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Thunderbirds and weight.


Paul S
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I'm mildly curious about Thunderbird basses - one would fit in with my blues/rock band rather nicely - but I've always believed them to be heavy old things.

But are they?  Did/do they vary much?

What about any of the Epiphones and MIJ knockoffs - any lightweights (sub-9lbs) amongst them?

Be exceedingly grateful if anyone can give a kind of overview. :) 

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My Gibson is really light, possibly my lightest bass that I own. My Epiphone on the other hand is quite a heavy beast. It's the through neck one but I'd owned two Epiphone's with bolt on necks previously and they were light basses. I think they sound great for blues rock.

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15 minutes ago, Cat Burrito said:

My Gibson is really light, possibly my lightest bass that I own.

I can second this: for a bass which looks so big, it's always a surprise when I go back to my Gibson, and remember how little it weighs! Haven't owned one of the Epiphones, but I don't recall any of the ones I tried being notably heavy.

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1 minute ago, Paul S said:

This really surprises me!  In a good way.  I'd assumed that the Gibsons would be heavier.  Interesting!

Do lightweight tuers go any way towards curing neck dive?

The tuners are pretty small, I think they can stop it being worse, but won't ever remove the issue. That's pure physics of the body shape and headstock.

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Epi's always seem to be heavier than Gibson's. 

I see lots of posts about weight, which I find funny, as people say such bass is lightweight etc. If you're 6"5 and built like a brick s**t house, their lightweight is not the same as a 5 foot skinny guy. Just saying! 😉

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1 hour ago, No lust in Jazz said:

I had a Gibson - the weight was fine, however, the balance wasn't great; we all know that there have efforts by various builders to improve this.

Around 2013 Gibson finally worked out that if you reposition the strap button the problem is solved. 

So neck dive for me. Don't quite know why Gibson took 50yrs to work that one out, but there you have it.

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17 minutes ago, hooky_lowdown said:

I see lots of posts about weight, which I find funny, as people say such bass is lightweight etc. If you're 6"5 and built like a brick s**t house, their lightweight is not the same as a 5 foot skinny guy. Just saying! 😉

I'm 6ft 3 but pretty slim. My shoulder is wrecked from 30yrs+ of low slung basses and bad posture. I am afraid weight is very much a factor for me and I'm a bigger boy (height wise, at least). I'd say I was fairly strong as I do a lot to keep in shape. I think it's more age than build of the player. 

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59 minutes ago, Cat Burrito said:

I'm 6ft 3 but pretty slim. My shoulder is wrecked from 30yrs+ of low slung basses and bad posture. I am afraid weight is very much a factor for me and I'm a bigger boy (height wise, at least). I'd say I was fairly strong as I do a lot to keep in shape. I think it's more age than build of the player. 

I think it's more about the actual weight of a bass then it is by someone's perceived definition of what "lightweight" is.

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I've had a couple-three Epi bolt-ons which I've Fenderbirded, and none of them are much more than 9lb (they're alder, and the TB body is pretty thin; getting an East U-Retro in to the cavity was a bit of a squeeze, depth-wise)... and I'm proper picky about weight. I've added better, heavier bridges (Supertones) and ultralight tuners, but that was only because I was building the things, and I could...

The neck dive thing is a simple move of the strap button...they can, however, sort of fall forward from your body a little, but if you can't cope with that (it's not a problem for me) run the strap across the 'rear wing', and problem solved...

And I can sympathise with Mr B above; there's no bass that cries out to be low slung more than a Thunderbird, and definitely none that looks cooler at knee height... 😁

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1 hour ago, hooky_lowdown said:

Epi's always seem to be heavier than Gibson's. 

I see lots of posts about weight, which I find funny, as people say such bass is lightweight etc. If you're 6"5 and built like a brick s**t house, their lightweight is not the same as a 5 foot skinny guy. Just saying! 😉

It's still about whether the bass is lightweight or not, no matter who's lifting it...I categorise <7.5 lbs as Lightweight, 7.5 - 9.5 lbs as Medium Weight, and >9.5 lbs as Heavyweight, even though I back away from anything over 9lbs...

Might be interesting to see what the rest of us glass-backed old geezers think...hmmm...

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9 minutes ago, Muzz said:

It's still about whether the bass is lightweight or not, no matter who's lifting it...I categorise <7.5 lbs as Lightweight, 7.5 - 9.5 lbs as Medium Weight, and >9.5 lbs as Heavyweight, even though I back away from anything over 9lbs...

Might be interesting to see what the rest of us glass-backed old geezers think...hmmm...

I think you missed my point. You may categorise lightweight as being 7.5lbs or less (as may I), but someone else may categorise lightweight as anything under 10lbs. Which is a significant difference for us glass backed old geezers. 😀

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Possibly....some maniac out there bought my old 78 Jazz, and that was a sniff under 12lbs...it was so dense it bent light around it...I'd be surprised to hear anyone short of a professional powerlifter describe that as anything less than Heavy...

Let's find out...new Topic incoming... 😃

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I have an Epiphone Classic Pro and wouldn't say it's that heavy. Having said that, my 2 other basses are a Ric and an ash bodied precision that are on the heavier side of things so it's all relative I guess. Not much of an answer, but I can weigh it tomo when I'm with it.

I've never really thought the neck dive was bad on it either, it's nothing a decent suede strap doesn't fix.

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I've got a couple and they're among the lightest of all my basses, Epi & Gibbo are both nice and light. The neck dive has never really been an issue with the strap button repositioned in Fender'esque positioning.

If you want a smaller headstock with no chance of dive, there's always Spector NS-2X or Mike Lull (RIP :() basses for megabucks...

 

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On 02/03/2020 at 11:49, Paul S said:

I'm mildly curious about Thunderbird basses - one would fit in with my blues/rock band rather nicely - but I've always believed them to be heavy old things.

But are they?  Did/do they vary much?

What about any of the Epiphones and MIJ knockoffs - any lightweights (sub-9lbs) amongst them?

Be exceedingly grateful if anyone can give a kind of overview. :) 

Never had a weight issue. Amazing sound. Wish I'd kept mine. 

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