The Last Bass Outpost
Gear Discussion Forums => Gibson Basses => Topic started by: Psycho Bass Guy on March 04, 2010, 09:26:08 PM
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The Epi Les Paul Standard I bought from GC used came in yesterday. It's in remarkable condition with a beautiful black finish and only some very shallow belt rash on the back that doesn't go far into the clearcoat which I may see about buffing out. I let it settle in to the temp difference between a Chicago warehouse and a Tennessee living room before I tried to set it up to play, but for $279, my cursory checkout said this puppy is a winner. It looks just like Deathshead’s, but in slightly rougher shape.
I had some time to kill waiting for it to be delivered, so I went around town to a couple of music stores I normally avoid, one for its incredibly unrealistic pricing, and the other because its owner is an asshole guitar-show "vintage" dealer. The 'overpriced' store was true to form, asking outrageous amounts of money for anything remotely playable and electric, though they did have a very good condition Ric 4004 on consignment for $1100. They are more of an upscale acoustic snob place, anyway. Other items of note were a Traynor Bassmaster stack for $895, (only about double its value) and a really shitty 60's hollowbody Italian Teisco Del Ray for $350 that rattled like a snare. Oh, and you could buy a mint condition, NOS hot pink Yamaha Attitude signed Billy Sheehan from 1992 for only $1200. Gee… I wonder why it has never sold…
I hadn't been into the other store in about five years and figured I'd at least check it out, because even though the jerk factor from the owner is huge, he runs across lots of oddball stuff and prices reasonably for local sales, and I was trying to find out if there were any takers for some signed guitars for fundraiser for a charity set up by a friend in memory of his young daughter who died of a rare brain tumor. I figured if there was anyone in town who would want a signed guitar, he’d know them, because he and most of his clientele are poser douches. (He was VERY unhelpful in this regard, BTW.) He has expanded his bass selection considerably since I was there last and now has a bass section with some pretty nice stuff, but you can tell he set it all up, guitar player-style. There were two Epi's and a few Gibsons: a Ripper III, an RD, and a Grabber.
I don't like Rippers or Grabbers and am thinking about a T-Bird, so I tried the RD. It was one of the heaviest basses I have ever picked up, black finished with a baseball bat of a neck, clover tuners and the big chrome-covered pickups. However, it had a Badass installed, and in the rear bridge post holes for the old three point, someone had installed switches and routed out the back for two 9 volts and put an 18 volt Carvin electronics systems in. It was set up terribly, and I didn’t even bother plugging it into anything.
One of the Epi’s was a “TV white” flying V that someone had put a fake Gibson logo on the headstock. It played OK, but was far too light and neck dived. It was also pretty reasonably priced at $350. The other was a redburst Les Paul Standard, same model as mine, but in mint condition, but something about it was not quite right. The first thing that I noticed was that the neck profile towards the headstock was much too wide; it had the whole “slope to the stock” look of a Rickenbacker, but with a much larger diameter neck than one would expect, and the neck joint at the headstock was clearly visible. It played exactly as you would expect with such an oversized neck, terribly. Even before I set mine up and it was adjusting to my house, it played miles better. I think it’s a second. I know Epi sells refurbed B and C-stock, and I’m guessing that it is one. He wants $445 for it
…now on to my new bass. I have never had to set up the three-point bridge before, so I expected a steep learning curve in regards to intonation. Surprisingly, that was the easiest part. Over the course of a couple of hours, I adjusted the neck and bridge height, and it became pretty apparent that the bass had been marked down because of an extremely poor setup by someone who didn’t know what he was doing. The bass side of the bridge was initially lower than the treble and the neck had a fair amount of backbow. The pitch angle on the front of the bridge was also set much too shallow. As a result, the E and A strings fretted out at the third fret and made tons of string noise. Once I corrected the bridge and the neck, the whole bass felt way more “alive” when I played, and the strings resonated with harmonics instead of the bad-shortscale-esq thud it had when I first started on it.
Once I got its playability issues out of the way, I proceeded on to the pickups. Lots of people here have remarked about the Epi TB+’s being tonally bland, and I can totally see that. However, the one thing I was NOT prepared for was their sheer output. These things could eat a G&L MFD without even trying! I noticed that it is nearly impossible to get an undistorted tone out of them, so I lowered them as far as they would go, and worked them back up to even out the sound. I’m not crazy about whatever strings are on it; they’re pretty bright and thin, but I can already tell that I’m not crazy about the top end of the pickups. They definitely have that ‘cheap import’ upper-midrange and high end and are much more subdued in the very bottom than I would like. Balancing their output helped that tremendously, but I still have to back down the volume knobs to get clear tone, and on the note of tone, sadly, my tone pots are going bad. The bridge tone control is worse, but both are persistently noisy, even after a good dose of De-oxit. I’ve got a couple of spare 500K pots, but I think I’ll wait until I decide whatever I’m going to do with the pickups before I go changing them.
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....welcome to the downward spiral...
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BTW, I'm open to suggestions for pickups that are drop-in replacements that will utilize the chrome covers and be fatter sounding with a more useable top end.
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Gibson LP bass pickups are on eBay a lot and have gotten great reviews here. Someone will chime in, I'm sure. They seem to go for reasonable prices as well.
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The sound will infinitely improve in terms of presence shine and more focused bass ooomph once you put in Gibson TB Plus pups, irrespective whether they are the soaps or the chromes. But the soaps will need extra routing (not much) and the chromes some cavity filling. Unfortunately, I don't think there is a replacement pup that would drop right in (assuming your LP has currently Epi soaps, Gibson chromes fit with Epi chromes).
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these are the only pickups I'm aware of that are drop ins. kind of pricey, though
http://www.lollarguitars.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=thunderbird-bass-pickups
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Kinda off-topic:
Recently I bought a pair of black tb+ from TBird1958 for my Epi Tbird. When I got em, out of sheer curiosity I measure them, they both show a nice and healthy 9,6 k. Then I measure my epi pickups. I was shocked when I saw 14k on the multimeter! Thats why the overloading mids and the completely lack of highs.
Ofcourse you can't judge a pickup from his dc resistance only, there are alot of other factors (inductance, wire thickness, turns, magnets) but a 14k pickup has little chance to sound "snappy".
The only downside is that I must route my bass alittle, gibsons are 4-5mm wider than epis.
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BTW, I'm open to suggestions for pickups that are drop-in replacements that will utilize the chrome covers and be fatter sounding with a more useable top end.
I would think Rio Grande Pitbulls would fit that bill, because you can coil split them for more top end, but still are hot pickups.
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Lindy Fralin Bassbucker, pretty much a repro 60's Tbird pup in a standard humbucking pickup cover
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these are the only pickups I'm aware of that are drop ins. kind of pricey, though
http://www.lollarguitars.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=thunderbird-bass-pickups
I wasn't aware of those, thanks. A pair of those would more than double the value of your Epi real quick, just finding a buyer who would then pay you 800 bucks for it is another matter.
But resale is one thing, quality gain another. On my silverburst Ltd Ed Epi TB a pair of TB Plus chromes (from a Money bass) for 120 bucks the pair made a wealth of a difference and elevated the sound of the bass into another league (structurally, there is very little to complain about an Epi TB).
That is not knocking the original Epi pups which I think make sense for the market they are aimed at. Most Epi users are budget-conscious and it is fair to assume that that also translates to their rig. And the Epi pups (who have been considerably souped up since they first came out, initially they sounded less loud and less middish, but also a lot lamer and docile) make one hell of a racket - you have no issues hearing yourself with them in a rehearsal even over a less than powerful rig. The sound ain't exactly pretty, bit grindy, but no one will say the bass isn't loud enough. When I was young, to me that was real important! :mrgreen:
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Schaller bassbuckers with the nos chrome $3.99 covers on ebay :)
im not digging the creme stock covers, We shall see how it looks with the chrome covers with the holes for the adjustable polepieces, if not i'll go with smooth ones.. Idk why these things has adjustable poles in the first place, take the epi pups and raise the outpost by 50%! but way clearer. (I think that the crappy caps might be a big factor of the tone of these stock too)
im redoing mine with a new V/V/T and les paul toggle and new caps. mine has regular alpha pots and arent bad at all.
plus the fact that they are 4 wire you can split the coils for some cool sounds with these.
(http://img3.musiciansfriend.com/dbase/pics/products/3/2/7/617327.jpg)
(http://i46.tinypic.com/xf9jxh.jpg)
(http://i48.tinypic.com/1zyc2ec.jpg)
(http://i48.tinypic.com/dlhwtg.jpg)
(http://i50.tinypic.com/34fl4bc.jpg)
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Just the covers, yes.
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Unfortunately, I don't think there is a replacement pup that would drop right in (assuming your LP has currently Epi soaps, Gibson chromes fit with Epi chromes).
Mine is an Epi LP Standard and has the chrome covered pickups right now, not soapbars. Deathshead discussed them in another thread here: http://bassoutpost.com/index.php?topic=3544.0
(edit: that's where his pics above are from)
I'm not really crazy about the look, even with chrome covers, or the increased output of the Schallers, not to mention their rarity and price, but if they still stay clean at high output, that I can deal with. My Epi is the first bass I've ever dealt with where the pickups overloaded themselves. You see it alot in guitar humbuckers, but this is the first bass pickup I've ever had to do so.
My tone caps are poly, so there's no reason they should be screwing up the sound. I guess I could pull them and check them on the cap meter, though.
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That is not knocking the original Epi pups which I think make sense for the market they are aimed at. Most Epi users are budget-conscious and it is fair to assume that that also translates to their rig. And the Epi pups (who have been considerably souped up since they first came out, initially they sounded less loud and less middish, but also a lot lamer and docile) make one hell of a racket - you have no issues hearing yourself with them in a rehearsal even over a less than powerful rig. The sound ain't exactly pretty, bit grindy, but no one will say the bass isn't loud enough. When I was young, to me that was real important! :mrgreen:
Head=Nail.
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a headular nailoid interface of the percussive variety?
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Lindy Fralin Bassbucker, pretty much a repro 60's Tbird pup in a standard humbucking pickup cover
I'm strongly leaning this way. It's funny; a set of them costs the same as my whole bass! I found the link to RS Guitarworks. Do they or anyone else actually stock them? Lindy Fralin doesn't even have a mention them on his own website that I could find.
I'm a little trepidatious about the Rio Grande Pitbulls. I'd prefer a blade and and lower output than what's in there now. I play fingerstyle with an insanely heavy hand. A single coil Precision p/u is hot enough already. Two of them modified into a humbucker sounds like too much of a good thing for me.
BTW, I'm not really crazy about top end to the point I'd want to split the coils, (though those pickup ring splitters ARE tempting.) I got my LP for that big, fat Gibson bottom, and no small amount of fandom of Eddie from the Supersuckers. My problem with the Epi p/u's is that they're just so dang honky and clangy, like a good pickup with a cold. What highs they do have are obnoxious; they have nice growl, just too much upper mids and not enough lows. My Trace compressor pedal can even it out to some extent, but I don't like having to use a pedal to make up for an instrument's natural shortcomings, and besides, you can hear that it's an effect and not the inherent tone of the bass.
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I'm not sure anyone else but RS Guitarworks has them. I almost want to say that Roy at RS had contacted Lindy and had them made especially for their two Explorer-birds. But then again, I'm not 100% on that.
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I'm strongly leaning this way. It's funny; a set of them costs the same as my whole bass! I found the link to RS Guitarworks. Do they or anyone else actually stock them? Lindy Fralin doesn't even have a mention them on his own website that I could find.
I'm a little trepidatious about the Rio Grande Pitbulls. I'd prefer a blade and and lower output than what's in there now. I play fingerstyle with an insanely heavy hand. A single coil Precision p/u is hot enough already. Two of them modified into a humbucker sounds like too much of a good thing for me.
BTW, I'm not really crazy about top end to the point I'd want to split the coils, (though those pickup ring splitters ARE tempting.) I got my LP for that big, fat Gibson bottom, and no small amount of fandom of Eddie from the Supersuckers. My problem with the Epi p/u's is that they're just so dang honky and clangy, like a good pickup with a cold. What highs they do have are obnoxious; they have nice growl, just too much upper mids and not enough lows. My Trace compressor pedal can even it out to some extent, but I don't like having to use a pedal to make up for an instrument's natural shortcomings, and besides, you can hear that it's an effect and not the inherent tone of the bass.
"BRASSY" is how i thought they sounded, harsh highs..
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Mmmmmm gloss black. Me likey.
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hey PBG, do you find the back of the neck on your extremely sticky? I had to take that paint off asap, it radically changed the feel and the tone of the bass. Nothing smoother than this neck and the roto flats. :)
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The paint on my Epi's neck is fine, but the one I tried at the asshole's store had that weird "tacky" quality to it that seems to grab your fretting hand. Most Ric's with Jetglo finish are the same way to me. The best one I ever played had its neck sanded clean. The only neck gripe I have with mine is that the cold dry winter air has shrunk the fretboard and the fret ends are very sharp. It's not an issue playing it, but I cut my hand several times setting the trussrod.
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Hmm... sounds like time for a bit of luthiering...
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or just a few rigorous passes with 800grit sandpaper to round over the edges of the fb and frets.
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Got my Fralin Bassbuckers from RS Guitarworks.
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After a few days of sitting in my house with my vaporizers running (both for ours and our cancer survivor cat's sinuses) the fretboard has "grown" to the point that you can barely even feel the rough edges at all and you couldn't cut yourself on the fret ends if you tried. Luthiery by Vicks!!!
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Just called RS and talked to Roy. What a great guy! I've got a set of their Fralin Bassbuckers and a new set of pot, caps, and knobs on the way. We talked tone and output, and you'd probably not be surprised to know that he said many of the same things that we have discussed here regarding Epi LP pickup tone. He said he had briefly owned a late 80's Gibson Les Paul Standard bass and that its US-made pickups weren't much better than what Epi put in their later copy of it. I'll have to ream the pot holes and get new knobs because all the Epi stuff is metric, but I have no problem swapping out the crap pots in there now.
He also cautioned against buying new Gibson pickups because they're overwound to the point of ridiculousness with 16-20k outputs being common! I may be heading to Nashville next month, and was going to see what I could find there, and I'm glad to not have to drop what I'm sure would be a small fortune for pickups if Gibson had any bass models in stock and then have them be worse sounding than what's in there now.
It wasn't a sales pitch either. He made sure to let me know that their Bassbuckers do NOT sound like a Les Paul, but I think I can "make do" with vintage t-Bird toned pickups. ;)
I'm psyched because I bought this bass for three reasons:
1. I just got a much better job, but will still contract at the TV station, but on my terms.
2. My old band may be getting back together.
3 .Between this forum and my love for the Supersuckers, I've been destined to have a kick ass Gibby-themed axe in my arsenal for years and just now realized it.
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Nice!, those suckers better play themselves for $280 a set!!!
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That's right in the price range for anything comparable I found for a whole set new. IIRC, the Rio Grande Pitbulls are $268 EACH! ...not a lot of Gibson love in the aftermarket world.
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Warmoth has the pitbulls $100 each, still a little pricey for me.
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Just called RS and talked to Roy. What a great guy!
It wasn't a sales pitch either.
That's Roy! He is great, I bought their Berry Oakley "Tractor" bass off them about two years ago and he's been nothing but amazing on the customer service end. Those guys really know what they're doing down there!
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After a prolonged wait due to an order foul-up, my RS pickups arrived today. I'll probably install them with a better set of strings this weekend. Expect a full report ASAP.