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Messages - fatherted

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Bill's Shop: Projects, Mods & Repairs / Re: 90's Gibson Thunderbird Bass Pot Values / awful sound when Tone knob is on
« on: July 20, 2022, 04:01:03 PM »
I've been through x2 sets of up pickups through eyguitarmusic now. The first batch that look like the original pickups, didn't fit as the bottom of the pickups are not flush like the original. there is a bunch of stuff sticking out. Contacted the seller, I shipped them back for a refund as advised, and I ordered the other kind they had from 2015 and up.

The new ones came in, didn't sound very good, but 1 was horribly microphonic while the other was okay.

Any other suggestions?

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Bill's Shop: Projects, Mods & Repairs / Re: 90's Gibson Thunderbird Bass Pot Values / awful sound when Tone knob is on
« on: March 08, 2022, 05:56:46 AM »
Pups have been ordered. 9K and 9.5K Hopefully 9.5K was the way to go for the bridge pickup. The store page for the bridge pickup said that some customers complained that 9.5K was too low of an output so they created the 14K. Figured I'd start with 9.5K as I am trying to cover up some noise instead of making it louder.

Old Pups came out, they tested @ 7.7K for the Neck and 7.8K for the Bridge.

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Bill's Shop: Projects, Mods & Repairs / Re: 90's Gibson Thunderbird Bass Pot Values / awful sound when Tone knob is on
« on: March 03, 2022, 05:41:24 AM »
I tried the test with the screwdriver and yea it picks up the tapping with a pick or a screwdriver, unless you turn the tone pretty much all the way down. Heck you you can hear the guitar strap creaking from the back of the guitar.

Going to go ahead and order the modern Thunderbird replacement humbuckers from EY guitars and have a go. Their Neck pickup comes as a 9K resistance and the Bridge comes in 9.5K or 14K Ohm.

I've reach that the bridge pickups on thunderbirds are usually a bit higher resistance than the neck. I'll test both of mine once I get them out, but has anyone tried really upping the bridge pickup to something like 14K? I'll probably start with the 9/9.5K range first as I imagine it's closer to the orignal specs.

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Bill's Shop: Projects, Mods & Repairs / Re: 90's Gibson Thunderbird Bass Pot Values / awful sound when Tone knob is on
« on: February 27, 2022, 08:48:28 PM »
Still working on this one any recommendations if I was to change out the pickups? I was thinking the EMG Passives.

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Bill's Shop: Projects, Mods & Repairs / Re: 90's Gibson Thunderbird Bass Pot Values / awful sound when Tone knob is on
« on: February 16, 2022, 07:08:27 AM »
Thanks for the replies,  I've been looking at how to test if a pickup has turned microphonic as far as I can tell it's a the bridge pickup that causes the noise combined with the tone being cranked up.

I found some more pots, but before busting out the soldering iron I took Alanko's advice and swapped out the strings just to be on the safe side, but no luck. Still a good idea to rule that out though.

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Bill's Shop: Projects, Mods & Repairs / 90's Gibson Thunderbird Bass Pot Values / awful sound when Tone knob is on
« on: February 11, 2022, 10:09:29 AM »
Hoping someone can point me in the right direction on this one, I've got a 90's (from what I can tell) Thunderbird Bass and it's been always been a bit off, in terms of tone/sound.

Apologies for the super long first post, but might help with the diagnostics:

I discovered the 3 point bridge was bent and broken when I took it off, the bolts had been the only thing holding it on. It crumbled into 3 pieces.

I upgraded it to a hipshot bridge and the sustain on it is amazing now, it was almost non existing before.

Next I took a look at the internals, I can't seem to find the correct values of the pots online, but what I had was:

Neck Pickup Pot - reading 241K Linear taper , must of been 250K
Bridge Pickup Pot - reading 236K Linear taper , must of been 250K
Tone Pot - reading 367K Linear taper, not sure what it would of been 500k?
The cap on the tone pot read 0.019uf and was replaced with a  Mallory .047 Capacitor @ 630 volt

I took these measurements with just the pots - nothing else connected.
It looks like the previous owner might have put these pots in and I was just wondering if anyone could confirm the proper values. I can find wiring diagrams and it is hooked up properly, but  nothing solid for pots values.

I had some spare CTS good quality pots kicking around and played around a bit, I found that that the pickups seem sound better with Linear and the tone with an Audio taper. (just my opinion wasn't that bad with all audio taper either)

After all that I still find with the tone knob enabled (anything past 0-2 really) the bass sounds good but is picking up a "twang" sort of sound into the amp like too much treble or something, this is just mainly on the A string, if you play it open it sounds awful. The string height is easy to adjust and I've raised it and still get that noise.

If you turn the tone completely off, all that noise is gone, but the bass doesn't sound as good. Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated, this is the only Thunderbird I have access to and can't compare it to anything similar.


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