Thunderbird Club

[Chucky Stiletti]

another great sounding bass head....wish I liked their cabs more...

 

[dukeorock]

Yeah, not to be disrespectful to anyone, but that’s not bass to me. Plus, play something.

Still looking for a special purpose for my

Weren’t you just gigging far away? Do you....Do you have transporter technology?

We finished our run in Sturgis last Saturday. Drove Sunday and Monday to get home, gig Tuesday, day off (yes!) Wednesday, session in Nashville Thursday, gig in Indiana tonight and Illinois tomorrow. Busy, but I’ve done way dumber things for way less money

I think Rod at Regenerate Guitar Works has switched to Rio Grande for his basses. I have a Regenerate and but it has Nordys in it. Heard nothing but good things about the Rio Grandes. I bet it will sound fantastic.

Sure hope so! Worse case I’ll put T Bird pickups in it, assuming it plays and feels right, but I have a really good feeling about it

 

[Miles_ONeal]

Did I post this? Been a long day! About to play a gig on a barge in Indiana...yep.
The superfan is having a custom bass made for me by Robin Guitars in Houston. I got to pick nut width and colors, the rest is the only way he’ll do it. He’s also the owner of Rio Grande pickups, so that’s what’s going in. He said “if you like T Bird pickups, you’ll love these.” I’ll be the judge of that! Worst case, I’ll swap the pickups.

View attachment 3510683

I look forward to your judgement!

 

[GonePlaid]

Man, if had had the dough i'd so get this right now. (no affiliation)

For Sale - Epiphone EB-3, Dark Star Pickups, Bad Ass Bridge.

Nice!

 

[Miles_ONeal]

Man, if had had the dough i'd so get this right now. (no affiliation)

For Sale - Epiphone EB-3, Dark Star Pickups, Bad Ass Bridge.

That's a beaut!

 

[Miles_ONeal]

Whoa!!!

Think you're gonna like The Rio Grande's.

But if not, talk to me!

 

[Miles_ONeal]

My thought was to make an amp for me (unrelated to the amp in case from whence it all started) based on a stupidly large redundant big array of 12AU7s as power amp.

Yeah, I got that. It sounds absurd and I would love to see it come to fruition. My kind of absurd.

 

[Miles_ONeal]

Did he call you a big dummy?

Said he was goin home to Lizbeth.

 

[Felix Lopez]

Good assortment there Felix that covers tons of tone. Nice! Of course the bird is in the place of prominence, as well it should be.

 

[Border]

Good morning Thunderbird brothers and sisters. Can't resist one last post as my Rolling Stones vacation comes to a close. Heading back to Spokane a little later today. Visited Thunder Road guitars/Bass NW yesterday. Great people and an amazing collection of instruments. I could not resist trying the Mike Lull 5 string Thunderbird in the photo. It is the first Lull I have ever seen in person. The craftsmanship is amazing! It was all I could do to leave it there. I love my 5 string Gibson, and that is the only reason I left without it. I was struck by the fact the Lull was considerably lighter. I may have to come back for it.They have a few other Lulls that were gorgeous as well.
The other picture is one last sunset from Alki beach. I don't know why I never got there when I lived over here 20+ years ago, but glad I did during this trip.
Have a great weekend everyone.

 

[Nocturnal]

Was just out in the garage. I turned around and there was a large red fox sitting there looking at me. I felt that I was being judged and did not measure up to his standards.
Well whatever Mr. Fox, I have opposable thumbs and have mastered fire and a TV remote.

That made me laugh a little, which is almost impossible when I first wake up.

another great sounding bass head....wish I liked their cabs more...
View attachment 3510748

I have never given a Hartke head a "real" test to see if I like them. I have plugged into them to try a bass but never tried to see what one was capable of. I did like the Hydrive cabs that I have tested but once again, never really tried to put one thru its paces. Anyone use Hartke heads much? They can be a steal on the used market.

 

[Chucky Stiletti]

That made me laugh a little, which is almost impossible when I first wake up.



I have never given a Hartke head a "real" test to see if I like them. I have plugged into them to try a bass but never tried to see what one was capable of. I did like the Hydrive cabs that I have tested but once again, never really tried to put one thru its paces. Anyone use Hartke heads much? They can be a steal on the used market.

really like them....about any tone possible is available with these due to the very diligent design of the EQ sections that include a tube stage paralleled with a ss stage in the preamp. the graphic EQ is switchable and when "on" offers a myriad of possibilities. there are then two "Contour" controls that sweep two bandpass (hi/lo) filters offering even more flexibility...the "Compressor" adjusts well but is really nothing special...they are rugged and very dependable...plenty of headroom with the 350 output module (some have 2 as biamping was the craze when they first came out)....all in all really nice stuff....unlike other amps there is no manufacturer specific "coloring" that one sees with other heads...these are clinically "clean" (very flat with the EQ off and controls centered) as one would like from a benchmark head...my only gripe would their weight (class AB) and the MOSFET (prefer bipolar) output stage...
one of these along with an SWR Goliath 4 X 10 and another Goliath 2 X 10 was my main rig for some years...

 

[GBassNorth]

FWIW - I did a quick little experiment with my 2015 bird to see if my assumptions were correct around the magnetic pull of the pickups on this bird being significantly stronger than my standard Gibson pickup TBird.

Results - the 2015 pups do indeed have a significantly stronger magnetic pull than any of my other birds pups, almost 50% stronger.

Test - I basically cut off about a 6" length of a spare bass guitar G string I had laying around and with the bass laying flat on its back I held the cut string perpendicular to the G string that was strung up on the bass. The tip of the cut string was held at approximately the same distance from the top surface of the G string pole of the pup as the strung G string. Then I slowly moved the top of the cut string laterally away from the pup. The tip of the cut string nearest the pup remained engaged with the magnetic pull of the pup as much as 1-1/4" away from the centerline of the pole. By comparison my other birds were all around 7/8" of distance for noticeable pull on the 6" string. In ballpark terms that would indicate the magnetic pull on the 2015 pups is nearly 50% stronger than a typical bird pup.

So why is this of any significance? I'm still getting a bit of chorus effect on the G string even though I've significantly lowered the pup. All the other strings play fine. I used a medium gauge string set and now I'm wondering if the G string is just too light for these magnets which may be impacting how that string vibrates. The next test will be to install a heavy gauge G string to see if that makes a difference. The other option would be to go to an overall higher tension set of strings or possibly a string set that is not impacted as much by magnetic pull (tapes?).

The 2015 continues to be an interesting journey. A rock monster bass with balls to the wall output.

 

[Chucky Stiletti]

FWIW - I did a quick little experiment with my 2015 bird to see if my assumptions were correct around the magnetic pull of the pickups on this bird being significantly stronger than my standard Gibson pickup TBird.

Results - the 2015 pups do indeed have a significantly stronger magnetic pull than any of my other birds pups, almost 50% stronger.

Test - I basically cut off about a 6" length of a spare bass guitar G string I had laying around and with the bass laying flat on its back I held the cut string perpendicular to the G string that was strung up on the bass. The tip of the cut string was held at approximately the same distance from the top surface of the G string pole of the pup as the strung G string. Then I slowly moved the top of the cut string laterally away from the pup. The tip of the cut string nearest the pup remained engaged with the magnetic pull of the pup as much as 1-1/4" away from the centerline of the pole. By comparison my other birds were all around 7/8" of distance for noticeable pull on the 6" string. In ballpark terms that would indicate the magnetic pull on the 2015 pups is nearly 50% stronger than a typical bird pup.

So why is this of any significance? I'm still getting a bit of chorus effect on the G string even though I've significantly lowered the pup. All the other strings play fine. I used a medium gauge string set and now I'm wondering if the G string is just too light for these magnets which may be impacting how that string vibrates. The next test will be to install a heavy gauge G string to see if that makes a difference. The other option would be to go to an overall higher tension set of strings or possibly a string set that is not impacted as much by magnetic pull (tapes?).

The 2015 continues to be an interesting journey. A rock monster bass with balls to the wall output.

nice methodology, any way you can plot the data in a ss?

 

[TBird1958]

Good morning Thunderbird brothers and sisters. Can't resist one last post as my Rolling Stones vacation comes to a close. Heading back to Spokane a little later today. Visited Thunder Road guitars/Bass NW yesterday. Great people and an amazing collection of instruments. I could not resist trying the Mike Lull 5 string Thunderbird in the photo. It is the first Lull I have ever seen in person. The craftsmanship is amazing! It was all I could do to leave it there. I love my 5 string Gibson, and that is the only reason I left without it. I was struck by the fact the Lull was considerably lighter. I may have to come back for it.They have a few other Lulls that were gorgeous as well.
The other picture is one last sunset from Alki beach. I don't know why I never got there when I lived over here 20+ years ago, but glad I did during this trip.
Have a great weekend everyone.

I haven't visited The Bass Shop's new location yet, it's a little closer to me now (West Seattle is damned expensive!), as they've moved. Mike's Thunderbirds are indeed very nice, were I to get another I think it would be a Jeff Ament version.

 

[GBassNorth]

nice methodology, any way you can plot the data in a ss?

Better than that...
Here's the data in Scatter Chart format where Process input is the distance I moved the cut string away from the pup, and the Quality Characteristic is the visual observation of magnetic impact on the cut string

But because Scatter Charts can get a bit messy with all the outlier info cluttering the data set here it is in a histogram using the standard Doane formula (which is a modification of Sturges' formula which attempts to improve its performance with non-normal data). The formula is as follows...
k=1+log2⁡(n)+log2⁡(1+|g1|σg1)

where g1

is the estimated 3rd-moment-skewness of the distribution and

σg1=6(n−2)(n+1)(n+3)

Thus arriving at the following Histogram Chart maintaining the same two axis sets from the Scatter Chart above...

Of course the short answer to the request for a spread sheet is nope, didn't do one. In fact I didn't do any of the charts or calculations in this post. But for a second there I bet you were impressed!

 

[Chucky Stiletti]

Better than that...
Here's the data in Scatter Chart format where Process input is the distance I moved the cut string away from the pup, and the Quality Characteristic is the visual observation of magnetic impact on the cut string
View attachment 3511232

But because Scatter Charts can get a bit messy with all the outlier info cluttering the data set here it is in a histogram using the standard Doane formula (which is a modification of Sturges' formula which attempts to improve its performance with non-normal data). The formula is as follows...
k=1+log2⁡(n)+log2⁡(1+|g1|σg1)

where g1

is the estimated 3rd-moment-skewness of the distribution and

σg1=6(n−2)(n+1)(n+3)

Thus arriving at the following Histogram Chart maintaining the same two axis sets from the Scatter Chart above...
View attachment 3511241

Of course the short answer to the request for a spread sheet is nope, didn't do one. In fact I didn't do any of the charts or calculations in this post. But for a second there I bet you were impressed!

certainly was!
would have probably been easier to tabulate the data than to find, cut and paste all that stuff!!

 

[MCF]

FWIW - I did a quick little experiment with my 2015 bird to see if my assumptions were correct around the magnetic pull of the pickups on this bird being significantly stronger than my standard Gibson pickup TBird.

Results - the 2015 pups do indeed have a significantly stronger magnetic pull than any of my other birds pups, almost 50% stronger.

Test - I basically cut off about a 6" length of a spare bass guitar G string I had laying around and with the bass laying flat on its back I held the cut string perpendicular to the G string that was strung up on the bass. The tip of the cut string was held at approximately the same distance from the top surface of the G string pole of the pup as the strung G string. Then I slowly moved the top of the cut string laterally away from the pup. The tip of the cut string nearest the pup remained engaged with the magnetic pull of the pup as much as 1-1/4" away from the centerline of the pole. By comparison my other birds were all around 7/8" of distance for noticeable pull on the 6" string. In ballpark terms that would indicate the magnetic pull on the 2015 pups is nearly 50% stronger than a typical bird pup.

So why is this of any significance? I'm still getting a bit of chorus effect on the G string even though I've significantly lowered the pup. All the other strings play fine. I used a medium gauge string set and now I'm wondering if the G string is just too light for these magnets which may be impacting how that string vibrates. The next test will be to install a heavy gauge G string to see if that makes a difference. The other option would be to go to an overall higher tension set of strings or possibly a string set that is not impacted as much by magnetic pull (tapes?).

The 2015 continues to be an interesting journey. A rock monster bass with balls to the wall output.

Thanks for the post. Interesting that it is that much more.

 

[Engle]

Tbird sighting:

Red is such a sexy colour on a bird. All it needs is chrome

IMO She is one of the cooler current pop singers. And it was refreshing to see a whole band playing instruments with no tracks...

 

[MCF]

Better than that...
Here's the data in Scatter Chart format where Process input is the distance I moved the cut string away from the pup, and the Quality Characteristic is the visual observation of magnetic impact on the cut string
View attachment 3511232

But because Scatter Charts can get a bit messy with all the outlier info cluttering the data set here it is in a histogram using the standard Doane formula (which is a modification of Sturges' formula which attempts to improve its performance with non-normal data). The formula is as follows...
k=1+log2⁡(n)+log2⁡(1+|g1|σg1)

where g1

is the estimated 3rd-moment-skewness of the distribution and

σg1=6(n−2)(n+1)(n+3)

Thus arriving at the following Histogram Chart maintaining the same two axis sets from the Scatter Chart above...
View attachment 3511241

Of course the short answer to the request for a spread sheet is nope, didn't do one. In fact I didn't do any of the charts or calculations in this post. But for a second there I bet you were impressed!

You lost me at Doane Formula. Wouldn’t have a clue how to read the chart even if it was real. 50% greater, I get.