The Last Bass Outpost

Once you peel away all the unfortunate trappings of the 1980s from this song, it ends up being a pretty good rocker



And a bicentennial back in the glory days

Scott, was the Rex Brown Chinese bird this way too or is this just the "1964 Thunderbirds" (perhaps the number 1964 refers to some kind of measurement and not the year...)

I wonder what name is next.

If the nickel+gold Rex Brown model is any indication, it will be the yin-yang coloring of the '69 Thunderbird

while searching for some replacement pickups for my '90 Tbird I came across these. I also found some interesting other things that perhaps a more brave soul here could buy and report on:

https://reverb.com/item/49380706-stonewall-pickups-alternate-dimension-thunderbird-bass-humbucker-set
An interesting overwound design, no sound clips I could find. I was tempted but I think the open coil design would be hard on a Thunderbird where so much of the pickup is exposed compared to an open coil guitar humbucker with a pickup ring

https://www.riograndepickups.com/thunderbass-3
Looks like it's to fit the larger Epi Bird route and is more of a dual Jazz Bass humbucker design

This didn't end up working. It actually seemed to make it worse, possibly negatively interacting with the tone styler. Looks like I'll sell the old pickups and get the modern ones by Gibson

1.6" nut width instead of the classic 1.5" Thunderbird neck. The Epiphone Embassy I have is 1.625" and it definitely took some getting used to. I suppose his Gibson has a bit wider neck too then?

So the 1990 Thunderbird I bought is a true Gibson, because it has some unpredictably strange parts. When I got it, the pickups both sounded really good (the bridge pickup is the best TB bridge pickup I've ever heard) but there was a huge volume drop with both pickup volumes at max. Worse, the volume went to almost zero as you rolled the tone off. But no matter, I thought, I wanted to change the electronics to master volume-blend-tonestyler (a multi-cap pot I like). The problem persists even there. After handing it to my luthier, we've concluded the pickups themselves are this way. While it sounds like I'm describing a phase issue, they most certainly aren't out of phase. Their impedance readings are a bit unusual: about 7.1 neck, 7.5 bridge. They both sound perfectly fine solo'd. They're kind of behaving out of phase though because they're canceling out a lot of signal, magnified when the tone pot adds further resistance.

So long story short, any suggestions for what I should do? Here's some options you may ponder:

1) Leave as is, change blend knob to neck-or-bridge solo switch, keep tonestyler. I almost always play my other Thunderbirds either 60/40 neck or 40/60 bridge. I very rarely solo one pickup, so it would be quite different playing-wise.

2) Get new pickups. Gibson sells TB+ replacements now and there are a couple very expensive options besides. I really do like the sound of these pickups though: a little clearer and less aggressive than the TB+ in my 2004 Thunderbird. I could sell the old ones, but who would want them?

3) Leave as is, revert to Volume-Volume-Tone. Go back to stock and just deal with the volume drop.

For reference, TB1958 asked what they looked like and these are the culprits:

Some interesting items for sure. This custom (?) SG bass looks pretty gnarly.