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SOLD - Gibson Thunderbird/Non Reverse/Vintage Sunburst
£750

NancyJohnson

By NancyJohnson,
in Basses For Sale

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NancyJohnson Grand Master

NancyJohnson

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OK, well here's the skinny and I'm going to be brutally honest.

I bought this new last year and I will be honest, I was fairly smitten; it was my first fresh out of the box bass in some years and I'd been waiting many moons for it to arrive. Forum members who share an interest in these basses will be aware my purchase wasn't without issues and the net result was that it required a rewire as the original Gibson pots were well under the recommendation for the pickups, so got changed to 500K units. (And before you ask, no I don't...I donated these to Neephid for his pant-wettingly exciting Ripper rescue project.)

Moving swiftly along, I've tried to ingratiate this bass into my band, but put simply, tonally it just doesn't fit. Despite the bass sharing pretty much the same guts as my other Thunderbirds, tonally it's a waaaay phatter than my desired hybrid Geddy Lee/Jean Jacques Burnel poop. It's never been, or will be, my go to bass and as a consequence it's only been out of the house about five times. It plays lovely, sounds great, balances great and has plenty of boom.

To the specifics, the bass has the original hard shell case and is fitted with a Hipshot Supertone bridge and Dunlop Straplocks. I will provide the original bridge should the buyer wish to revert it back to stock visually. There's an off white replacement guard fitted (the 'bird logo is a vinyl sticker) and I'll provide the original pickguard too. New set of D'Addarios fitted at the weekend. It's pretty minty, small amount of buckle rash behind the top horn. No dings or chips. For the record, Gibson are rumoured to have made around 200 of these before discontinuing production (the Pelham Blue ones double that), so it is a classic in the making, but I'm sure I'll be long dead before collectors are hunting these down and saying, '[i]Woo, it's a 2013. How many thousand do you want?[/i]'.

I'm looking for a bargain £750.00 or part trades (we can haggle over trade values); all in all, I guess it owes me about £950 including the mods. I'm in no rush to sell and have other basses to use, so it'll just sit in the case until someone comes knocking.

From a trade perspective, I'd only really be looking at a cherry-finish Gibson Thunderbird (no studio versions please), a Musicman Stingray (black/rosewood), a nice Euro/US Spector or a R*ck*nb*ck*r Blackstar or an original spec 400* series in Jetglo. To make any deals sweeter, I could also (but would be reluctant to) chuck in my 2008 reverse Thunderbird as well, so you'd have a mirrored pair!

Thanks for reading
P



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karlfer Veteran

karlfer

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[quote name='NancyJohnson' timestamp='1399649702' post='2446334']
I think if I can shift this, and it's still available, then I may be ordering that. :) It's around £1.5k.
[/quote]

I had a look and couldn't find it.
If it's that price imported/VAT/customs/shipping, that is a STEAL!

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howdenspur Mentor

howdenspur

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[quote name='NancyJohnson' timestamp='1399491131' post='2444800']
OK, well here's the skinny and I'm going to be brutally honest.

I bought this new last year and I will be honest, I was fairly smitten; it was my first fresh out of the box bass in some years and I'd been waiting many moons for it to arrive. Forum members who share an interest in these basses will be aware my purchase wasn't without issues and the net result was that it required a rewire as the original Gibson pots were well under the recommendation for the pickups, so got changed to 500K units. (And before you ask, no I don't...I donated these to Neephid for his pant-wettingly exciting Ripper rescue project.)

Moving swiftly along, I've tried to ingratiate this bass into my band, but put simply, tonally it just doesn't fit. Despite the bass sharing pretty much the same guts as my other Thunderbirds, tonally it's a waaaay phatter than my desired hybrid Geddy Lee/Jean Jacques Burnel poop. It's never been, or will be, my go to bass and as a consequence it's only been out of the house about five times. It plays lovely, sounds great, balances great and has plenty of boom.

To the specifics, the bass has the original hard shell case and is fitted with a Hipshot Supertone bridge and Dunlop Straplocks. I will provide the original bridge should the buyer wish to revert it back to stock visually. There's an off white replacement guard fitted (the 'bird logo is a vinyl sticker) and I'll provide the original pickguard too. New set of D'Addarios fitted at the weekend. It's pretty minty, small amount of buckle rash behind the top horn. No dings or chips. For the record, Gibson are rumoured to have made around 200 of these before discontinuing production (the Pelham Blue ones double that), so it is a classic in the making, but I'm sure I'll be long dead before collectors are hunting these down and saying, '[i]Woo, it's a 2013. How many thousand do you want?[/i]'.

I'm looking for a bargain £750.00 or part trades (we can haggle over trade values); all in all, I guess it owes me about £950 including the mods. I'm in no rush to sell and have other basses to use, so it'll just sit in the case until someone comes knocking.

From a trade perspective, I'd only really be looking at a cherry-finish Gibson Thunderbird (no studio versions please), a Musicman Stingray (black/rosewood), a nice Euro/US Spector or a R*ck*nb*ck*r Blackstar or an original spec 400* series in Jetglo. To make any deals sweeter, I could also (but would be reluctant to) chuck in my 2008 reverse Thunderbird as well, so you'd have a mirrored pair!

Thanks for reading
P




[/quote]That creamy PG was a great idea - very nice!

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NancyJohnson Grand Master

NancyJohnson

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Happy Sunday morning. Here's some more pics.

The case:



The bass in da case:



The case-candy (including the original bridge):



Front of the bass:



Back of the bass:



Hipshot Supertone bridge:



The control cavity (CTS 500k pots). Rewire was done by Julian Mullen in Reading, Berkshire ([url="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/julian.mullen/index.htm"]http://homepage.ntlworld.com/julian.mullen/index.htm[/url]):



Rear of the headstock showing the volute and serial number. None of my other TBs have the volute and I'm not certain whether the original 60s version did either. Irrespective (and despite the neck profile (which is similar to a Precision, rather than the skinny Jazz-esque profile of the reverse models), you'd think it has to be a good thing to strengthen the headstock at that position):



That's it! Someone buy it soon! Trying to do a deal with Karl!!

Cheers
P

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NancyJohnson Grand Master

NancyJohnson

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OK...let's start over here.

Output/hotness. Difficult to quantify as I only have passive basses to compare to at the present time. By way of comparison however, my long departed Bongo 5HH was off the scale...active, very hot, fairly uncontrollable tone; loved that bass, hated how it sounded at the end of the session after continual tweaking of the controls. Insofar as hotness goes, there's parity with the other passive basses I use. Obviously bear in mind that scale of output is dependent on several factors; pickup height, finger/pick style, gauge of strings. I have a tendency to set up my basses in a manner that leans towards a similarity in output, by which I mean, I just like to plug in, ramp the controls up and leave my outboard gear to control what comes out of the speakers.

It sounds good, different/phatter to my reverse Thunderbirds (or which there are many). It has 500K CTS pots, the stock Gibsons were sucking the highend out of the pickups.

If you're in the vicinity (Reading), you're free to come round for a noodle. We have good coffee.
P

Edited by NancyJohnson
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