Any 2 pup TBird is a IV - of any era. One pup Birds were "Thunderbird II" and regularly built only in the sixties (the eighties saw a small edition creep out). Modern Birds began in 1987 with the here (unjustly!) much derided black hardware and the black plastic "teflon" soapbars called TB Plus Ceramic Humbuckers.
To my ears, new Birds sound fatter with more sublows and less overdriven then either sixties or Bicentennial Birds. Owning a variety from all eras, I don't think the difference is huge though - pups and headstock size excepted, the TB IV is still the same animal as in the sixties: a nine ply neck thru construction with maho wings. We're all trainspotters and connaisseurs here so we hear or believe to hear nuances no one else will give a damn about. While 80 % of this forum will now swoop down on me, I think the modern TB Plus pups emulate the sound of the sixties pups to quite some extent. I don't think any TBird player in the sixties or seventies would have rejected a modern TBird had an alien intelligent lifeform brought him one from the future.
I think the sound of a new Bird to an old one compares to the difference in sound between a Ric 4001 and a modern Ric 4003 (both uncapped). The voice of these basses has been retained over the decades.
Uwe
Perfectly stated.
The new birds sound great, and I bet this one with its wiring gets in that ballpark. I'll get to A/B it with Andy's (nokturnal) blackout Thunderbird here in a few weeks, so that will be telling. Unless you have bass OCD like me and are hell bent on all those subtlties, a modern one or an Orville by Gibson, Epi Japan, Elitist, etc... would do you proud. In fact, I was suprised how closely proportioned the Elitist was to the '76.
When I was a kid, I got to play my teacher's 60s Pbass ('66, IIRC) regularly, and that was a life changing experience. I would have probably chalked that thing off to an old beat up POS at first glance, and wondered what the big deal was compared to a modern Pbass had I not gotten to experience that difference first hand. That bass just sung! It would resonate your entire body, and that was before plugging it in. That's not to say all old basses are automatically gems (some can be stinkers), but with the good ones, there is some sort of magic that happens at some point, and that's what I always find myself trying to chase.
Hey - now that I think of it, I'm mentally screwed for life, and that guy has cost me a lot of money!