U.S. Peavey Club

[kodiakblair]

Another US Peavey joined the clan today. This time an 84 Furydrool

Surprised at getting one with a rosewood fretboard for £100.USA Peaveys don't come up for sale too often in Scotland,probably
cause I have most of them 5 hour trip to get her this morning, no complaints

 

[kodiakblair]

Just got to spend some time with the Peaveys. The 84 Fury,my T-20,91 Fury and the Patriot, felt the Patriot had slightly
less punch than the others but the neck needed adjusted again

Glad to report I'm very happy with the latest addition and that the Patriot is now playing sweet

 

[PokeyPrasch]

Nice to see you scored my favorite Fender P alternative. The early Fury. Grats.
My refinished body should be arriving soonish I hope, then I'll post my Peavey family here.

 

[DavidEdenAria]

My local GC had an early Fury just like the one I scored, except it was fretless......they had $199 and it didn't last a week....wish I would have bought it now.

 

[58kites]

So, I wanted to ask about pick ups.
Got an RSB with Koa body... has the two VFL's and a Volume/Sweep/Tone control knob set up, and no active tone circuit, just a cap for treble roll off.
I'm not that enamored with the sound of active bass pickups and have thought about putting passives in this bass.
Have not seen anything that that looks like a fit except for Fender who had a Modern Player Dual Jazz pickup that looked like two jazz pickups stuck together.
I think it looked a lot like the size/shape of the VFL (with the four half round mounting screw cuts) but I would guess they are not sized the same, unless by some wild coincidence.
I was also thinking of maybe routing the pickup holes to rectangle shape to put Bartolini, EMG, Kent Armstrong or some other passives in there.
Any ideas, suggestions? Anybody done this with a bass that has VFL's?
The VFL pickups body size is 3 11/16" (93.66mm) long ...and 1 7/16" (36.51mm) wide.

 

[kodiakblair]

@58kites

Nice looking bass. Now it's 4.30am here in Scotland but my brain says EMG 35 Soapbars are the right size.
Something rings a bell about a 5 string swap using 40's so I imagine 35's would work.

Be easy enough to email EMG for the size,and I hope they fit. I better hit the hay Sun rise in 5 minutes

 

[Bigtruck1369]

Do any of my fellow Axcelerator owners have recordings of yourselves playing? I love mine, but I'm certainly not skilled enough to really put it through its paces and there's a serious lack of sound and video online, so I really have no idea what it can do!

Can anyone help me?

 

[sirsam22]

@58kites, I just did some looking at dimensions on bestbassgear.com, and it looks like the closest fits you'll get will be Bartolini BBs or anything(almost everything) that is EMG 35 sized with a tiny bit of routing. The site says they are 1.51". None of them will fill the cavity the other direction, so there will be some gap on either side.

On another topic, I'm going to do a refinish on my 90's Fury. As part of the process I'm thinking about tinting the neck darker, but I don't know if I'll have to go all the way down to bare wood to do it. Do any of you fine gents know if it's possible to darken without sanding it all the way down? I took 0000 steel wool to it today to take the gloss of the whole thing. Will that be enough?

 

[kodiakblair]

Excellent bit of detective work there @sirsam22

My apologises @58kites. Are there pickup surrounds that could fit, I think that might spoil the look though.

Afraid I can't speak for tinting the neck.

 

[geoff_in_nc]

I've played Cirruses and Axcelerators with VFLs and preamps, but never a passive VFL equipped bass. Can anyone tell me if converting an Axcelerator to passive would change the tone significantly? FYI I typically run my treble control flat and just bump the bass up a little bit.

 

[mech]

Can anyone tell me if converting an Axcelerator to passive would change the tone significantly?

The pickups are active so it will still have an "active" sound. The pickups are low impedance and have a buffer/gain stage inside so you would still need the battery(s). It would be easy enough to try the pickups without the pre. The pickups feed the balance control. Disconnect the output of the pre from the output jack. Disconnect the output of the balance control from the pre and connect it to the output jack. You wouldn't have volume or tone controls but that shouldn't matter for a test.

 

[geoff_in_nc]

Ah, I didn't realize the pickups alone would require batteries.... That was the unstated reason for the question to see if I could get away from batteries completely. I guess not.... Batteries and preamp it is then. Thanks for the quick answer!

 

[mech]

You could keep an eye out for a set of passive VFLs on EPAY. There's two on there now but the price is too steep for me.

 

[Charley Umbria]

If anybody's in the market for a T-40, [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] in Nashville has a beautiful early 1979 (0032xxxx s/n) "Patent Applied For" model. Better pix are in their Reverb store. The bass in in great condition, with just a few minor scratches. The neck is your typical T-40 P-Bass-ish profile and is very comfortable, despite having almost no playing wear. All of the controls work properly, the bass is nicely set up, and it's on the light side, compared to later T-40s. IMHO, their asking price is a little high, though.

There's something very special about these early (sorta) slab-bodied T-40s. They just feel..."authentic." The finish on the wood is very thin and you can tell that someone put a lot of care into assembling a quality instrument (and, yes, I know that they were CNC made, etc.). But still, look at this thing...

BTW, I have no affiliation with either Fanny's or this particular bass. I just happened to be in their shop a couple of days ago and stumbled across it. I will say, though, that they're very nice people to deal with and they seem to focus on selecting high-quality instruments to sell.

If I could possibly justify owning a second T-40, I'd have already snapped this one up!

(Also posted in the T-40 Club thread)

 

[kodiakblair]

So I get home from work and the local gear for sale/trade FB page has a fella goin back to drums. 40 minutes later I've another Fury

For the princely sum of £90 ($130) this 8lb piece of Peavey goodness was mine. The soon-to-be drummer fella was going to see about a
Premier drum kit £50 ($75) next then trade a Epi T-bird tonight for cymbals and other assorted drum gear.

Sorry for the lousy photo.

 

[Runnerman]

Sweet Blair! Transitional with a Rosie fretboard....don't see those much.
Nice score!!!

 

[kodiakblair]

Greek Myth talks of 3 Furys, Goddesses of Vengeance.

My 3 are sweethearts

I ask myself "will I ever stop buying Peaveys ?" Then answer "I sure hope not"

 

[Runnerman]

Oh you!

 

[PokeyPrasch]

I'm getting my slant-pup Fury back together, is the wiring just a standard P bass?
I can't find the original wiring harness...

 

[kodiakblair]

@PokeyPrasch

Give me 30 minutes and I'll get the scratchplate off mine and post some photos.