Someone's gonna mention anal sex soon and it will be all over ...
Ray, Fräulein Rommel's disciplinary measures have never been more called for. Even a modern TBird is inherently a more valuable bass than an EB-3 as far as components, structure and versatility go.
I see the mudbug (mudbuck?) has bitten you, and that's fine, but there are other ways to quench your desire:
- Wait for the next Epi EB-3 Elitist on ebay. These are fine basses and awfully close to the original Gibson model. Closer than an SG RI though that is a fine bass in its own right (have you played one yet?).
- Buy a seventies maple neck EB-0 (and add an extra pup, almost any pup will be better than the original minibucker) or EB-3. It can be a total beater, these basses are much more sturdy than the sixties EBs and also feel a lot more substantial compared to the guitarish sixties EBs. The maple neck and middle pup position make them also more versatile, but I assure there is still plenty of El Mudo. They also sell a lot cheaper than the sixties stuff. This is for example my best-sounding EB-3/modded EB-0 (with maybe the exception of the clown fin EB-0L mentioned below) and I have quite a bunch from all eras:
- And if you are a brave man and want to lead the pack then you should do what one of us should have had the guts to do a long time ago: Install a sixties mudbucker right behind the neck of your 05 TBird and have the two vol and the one tone control changed to vol controls for each of the then three pups, you won't miss the tone control I assure you as dialing in the mudbucker will cut all the treble you could ever want. Basically, your Bird would then be a mirror image of my EB-0L "+ 2" which sounds wonderfully gutsy, yet focused in any combination of the pups:
