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Thunderbird Club

#129,544
GBassNorth said:
If they're functional I'd assume an active preamp with a volume knob and three tone shaping knobs (bass, mid, treb). Makes perfect sense to me but only if it's active.
Click to expand...

Kens post on the last page.
 
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#129,545
Miles_ONeal said:
There are lots of options if you aren't afraid of wiring and soldering. Parallel/series, phase, kill, volume or tone presets, p/u selector, etc.
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Yeah I’m fine with wiring and soldering, but I prefer to keep my basses simple.
Usually when I’m performing, if there’s a chance that I could hit a switch accidentally, I’m likely to do that.
 
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#129,548
StephnG said:
Hmmmm decisions....
Click to expand...
If you're play live or do recording (gigging, Studio, etc) a kill switch is very handy. If you're not, it's pretty useless.

On my two band active preamp dual pup FrankenGoth I installed a toggle to split the coils.

So in position one its both pups in full Humbucker series mode on steroids if needed with up to an 18db boost or cut on both treb and bass. In position two it puts both pups into single coil mode, using the neck coil on the neck pup and the bridge coil on the bridge pup in parallel. In essence this creates one large super wide Humbucker with the north and south poles about 6" apart, no 60Hz hum on either pup soloed as long as you crack the other volume knob open just a hair. The single coil mode is very useful with some pedals that don't play well with Humbuckers and gives the bird an opportunity to dig pretty far into Jazz bass territory if needed. Easily the most versatile of all my TBirds. Because it's active it has a much more hifi sound than my passive birds, which can be good or bad depending on what you want.
 
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#129,549
Engle said:
Yeah I’m fine with wiring and soldering, but I prefer to keep my basses simple.
Usually when I’m performing, if there’s a chance that I could hit a switch accidentally, I’m likely to do that.
Click to expand...
Worst stage failure I ever had was from hitting a switch. I had a sealed bottle of water sitting on top of my amp. The amp was the Grexa 360 reissue, which has an on-off switch for the power amp in the cabinet. That switch is on a slanted panel on the back of the amp. Of course, there's a tangle of power cord and patch cords back there, because all that stuff plugs in right next to the switch. Halfway through the show, my sound disappeared. About half a song of panic and silence later, I had checked and twiddled with just about everything else. Then I looked at the back of the amp and found the full, still sealed water bottle resting against the on-off switch, neatly suspended in the power and patch cords. It had somehow walked off the top of the preamp head and fallen back there, landing in the only way it could have to turn off the powered cabinet.

Note to self: there's another reason to never put anything on top of the amp, even if it's solid state, has no vents, and could be doused with a fire hose without damage. If there was any need for another reason.

So, yeah, switches. What a terrible idea!

As far as a kill switch, the wireless transmitter has an on-off switch that I can't hit by accident, and the receiver has a button that I can step on like a tuner. It has a tuner built in, so that's what I use. Silencing the upright when it starts to feed back is the usual reason I would do that if I'm not checking tuning.
 
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#129,549
Gaolee said:
Worst stage failure I ever had was from hitting a switch. I had a sealed bottle of water sitting on top of my amp. The amp was the Grexa 360 reissue, which has an on-off switch for the power amp in the cabinet. That switch is on a slanted panel on the back of the amp. Of course, there's a tangle of power cord and patch cords back there, because all that stuff plugs in right next to the switch. Halfway through the show, my sound disappeared. About half a song of panic and silence later, I had checked and twiddled with just about everything else. Then I looked at the back of the amp and found the full, still sealed water bottle resting against the on-off switch, neatly suspended in the power and patch cords. It had somehow walked off the top of the preamp head and fallen back there, landing in the only way it could have to turn off the powered cabinet.

Note to self: there's another reason to never put anything on top of the amp, even if it's solid state, has no vents, and could be doused with a fire hose without damage. If there was any need for another reason.

So, yeah, switches. What a terrible idea!
Click to expand...
No kidding! I spent many years as a tech working in telecom/data racks where it was easy to bump a switch on a power bar - and take a system down.

Stage fail:
I once built a tube distortion pedal in the case of an old wah pedal. All was great until at a show my cord wrapped around the gain knob on the front of the pedal and turned it down.
When I hit the button for my solo...nothing:banghead:
 
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#129,550
Engle said:
No kidding! I spent many years as a tech working in telecom/data racks where it was easy to bump a switch on a power bar - and take a system down.

Stage fail:
I once built a tube distortion pedal in the case of an old wah pedal. All was great until at a show my cord wrapped around the gain knob on the front of the pedal and turned it down.
When I hit the button for my solo...nothing:banghead:
Click to expand...
Yikes! On a solo, that's no fun.
 
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#129,552
Engle said:
No kidding! I spent many years as a tech working in telecom/data racks where it was easy to bump a switch on a power bar - and take a system down.

Stage fail:
I once built a tube distortion pedal in the case of an old wah pedal. All was great until at a show my cord wrapped around the gain knob on the front of the pedal and turned it down.
When I hit the button for my solo...nothing:banghead:
Click to expand...
I can imagine the routine that you went through to figure out what happened. Cord tangles are the bane of my existence. I'm anal about how they are coiled, have them all marked, have velcro wraps for each of them, and everything else. But, I still go with wireless when I'm playing. I hate cord tangles! Good cable management solves a lot of problems, but as both of our silence problems show, it doesn't solve everything.
 
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#129,554
here again tonight....they really like us for some reason..:laugh:..
2F3742AF-7ACC-455B-A6D6-E404BBAC4871.jpeg


75D0C2F7-A111-42DE-B018-7DB0A92585B2.jpeg
 
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#129,555
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