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Gibson thunderbird bass pickups12/2/2023 I'm happy with playing my SG and EB basses as they are. Although using them often for supporting my thumb, I also pick closer to the bridge on them sometimes. However, I don't think that a different pickup would solve the problem since the attack position would stay the same.Īs for thumbrests, I added one each to my Ibanez Blazer "P-style" bass already in the 1980s, and to my Fender '65 Mustang Reissue Bass. The naming of both the SG Bass pickups as "TB Plus" and "TB Mini" is misleading which has been discussed here in at least one topic before. The term "TB" used by EMG means "real" Thunderbird pickup shape and dimensions. But I think the size of the soapbar TB-HZ won't work in that bridge slot. One alternative is to put a thumb-rest in the middle, but that seems cheesy. But thumb on the neck pup is uncomfortable for me. My issue is that if I play with thumb on the bridge pup, my preferred way, the tone loses a significant amount of warmth. All of my thirteen Gibson sixstring guitars and the two SG basses of mine are stock.Ĭapmaster, do you have a pic? I have a new SG Special and have considered a pup replacement for the bridge T-Bird humbucker. The two EB basses of mine are the only Gibson instruments of mine with replacement pickups, and the only instruments of a quality brand with third-party pickups. So I didn't return it but definitely wanted passive replacement pickups, and there are very few Thunderbird sized passive pickups available. when just taking strings and wood into considerations. :( However, I liked the tone of the "pure" bass, i. Since my string action is fairly stiff, there was lots of space between strings and magnets - no significant improvement. I tried with lowering pickups as much as possible. What it does it does well, but I find myself happier with the EB overall. I also like the tone of my 1987 Gibson IV, but it's less versatile to my ear. Tone is a pretty subjective thing, and if your new setup makes it work for you, I'm glad to hear it. The other thing is, I rarely have to play up that high on the fretboard, so it's possible I overlooked it. Their pre-sale instrument inspection is really good, so I imagine their techs caught the issue before it shipped if it existed. It could be to try and counteract what you experienced. The neck pickup came set pretty low by my usual reckoning, but the sound was great so I didn't mess with it. I didn't have those issues you described with mine, possibly because of the setup of the pickups from Sweetwater (which is where I bought mine). In my opinion, Gibson Thunderbird pickups are among the best bass pickups ever made. I would have loved replacing my EB's pickups with a four-conductor version of them. It is even worse they give up making the original Thunderbird pickups. I don't understand they continue making them. I have to say that these DeCola bass humbucker are the only badly misdesigned Gibson pickups I ever encountered. One is strung with roundwonds, the other with flatwound strings. Later I bought a second EB 2013, same pickup problems as expected, and did the same mods. What a difference! I guess they could be even better by using ceramic magnets. I replaced them with EMG TB-HZ pickups and upgraded the circuit for separate series/parallel options and a commonly switched capacitor-tuned coil split. They had a great tone otherwise, but I wanted identifyable notes, not noises. As an experiment, I removed the front pickup and tried, with only a slight betterment. It was the string pull of the big AlNiCo magnets. I tried four different string makes of three different brands, no way. What about the tone of your EB when fretting E4th or A3rd on higher frets? The beats of E4th past the 7th and A3rd past the 10th fret were unbearable on mine. Does anybody know yet whether the pickups on the new 2015 Thunderbird are the same as the ones on the EB Bass? I bought an EB and LOVE it, and I wonder if they took those pickups and the coil taps and put them on the new T-Bird.
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