In return, Slove gave her his heart. She took it with her when she died.

Slove played bass with a jazz trio at a gin joint down on the waterfront. His band mates and the bar owner were the closest things to friends he had. At least close enough to keep him sane. At first, they tried to talk him into playing an upright bass. They changed their minds when a fight broke out and they saw how effective the t'bird was at protecting the small stage and their equipment. The battle scars the Gibson earned were a constant reminder to the regulars to give the stage a wide berth during brawls. Now, the band just picks up the tempo a little bit to provide the background music.



@JIO please feel free to pick this up again. Or anyone else for that matter.
 
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It's very rare, probably one of less than 10. Note the '70s headstock with smaller tuners, the pickups are most likely leftover '70s sidewinders potted into black plastic covers.

Wow! :woot:

I might sell my Studio V and a couple of others for a shot at it. I already placed a bid so that I'd get notified when the auction nears the end. :greedy:
 
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Stupid question here, not trying to be sarcastic, is there such a thing as a good headstock repair, one that will hold up through the years.

Absolutely. A properly repaired headstock will hold up, IMO.

Thing with headstock repairs on a trans colour like bursts is the repair is usually painted black to hide it which in a way makes it more noticable to me. If you look at the pictures of that bird you can see on the back of the neck just below the headstock (usual spot) that it black and not a uniform trans colour.
 
My closest neighbour is probably half a kilometre :cautious:, only thing keeping me from turning it up to 11 all the time is my mom doesn't appreciate my kind of music... or music at all really. My dad encourages the loudness. But headphones are cheaper than renting a house.
If you are going to do this in metric, the neighbors are about two meters away on the north, and maybe three meters on the south. It's not exactly a rural area.
 
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It has had headstock repair, I don't know if that matters to you but just a heads up.

Thanks and yes I saw that as well when I was going through the pics and confirmed when I read the description. It doesn't matter to me on a rare enough TBird and this one is rare enough. :thumbsup:

Stupid question here, not trying to be sarcastic, is there such a thing as a good headstock repair, one that will hold up through the years.

Yes, some even say that the repair if done right will be stronger than the original.
 
Thing with headstock repairs on a trans colour like bursts is the repair is usually painted black to hide it which in a way makes it more noticable to me. If you look at the pictures of that bird you can see on the back of the neck just below the headstock (usual spot) that it black and not a uniform trans colour.
I totally agree and I noticed the repair immediately without reading about it. I was commenting about the integrity and durability of headstock repairs.
 
Thanks and yes I saw that as well when I was going through the pics and confirmed when I read the description. It doesn't matter to me on a rare enough TBird and this one is rare enough. :thumbsup:



Yes, some even say that the repair if done right will be stronger than the original.

I have talked to luthiers in the past about this, and they reassured the same.
 
Thing with headstock repairs on a trans colour like bursts is the repair is usually painted black to hide it which in a way makes it more noticable to me. If you look at the pictures of that bird you can see on the back of the neck just below the headstock (usual spot) that it black and not a uniform trans colour.

That would be the only obvious show that there was a repair done,
Personally that wouldn't bother me if it looked proper.