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Thunderbird Club

#99,481
Nocturnal said:
I was born in 1963 just like the Thunderbird. I would LOVE to have a 63 Bird but $$$ will keep that from happening. I do have the 50th Anniversary Bird that my wife bought me for my 50th. She thought it was a sign from God that my favorite bass and I turned 50 together. Who was I to argue with her if she wanted to buy me a bass??
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That is AWESOME!
 
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#99,482
GBassNorth said:
Thought I'd jump into the semi hollow body pool. Just got a sweet deal on a Fender Starcaster the other day. First Fender product I've bought in the last 5 years. My last 6 bass purchases were all Gibby/Eppi darlings. It's a sweet looking bass (IMHO) and would fit well with a lot of the stuff I'm doing nowadays.
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Had it about a week now and still trying to get on with it. The ergonomics are bizarre - very heavy for a semi hollow body, does not want to stay in your lap while sitting (tries to jump forward), short scale is taking more time to get used to than normal (probably because my left hand is trying to keep the darn thing from hitting the floor while it's trying to jump out of my lap), and the headstock is heavy when strapped on. And to think, the Fender fan club complains about TBird ergos!

It also has something odd going on with the A and E strings on the neck pup - if you turn the tone knob to full bass and solo the neck pup then dig in on either of those two strings it farts out the cab. At first I thought I blew a speaker, plugged it into a different rig and got the same thing. Assumed they were just hot pups so I lowered the gain, helped a little but still not the right solution. Noticed the pups had been lowered all the way down into the body as far as they could go, nearly an inch air gap to the strings. So I raised the pups up to about a 2mm clearance, no change in the fart but sounded much better across the board. Fiddled with the neck tone pot and think it or a cold solider joint might be the problem, if not that it might be a microphonic pup. Typical hollowbody PITA to work on the pots since there's no control cavity access (you have to feed the entire electrical harness back through the ultra narrow sound holes to work on the pots. Fortunately they have a binding on them so less chance of mucking up the finish around the F holes.

I originally bought this bass because I wanted to drop some TBird pups in it. Not sure if that will work since the Fender Humbuckers have a completely different aspect ratio than anything Gibson uses. Might look at Dark Star options if I keep the bass. I'm into it for less than a couple hundred bucks so I have plenty of room to mod without going under on value.
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Sell it and get an Epi Allen Woody Rumblekat! Edit. Or a Jack Casady!
 
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#99,489
JJR58 said:
I must say, i do like Daniel Craig as 007. Sean will always be the original, but DC was pretty cool.
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funny cause people like to disagree about everything...I once heard someone in Britain try to tell me that as per Flemming's novel Moore qualifies better because Flemming's character (modeled after Porfirio Rubirosa believe it or not) was a mild mannered public school type Englishman.....I looked him in the eye and said BOLLOCKS!...:laugh::laugh:
 
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#99,490
Chucky Stiletti said:
funny cause people like to disagree about everything...I once heard someone in Britain try to tell me that as per Flemming's novel Moore qualifies better because Flemming's character (modeled after Porfirio Rubirosa believe it or not) was a mild mannered public school type Englishman.....I looked him in the eye and said BOLLOCKS!...:laugh::laugh:
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Mild mannered. Unacceptable.
 
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#99,491
JJR58 said:
I must say, i do like Daniel Craig as 007. Sean will always be the original, but DC was pretty cool.
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Daniel Craig is the best Bond since Sean Connery IMHO. Less snootiness - more toughness. The most 'silly'/cartoonish JB era was Roger Moore, but all the "blue-hairs" loved him.
 
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#99,493
JJR58 said:
"blue-hairs" :roflmao::laugh::roflmao:
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It's true! Partially because he was the oldest Bond (started in the 60's on TV as " The Saint") So he had that older 'charming/suave" thing going on that the older ladies liked. (but always had the young babes in the series...)

James-Bond-Female-What-Roger-Moore-Thinks.jpg
 
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#99,494
JIO said:
It's true! Partially because he was the oldest Bond (started in the 60's on TV as " The Saint") So he had that older 'charming/suave" thing going on that the older ladies liked. (but always had the young babes in the series...)

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Oh that Barbara Bach. I digress, my bad.
 
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#99,495
Chucky Stiletti said:
RS66 is the prefix for the Swing set, in other words, they're the same thing.
Particular reason?
1) No other string fits the Bird better as Birds were some of the early test beds for these strings.
2) The tension and bright response of stainless is unparalleled for long scales such as on Birds.
3) The brand is always consistent, you always get the same quality and characteristics.
4) Cheap.
5) Available everywhere globally.

Finally, it is probably the string that defined the TBird sound and brought it to it's current recognition status as I would be willing to bet more Tbirds out there, now and through time have worn these...

This said, this in my personal opinion and observations of course..
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The first RS 66 were NICKEL, as designed for John Entwistle and what he preferred until he switched to Optima Golds in the late 90s. So they were 'developed' for Precision basses, since he didn't start playing Tbirds until after Live at Leeds. I'd say that's the quintessential Roto Sound, followed by Chris Squire's Rick. They were still ONLY nickel until the late 1970s. As far as being consistent, that's debatable. It's fairly well known RS had problems in the early 2000s, they've even admitted it.

IMO Ken Smith Bass Burners sound like RS 66 nickel, silk on both ends originals. That's Swing Bass 45-105 Roto Sound 1966
 
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#99,496
RedVee said:
Sorry to hear about the tornado. Is that a normal thing, having tornados?

Sydney has been hit with bad storms, including hail storms over the last week. Last Saturday my house received 6 broken windows from the hail. It was like a strafing (sp?) attack in a WW2 movie. One went right through the study window, through the study and came to rest in the hallway just at the bottom of the stairs. Must have been moving.

A town near me got hit again this Thursday with an officially declared “catastrophic hail storm”. Hail ranging from golf balls to cricket balls, one described as 8cm and spiky.

Trees. I love him trees but they have a bad habit of dropping limbs. Which can be dangerous. Lots of other trees uprooted, one next door spilt in half from the wind (don’t think it was the lightning).

Edit: gumtrees (eucalypts) are the ones that drop limbs.
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Starting to have flashbacks to one of my favorite movies, The Last Wave.
 
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#99,499
Dadagoboi said:
IMO Ken Smith Bass Burners sound like RS 66 nickel, silk on both ends originals.
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I installed a set of Bass Burners on my BlackBird in time for this weeks gig. They sounded perfect on that bass. I have slowly started to add the Smith's back into the rotation after years of DR loyalty. Nothing wrong with DR IMO, but I had forgotten how much I liked the Smith strings. They are just impossible to find locally any more.
 
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