I wondered about that since the PUs look different. But I had one expert tell me they did crazy stuff at times with some of the NRs, and he's even seen chrome and nickle on the same bass.
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Thunderbird Club
- Thread starter TBird1958
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- club thunderbird
Amen brother! Preach it! That is a major factor for me as well. I want them where I'm used them being. For me, that sounds right.
When it comes to more than two pups on a bird you’re in relatively uncharted territory. I think I recall seeing a picture of our Queen holding a custom one off that Gibby made quite some time ago, but there may only be one of those. Cataldo has a three pup as an option but probably only a few of those at most floating around. So I pretty much did the pup layout on my own. Same with the control design, scant info out there on wiring for a three pickup bass, plenty on guitars but I wanted the option to control volume and tone on all three pups independently. Hence, a modified ‘62 Jazz bass stacked pot configuration.
After a lot of searching and researching I concluded that the theoretical “best” pup locations for my application would be the lower two pups in standard P/J locations and the third pup up close to the neck heel. For the third pup location it worked out very good aesthetically to just drop the third pup at the same pup to pup spacing as the lower two. This brought the third pup about 1/2” from the neck heel (or 21st fret location) and the equal pup spacing kept my OCD in check.
Coincidentally, the spacing lines up exactly with my two pup SpectorBird, which because of the all maple body and maple/rosewood neck, is probably a closer fit sound wise to the new build. The new build is a poplar semi hollow body with a thick maple cap and maple/rosewood neck. The Spector is no slouch on tone and hopefully the additional pup will thicken it up even further - fingers crossed.
I found a few pics of basses with 3 Thunderbird pickups. A couple Gibson and a couple Greco.
And this link to a Reverb sale from a while back:
https://reverb.com/item/2598472-gibson-thunderbird-custom-shop-1991-red
And this link to a Reverb sale from a while back:
https://reverb.com/item/2598472-gibson-thunderbird-custom-shop-1991-red
LOL - at first glance I thought he had three thumb rests on that bass.
Seriously though, unless he uses a forced full neck playing style (running all the way down the A and E strings vs using the G and D strings) I can’t imaging how this would sound good. The A/E string pup is close to the neck potentially making those notes which already have a tendency to be thicker sounding even more boomy. Then he has the G and D string pup way down by the bridge potentially making those two strings sound even thinner than normal. Looks to me to be a very unbalanced sound across the four strings at any given fret location. I don’t know what his control layout is, but I guess you could compensate for the unbalanced volume and tone to a degree. Bottom line - not a layout that I’d blindly copy on any of my basses.
Now if he had reversed the two pup locations I’d consider it an interesting build with some cool potential. Warm up the bright strings and brighten up the warm strings makes a lot of sense. Which is why a number of top name builders offer a reverse P pickup in their basses.
All that said, I’m sure he makes more money doing what he’s doing than I could make doing what he’s doing.
I don't have to tools to make my own bodies, or I woo(l)d, but I had a few made.
The couple fellers what made the bodies for me BOTH were kind of particular asking about pickup placement.
I told em' I didn't care.
I can't tell if it's a Pbass, a Thunderbird, or a tuba on a specific recording, so 3mm of pickup placement is lost on me.
I don't envy those that can tell the difference.
I go "Thumpity-thump-clank-thump", girls dance, peeples smile and order another round.
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LOL - at first glance I thought he had three thumb rests on that bass.
Seriously though, unless he uses a forced full neck playing style (running all the way down the A and E strings vs using the G and D strings) I can’t imaging how this would sound good. The A/E string pup is close to the neck potentially making those notes which already have a tendency to be thicker sounding even more boomy. Then he has the G and D string pup way down by the bridge potentially making those two strings sound even thinner than normal. Looks to me to be a very unbalanced sound across the four strings at any given fret location. I don’t know what his control layout is, but I guess you could compensate for the unbalanced volume and tone to a degree. Bottom line - not a layout that I’d blindly copy on any of my basses.
Now if he had reversed the two pup locations I’d consider it an interesting build with some cool potential. Warm up the bright strings and brighten up the warm strings makes a lot of sense. Which is why a number of top name builders offer a reverse P pickup in their basses.
All that said, I’m sure he makes more money doing what he’s doing than I could make doing what he’s doing.
Good points but the bass sounds amazing.
On some tracks the bass sounds like it's panned across the stereo field so maybe it was stereo and each pickup was amplified separately and the sound was compensated and balanced that way.
The Move was a pioneer on heavy bass sound and used a dropped-D tuning early on ("Brontosaurus" for example). Fellow Birmingham boys Tony and Geezer tuned to low C# in 1971 until Jannick Top of Magma blew them off the orbit in 1973 with his monster low C (cello) tuning. But that's another story...
I looked at those when doing my layout but didn’t have much interest in the Gibson Tbird three pup config because I wanted to land in the Mudbucker spot up by the neck. I did briefly consider a four pup option, in which case the spacing between the Gibby pups was my number one choice.
As for the Greco single cuts, I wanted badly to find one to see how it sounded but couldn’t get my hands on any for sale here in the states. I did check out pictures on line closely (couldn’t find any dimensions) and determined that proportionally I’m relatively close to their spacing maybe a quarter inch more gap between pups on mine but I assumed the Greco was a shorter scale as well, so probably a wash. My neck pup also sits about a half inch closer to the 12th fret than theirs, but they’re sporting a 22 fret neck vs my 20 fret neck, so they probably couldn’t go any further north.
I pretty much looked everywhere but couldn’t find any info on their control wiring, so I don’t know how they have that wired considering it’s a three pup with three knobs and no toggles. Is it volume/pup selector knob/tone, or is it vol/vol/vol no tone control, or is it something else? I don’t know, but would be interested to find out.
Yes. Reversing a P PU or angling a J type PU to me this has always made more sense. I almost tried this when I modded a Pbass in the 80s, but chickened out as it would have been a costly mistake (if it didn't work) I was unwilling to risk....Warm up the bright strings and brighten up the warm strings makes a lot of sense. Which is why a number of top name builders offer a reverse P pickup in their basses.
Ohh man, now I want a 4 pickup bird....
I would imagine those 3 pickup Greco's are 3 vol, no tone. MAYBE combining middle and neck on one vol? and a tone?
There is/was a TB member that had a couple of the Greco LP style. I think it was @Johnny Crab? He might be able/willing to answer a couple questions on that model.
- Mar 13, 2008
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OK, so I got a Bird pickup surround question.
My Greco has these plastic surrounds that are screwed into the body, and serve no function.
Where can I get 1 more in black? I don't have room for 2 more...
Looking at my NR, I do have room for 2 more pickups, but as they would be on the pickguard, I don't need the surrounds.
My Greco has these plastic surrounds that are screwed into the body, and serve no function.
Where can I get 1 more in black? I don't have room for 2 more...
Looking at my NR, I do have room for 2 more pickups, but as they would be on the pickguard, I don't need the surrounds.
How do you run your 4 pickup fretless Tele? Does it have all on all the time or do you use different combinations for different situations?
My only "multi pickup" bass is this Jazz, originally assembled in 2006 because I was (and am) a huge Doug Rauch fan. What I didn't know back then that he had a P pickup in place of the Jazz neck pickup and also I have never had a real mudbucker. The current setup is pretty balanced (Model 1 and DP127's) 'though I seldom use all three on.
Given my preference for a II or a IV with the bridge pickup off, them futzing about with the neck position location is all the more egregious. Put the one pickup right in the sweet spot, and leave it be.
Now it all makes sense. His bass sounds exactly like I thought it would with very gritty grindy aggressive upper mids and highs that easily cut through the mix and thick lows, not a lot in between. That sound works great for him, but not really my style.
I think you’re right about the stereo effect, with his pup set up it would make perfect sense to split the pup signals into two separate amps and EQ each accordingly. In the Christmas video of his bass it does look like he may have some kind of dual output jack on the bass but the pic was kinda fuzzy so I can’t tell for sure.
Great song though, I’ll have to dig deeper into his stuff, YouTube rabbit hole, here I come!
And they all sound great! Some may fit some songs or venues better than others but any one of them will easily get the job done with great applause from the crowd.
No idea on the Greco controls but I’d sure be interested to find out.
As for a four pup bird, if my three pup experiment goes well I’ll probably mod my already heavily modded FrankenGoth to a four pup layout. With Chinabuckers that’s easy to do for under $300.
Super secret wiring... this is actually the first and only time I will put this in writing...
Two 51 single coils (one under the cover) controls are volume/blend (the two toasters are dummies)
