The Last Bass Outpost

I know I shouldn't say that, but I kinda like the mirror guard ...

It's very Phil Lynott. Which is always good of course.

For studio needs, I'd say the Ampeg Portaflex B-15 is the perfect amp.

Last weekend someone shot some nice pics from me and my Greco T-bird

I have a Greco Thunderbird too. I has a real powerful growly tone.
The (set) neck is a bit chunkier than a Gibson Tbird, but other than that it's pretty close to the real thing.
I bought it in 2003 from Takahiro Nasu in Tokyo through Ebay.

I used it on one of the songs of our new album.
Here's a short sample.








And I've been using it in another band that I'm helping out till they've found a new bassplayer.
I found out it goes really well with the Orange AD200. The Greco Tbird wakes up the beast inside the AD200.

GHS Bass Boomers Heavy (50-115) on my TBird.
Monster Tone.

Those S-1 pickups are the ones I bought.

I have a little story that involves one of those casings as well.
I already told it a Jules' place, but I figured it goes well with the other stories in this thread.


A while ago a I bought a casing plus mount ring too from Greatdealz on Ebay.
With the BaCHBird project in mind, I thought it might come in handy.

Almost at the same time Krishna (BostonGuitarRepair) told us how the inside of those sixties Thunderbird humbuckers look like. He told us there were MelodyMaker like pickups (with a bar magnet) inside.

So I bought two G3 single coils from the same guy on Ebay. The two G3 pickups will fit in perfectly if I cut off the middle lugs on both.
Haven't done anything final yet, though. I want to wait till the BaCHbird is here.


I did do some hobbying and wired them together as a humbucker.. Simply without any pots, just straight onto the jack plug.

Two single coils taped together with gaffertape.

- two orange wires from the groundplates of the coils to the bridge (ground)

- the white wire from one coil to the orange wire from the other coil.

-black wire to the ground of the jack plug
-red wires to the tip of the jack plug






I mounted this improvised G3 humbucker upside down over  the strings with some gaffertape and original screws as "stalks".
I used my (mahogany) BaCH Telebass for this experiment.
The pickup location; just about 1cm from the end of fretboard.





I must admit I'm not 100% convinced yet.
I miss the low frequencies.
Especially if you compare it to the soundsamples Jules put up on his site...
Although that may be caused by the improvised set up? Or maybe a poor connection to the jack (gaffer taped)?
Maybe I should add that I had to take the input volume down quite a bit on my recorder, because the output of this G3 combination is really very high!

Great read.
And what a great bassplayer! (I had never heard of him... )

Al had this bass, he would let me use his equipment and I ended up using this bass. I wish I could find one today. It was a Gibson Studio Les Paul Bass [Les Paul Triumph bass]. It had in and out phase switches and was a light colored mahogany finish. That was a good sounding bass. I loved the sound of that. That was the first Gibson bass I ever played at a gig with a group.

Someone please tell him that Les Paul Basses / Triumphs regularly pop up on Ebay