Will they be posted in the Peavy Club thread? I’ve been remiss about checking in there as regularly as I used to. Need to change that.
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U.S. Peavey Club
- Thread starter Soundchaser11460
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I’m a T-Bird geek. I love humbuckers. But I also love my Foundation with the SFs. They sound so much better to me than typical J pickups.FWIW, I look at the pragmatism of instruments. I love G&L. I have an El Toro and have nothing but respect and reverence to it. The ASAT is a really cool bass, however, it's not as balanced and comfortable as it's electronically identical brother, the L2000. The Tele body style of the ASAT is known for mostly neck diving, the Precision body style of the L2000 doesn't neck dive nearly as badly nor as often as the ASAT.
if a T40 and fretless T20 came my way, I might just swap them out. As we all know, those T series Peaveys have had their comeuppance in the market and are not going backwards in value. G&L has it's collectability, but it's mostly the 80s era stuff that is desired at this point.
Plus, in the grand scheme of things, this is a Peavey thread. haha.
And now I’m wanting to get serious about finding a T-40 at a weight I can live with. I still kick myself for passing on a +or- eleven pound one I found at a shop in 2018. They wanted $500 for it which seemed high for the time and they wouldn’t budge. I’ll have one, one of these days.
I'll make sure it's posted in the Super Ferrites thread and I will post a link here too.
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I love the TBird neck-side sound and I love jazz or Super Ferrites in the bridge position. Thinking of pairing a Novak TBird pickup at the neck with a linear humbucking SF from Matt/916 in the bridge at some point in the not too distant future...probably in a Gen 2 or Gen 3 Fury body...best of both worlds.
That's what I've been seeing too.
About 13 have been on eBay in the last 3 months. Most went for around the $600 to $630 mark, 2 were in the $700 to $750 range. Those BIN who accepted OBO got a sale, those who stuck to their guns were left with the bass.
In January, MGR were asking between $1000 and $1250 for the 6 they had, now it's $820 to $1100 for the same 6.
My gut feeling is the 'Big 4-0 YOB' moment has passed and most folks who wanted to own a 40 have been there then sold the T-shirt. It's another 5 years till the Big 5-0 moment begins but given TB's "what's the weight", "Too heavy", "Must be 8lbs or under" mantra the 50somethings will likely look elsewhere.
The T40 is just too much bass for me, the body is is too big, the bridge is massively over sized, and it has to many knobs and switches.
I like the T45 much better but it is still a big body and the bridge is still stupidly huge.
So, I'm putting a T40 pickup in a Gen 3 Fury body with a volume and a tone control so I can have that nifty T40 pickup in a bass that is less over the top.
I like the T45 much better but it is still a big body and the bridge is still stupidly huge.
So, I'm putting a T40 pickup in a Gen 3 Fury body with a volume and a tone control so I can have that nifty T40 pickup in a bass that is less over the top.
That's putting it mildly my friend
I actually took possession of another Peavey yesterday
About 5 or 6 years back I picked up a Milestone IV for a pal to learn on. It's been in an attic since he returned to Oz Dec 2018. Tuning was out a few cents but otherwise in great shape.
Honestly my impression of the t-40 is that it tried to wring so much utility out of one instrument that it kinda misses the forest for the trees. It's a concept that sounds great on paper, and I was so stoked to get mine, but I definitely still have it more for the novelty than the utility. Well crafted as it is, it wreaks of over-design imo.
Amazing price difference now compared to 2018 when I bought my 1979 T-40 here in Australia for $600aud (approx $450usd back in 2018). Mine was a 10.8lbs bass..a T-40 on the "lighter" side lol I never regretted the purchase either..a great bass.
Yeah, the T40/T60 were pretty over the top, and I'm sure it was to make instruments that could have more utility than the usual suspects of the mid to late 70s. The phase switch, spin a split and VTVT controls is very hip in a 1977 sort of way. No disrespect to the T series, but I prefer the next generation of instruments Peavey released after the Ts.
T20 was a reduction that was going in the right direction but the Gen 1 slant Fury hit the nail on the head.
Making the split P pickup Gen 2 Fury was fine but they should have kept making the Gen 1.
Same with the Foundation with Super Ferrites, changing their basses to standard Fender P and J pickup designs made those Peaveys just like every other copy in the world.
Trouble is with spin-a-split you don't really benefit from VTVT.
Dan Armstrong used spin-a-split in the London bass 71/72, he quickly spotted the limitations and added a 2nd tone pot.
Totally agree it was hip to 1977, time 1980 rolled up the T-series just looked old and dated.
As much as I appreciate the elegant simplicity of a VT or VVT control set up there are a lot of things it cannot do tonally especially when you add the option of coil splitting or pickup voicing and a 3 way selector.
I live the flexibility on my Unity LTD and Carvin LB50 basses
I live the flexibility on my Unity LTD and Carvin LB50 basses
Agreed. It's nice to roll off the tone a bit on a single coil. I find repurposing the phase switch as a master coil split much more useful.
A really cool usage of VTVT is on Danelectro basses-independent tones. I almost always play my Longhorn with both pickups on, the tone fully off on the bridge pickup, leaving the neck wide open. It's a cool sound-one gets all the depth, cut and bite from the neck pickup, while the bridge coil is adding just lows and low mids. Similar to OMG mode on a G&L. It's not as phasey and scooped as when both pickups are full range and reading the strings from two different spots on the strings.
Fully agreed on all fronts. Those original designs are much cooler and unique.
Chip Todd mentioned that he would have liked to do a revision on the bass T pickup, as they weren't as clear sounding as he preferred. The T60 pickup had the clarity, and he mentioned that it sounded better on bass than the bass version, but the aperture was too narrow for the string spacing. That would have been much cooler, a new version T bass pickup that continued to be used well into the 80s and 90s. It would look cool with a black chrome cover on a Dyna!
The SF just needed a 5 string revision to keep it viable. Good sounding single coils never go out of style. Seems the 5 string popularity may have sent the engineers back to the drawing board.
I have never owned a T40, but many, many of my friends have. Some of which have allowed me to do some small mods to the electronics to make them more of a true utilitarian instrument vs a 'jack of all trades, master of none' as they are often portrayed.
#1, as mentioned a few posts up, is the master coil split vs phase switch. The T40 splits to the bridge side coil. Now one can use the tone controls and not deal with the wacky phase play. Yes, it's fun to play with how in and out of phase the pickups are with small adjustments of the volume controls, but it's a thing that tends to work better with guitars vs basses in the grand scheme of things and what their roles are in a mix.
#2 is a modified coil split that goes to either inner coils or outer coils. This way you get hum cancelling and coil split. Still uses a DPDT switch. I posted about this somewhere earlier in this thread when I had an 'aha' moment regarding the DPDT switch in my homemade ABY boxes, the 3 wire T pickups and the DPDT phase switch. This has become my favorite way to use two T pickups. I initially tested my theory on my T42.5 (Foundation body with two Toasters and T45 neck), it splits to the middle coils and sounds great.
Something else discovered along the way... Splitting to the inner coils of a T40 is a more accurate tone clone of the Ric bass, as it puts the bridge pickup closer to the right spot. If you rotate the pickups 180 degrees in the body, they then split to the neck side coils, which is yet more accurate for Ric cloning.
The simplicity and tonal variety of my T42.5 (kept it VVT with split switch as the body was already drilled for the switch) and Ibanez RB45 (RB620 modded to be a virtual T45 with blade T pickup, Q Filter and push/pull coil split) are my favorite T type basses without being clunky/late 70s chic.
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First time poster to U.S. Peavey Club. After cycling through lots of various brands and types over the years I found that I was playing my Fury models more than any of the others, so filled in the different generations. 1982 T-20, 1984 Fury, 1988, 1989, 1992. I’m not all the way back reading through the thread yet, but will be interested to see if any have ever been posted. Love them all but probably play the ‘88 Fury the most (my first).
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As you read back through this thread, you just might find a couple of posts of me praising my favorite '88 Fury !!
As you read back through this thread, you just might find a couple of posts of me praising my favorite '88 Fury !!
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Very cool ... mine looks similar!
I think '87 and '88 were the most consistently great necks.
