My ongoing odyssey into the world of Gibson basses...

[Psycho Bass Guy]

The Epi Les Paul Standard I bought from GC used came in yesterday. It's in remarkable condition with a beautiful black finish and only some very shallow belt rash on the back that doesn't go far into the clearcoat which I may see about buffing out. I let it settle in to the temp difference between a Chicago warehouse and a Tennessee living room before I tried to set it up to play, but for $279, my cursory checkout said this puppy is a winner. It looks just like Deathshead's, but in slightly rougher shape.

I had some time to kill waiting for it to be delivered, so I went around town to a couple of music stores I normally avoid, one for its incredibly unrealistic pricing, and the other because its owner is an asshole guitar-show "vintage" dealer. The 'overpriced' store was true to form, asking outrageous amounts of money for anything remotely playable and electric, though they did have a very good condition Ric 4004 on consignment for $1100. They are more of an upscale acoustic snob place, anyway. Other items of note were a Traynor Bassmaster stack for $895, (only about double its value) and a really shitty 60's hollowbody Italian Teisco Del Ray for $350 that rattled like a snare. Oh, and you could buy a mint condition, NOS hot pink Yamaha Attitude signed Billy Sheehan from 1992 for only $1200. Gee... I wonder why it has never sold...

I hadn't been into the other store in about five years and figured I'd at least check it out, because even though the jerk factor from the owner is huge, he runs across lots of oddball stuff and prices reasonably for local sales, and I was trying to find out if there were any takers for some signed guitars for fundraiser for a charity set up by a friend in memory of his young daughter who died of a rare brain tumor. I figured if there was anyone in town who would want a signed guitar, he'd know them, because he and most of his clientele are poser douches. (He was VERY unhelpful in this regard, BTW.) He has expanded his bass selection considerably since I was there last and now has a bass section with some pretty nice stuff, but you can tell he set it all up, guitar player-style. There were two Epi's and a few Gibsons: a Ripper III, an RD, and a Grabber.

I don't like Rippers or Grabbers and am thinking about a T-Bird, so I tried the RD. It was one of the heaviest basses I have ever picked up, black finished with a baseball bat of a neck, clover tuners and the big chrome-covered pickups. However, it had a Badass installed, and in the rear bridge post holes for the old three point, someone had installed switches and routed out the back for two 9 volts and put an 18 volt Carvin electronics systems in. It was set up terribly, and I didn't even bother plugging it into anything.

One of the Epi's was a "TV white" flying V that someone had put a fake Gibson logo on the headstock. It played OK, but was far too light and neck dived. It was also pretty reasonably priced at $350. The other was a redburst Les Paul Standard, same model as mine, but in mint condition, but something about it was not quite right. The first thing that I noticed was that the neck profile towards the headstock was much too wide; it had the whole "slope to the stock" look of a Rickenbacker, but with a much larger diameter neck than one would expect, and the neck joint at the headstock was clearly visible. It played exactly as you would expect with such an oversized neck, terribly. Even before I set mine up and it was adjusting to my house, it played miles better. I think it's a second. I know Epi sells refurbed B and C-stock, and I'm guessing that it is one. He wants $445 for it

...now on to my new bass. I have never had to set up the three-point bridge before, so I expected a steep learning curve in regards to intonation. Surprisingly, that was the easiest part. Over the course of a couple of hours, I adjusted the neck and bridge height, and it became pretty apparent that the bass had been marked down because of an extremely poor setup by someone who didn't know what he was doing. The bass side of the bridge was initially lower than the treble and the neck had a fair amount of backbow. The pitch angle on the front of the bridge was also set much too shallow. As a result, the E and A strings fretted out at the third fret and made tons of string noise. Once I corrected the bridge and the neck, the whole bass felt way more "alive" when I played, and the strings resonated with harmonics instead of the bad-shortscale-esq thud it had when I first started on it.

Once I got its playability issues out of the way, I proceeded on to the pickups. Lots of people here have remarked about the Epi TB+'s being tonally bland, and I can totally see that. However, the one thing I was NOT prepared for was their sheer output. These things could eat a G&L MFD without even trying! I noticed that it is nearly impossible to get an undistorted tone out of them, so I lowered them as far as they would go, and worked them back up to even out the sound. I'm not crazy about whatever strings are on it; they're pretty bright and thin, but I can already tell that I'm not crazy about the top end of the pickups. They definitely have that 'cheap import' upper-midrange and high end and are much more subdued in the very bottom than I would like. Balancing their output helped that tremendously, but I still have to back down the volume knobs to get clear tone, and on the note of tone, sadly, my tone pots are going bad. The bridge tone control is worse, but both are persistently noisy, even after a good dose of De-oxit. I've got a couple of spare 500K pots, but I think I'll wait until I decide whatever I'm going to do with the pickups before I go changing them.

[bassvirtuoso]

....welcome to the downward spiral...

[Psycho Bass Guy]

BTW, I'm open to suggestions for pickups that are drop-in replacements that will utilize the chrome covers and be fatter sounding with a more useable top end.

[OldManC]

Gibson LP bass pickups are on eBay a lot and have gotten great reviews here. Someone will chime in, I'm sure. They seem to go for reasonable prices as well.

[uwe]

The sound will infinitely improve in terms of presence shine and more focused bass ooomph once you put in Gibson TB Plus pups, irrespective whether they are the soaps or the chromes. But the soaps will need extra routing (not much) and the chromes some cavity filling. Unfortunately, I don't think there is a replacement pup that would drop right in (assuming your LP has currently Epi soaps, Gibson chromes fit with Epi chromes).

[ramone57]

these are the only pickups I'm aware of that are drop ins.  kind of pricey, though

http://www.lollarguitars.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=thunderbird-bass-pickups

[exiledarchangel]

Kinda off-topic:

Recently I bought a pair of black tb+ from TBird1958 for my Epi Tbird. When I got em, out of sheer curiosity I measure them, they both show a nice and healthy 9,6 k. Then I measure my epi pickups. I was shocked when I saw 14k on the multimeter! Thats why the overloading mids and the completely lack of highs.

Ofcourse you can't judge a pickup from his dc resistance only, there are alot of other factors (inductance, wire thickness, turns, magnets) but a 14k pickup has little chance to sound "snappy".

The only downside is that I must route my bass alittle, gibsons are 4-5mm wider than epis.

[Barklessdog]

BTW, I'm open to suggestions for pickups that are drop-in replacements that will utilize the chrome covers and be fatter sounding with a more useable top end.

I would think Rio Grande Pitbulls would fit that bill, because you can coil split them for more top end, but still are hot pickups.

[godofthunder]

Lindy Fralin Bassbucker, pretty much a repro 60's Tbird pup in a standard humbucking pickup cover

[uwe]

these are the only pickups I'm aware of that are drop ins.  kind of pricey, though

http://www.lollarguitars.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=thunderbird-bass-pickups

I wasn't aware of those, thanks. A pair of those would more than double the value of your Epi real quick, just finding a buyer who would then pay you 800 bucks for it is another matter.

But resale is one thing, quality gain another. On my silverburst Ltd Ed Epi TB a pair of TB Plus chromes (from a Money bass) for 120 bucks the pair made a wealth of a difference and elevated the sound of the bass into another league (structurally, there is very little to complain about an Epi TB).

That is not knocking the original Epi pups which I think make sense for the market they are aimed at. Most Epi users are budget-conscious and it is fair to assume that that also translates to their rig. And the Epi pups (who have been considerably souped up since they first came out, initially they sounded less loud and less middish, but also a lot lamer and docile) make one hell of a racket - you have no issues hearing yourself with them in a rehearsal even over a less than powerful rig. The sound ain't exactly pretty, bit grindy, but no one will say the bass isn't loud enough.  When I was young, to me that was real important! 

[Deathshead]

Schaller bassbuckers with the nos chrome $3.99 covers on ebay
im not digging the creme stock covers, We shall see how it looks with the chrome covers with the holes for the adjustable polepieces, if not i'll go with smooth ones.. Idk why these things has adjustable poles in the first place, take the epi pups and raise the outpost by 50%! but way clearer.  (I think that the crappy caps might be a big factor of the tone of these stock too)

im redoing mine with a new V/V/T and les paul toggle and new caps. mine has regular alpha pots and arent bad at all.

plus the fact that they are 4 wire you can split the coils for some cool sounds with these.

[exiledarchangel]

Just the covers, yes.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Unfortunately, I don't think there is a replacement pup that would drop right in (assuming your LP has currently Epi soaps, Gibson chromes fit with Epi chromes).

Mine is an Epi LP Standard and has the chrome covered pickups right now, not soapbars.  Deathshead discussed them in another thread here: http://bassoutpost.com/index.php?topic=3544.0

(edit: that's where his pics above are from)

I'm not really crazy about the look, even with chrome covers, or the increased output of the Schallers, not to mention their rarity and price, but if they still stay clean at high output, that I can deal with.  My Epi is the first bass I've ever dealt with where the pickups overloaded themselves. You see it alot in guitar humbuckers, but this is the first bass pickup I've ever had to do so.  

My tone caps are poly, so there's no reason they should be screwing up the sound. I guess I could pull them and check them on the cap meter, though.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

That is not knocking the original Epi pups which I think make sense for the market they are aimed at. Most Epi users are budget-conscious and it is fair to assume that that also translates to their rig. And the Epi pups (who have been considerably souped up since they first came out, initially they sounded less loud and less middish, but also a lot lamer and docile) make one hell of a racket - you have no issues hearing yourself with them in a rehearsal even over a less than powerful rig. The sound ain't exactly pretty, bit grindy, but no one will say the bass isn't loud enough.  When I was young, to me that was real important!  

Head=Nail.

[clankenstein]

a headular nailoid interface of the percussive variety?