single coil-like buzz on a Gibson Thunderbird

bobyoung · March 10, 2009, 05:25:33 PM

Hi All. I have a Gibson Thunderbird which i bought new a few years ago, it's a great sounding bass but is quite noisy under lights, is this common or do I maybe have a bad ground somewhere? It's all stock, I use flatwounds and always set the treble to the max on this bass. I find it to be much noisier than both Fenders and Ricks which I think is a little strange.

Highlander · March 10, 2009, 06:04:52 PM

Checking the grounding and shielding seems like a good place to start - bell-out between the hardware and the casings of the pots (zero ohms), and make-sure the ALL the cavities are ALL well shielded... I've had a bad pup that used to be very microphonic, so all is possible...

Dave W · March 10, 2009, 06:38:09 PM

Bob, some of them from the 90s were noisy despite being grounded and having a shielded cavity. I don't know why.

I passed on one from the late 90s for that very reason, beautiful and priced right until I factored in the cost of replacement pickups.

You need some roundwounds on that thing!

gearHed289 · March 11, 2009, 08:27:46 AM

Welcome to the wonderful world of TB+ pickups! Some of the best sounding pups I've ever used, but noisy.....

n!k · March 12, 2009, 07:32:14 PM

When I bought my Thunderbird (2007), it had defective pickups where half of the coils were dead, effectively making them noisy ass single coil pickups. I'd advise you test them out to see if they are. When I got the replacements from the factory they were (almost) totally noiseless.

Dave W · March 12, 2009, 08:01:13 PM

Wait.. what? Gibson has a QC problem?

bobyoung · March 15, 2009, 09:15:54 PM

Quote from: n!k on March 12, 2009, 07:32:14 PM
When I bought my Thunderbird (2007), it had defective pickups where half of the coils were dead, effectively making them noisy ass single coil pickups. I'd advise you test them out to see if they are. When I got the replacements from the factory they were (almost) totally noiseless.

How do you check them to see if half the coils are dead although it certainly doesn't sound like it? The sound is not thin and they don't sound like single coil pickups. The noise is the same from either of them singly and also with both on. Everything else checks out, everything is grounded and there is ground continuity everywhere it should be. This thing even picks up my computer screen. I'm almost positive it is the pickups themselves. I never sent the warranty card in either. The problem is the thing sounds great except for the noise. I went to the Gibson site, it looks like I'd have to buy the pickups through a dealer as I don't see them offered anywhere there. Pickups for these don't seem to be very common, nothing on ebay. I saw some Bartolinis T4's for a Thunderbird but I hate to mod a bass with different pickups. Has anyone shielded the cavity on these?