4005 gets the shunt!

[Dave W]

Uwe's occasional grumblings about whether finish affects tone are aimed at me and refer to discussions that predate this forum.

He's a major Gibson bass collector, but he occasionally ventures over here.

[Pilgrim]

Uwe is an ultimate overlord admin on Last Bass Outpost - a German attorney who has an extensive, impressive Gibson collection but "doesn't collect for fins."  He's first to pull out the Deutsch jokes and a really interesting guy.  I just found the juxtapositionof your comment about finishes to be a contrast.

This probably falls under the "you had to be there" category.  Sorry for the distraction.   

EDIT: Thanks, Dave.....

[godofthunder]

Paul is being modest. He's not just a modeler, he's the retired longtime editor of FineScale Modeler magazine.

I'm more than impressed got the latest copy in my reading pile.

[uwe]

Kenny your eyes must be going  there is a fretless Ripper sitting right in the middle of things!

And we thought we had seen it all with that unsavory Hellcat affair, there he does it yet again! "Hellcat And Ripper Non-Recognition Club".

PS: Hey, I used to collect 1/72 scale WW II aircraft kits too (mostly Airfix, Revell and Matchbox)!!! My favorite model was probably the Short Sunderland and the Henschel something tank buster with the huge cannon.  Plus of course the P-47 Razorback. Even then I could recognize a Hellcat too btw. I had endless discussions with my buddies over the fact that I sometimes used glossy camouflage paints which my friends felt made my planes "look like toys" though they admitted that they were well-painted. My personal obsession was that the lower body blue and the upper body camouflage had to be separated by a neat, perfect line, which my only flat colors using brethren regularly did not take (sufficient) care for.

I had more than a hundred built models in my collection. It literally stopped from one day to another. Chicago and Nebraska were to blame. Huh? It was a dance party, Chicago's Saturday in the Park was playing when my high school crush Kendall  Siefker from Nebraska gave me the first (not even French) female kiss by a non-relative. I stopped building and collecting that very night leaving the last few boxes untouched.  Coming of age alright. And the money I had saved for new models when back in Germany (we lived in Zaire/Congo at the time) went into the purchase of Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits plus four other albums by an English organ and guitar unisono lines characterized band, whose bassists often played Rics, I am not allowed to mention them too often here ...

To this day I hold that the glossy fins I used on my model airplanes had no effect whatsoever on their ability to strafe my Airfix 1:72 mini-soldiers (I never painted those, the Russian kit and the Brit Commandos were my favorite ones) while I was providing live engine and machine gun noises via my mouth ...  Kendall turned me into a pacifist with a kiss. 

[Paul Boyer]

Great story, Uwe. My experiences were not dissimilar, but I've never stopped modeling. I'm turning 65 next month, and I figure that makes 60 years of "playing" (with models) as a vocation and avocation. The music thing came along with it; my Dad was a self-taught swing-jazz pianist, and my Mom a talented singer of same. It was in my genes, and I ended up being a self-taught bassist; not pro grade though, but I can get along with most anything. The journalism thing followed my formal training in photography, and all of that gelled with the FineScale Modeler editorial positions for my ultimate career. So journalism, photography, and music was a natural blend in producing the Rick bass book, my "retirement project."

Not to take this thread too far afield, but for those wondering what the big deal about model airplanes is, these are museum-display-quality, non-flying, highly detailed plastic scale replicas:

[uwe]

Those are beautiful and that camouflage of the one in the middle could almost pass for a Splittermuster/splinter camouflage. Is it not enough that you Yanks have your own infantry men look more and more like Waffen-SS soldiers (circa 1944) by now,



(Note: That picture is not from some Nazi site, it hangs on a wall in Westpoint!)

do you have to rip off splinter too? 

[uwe]

Played a friend's all-original '67 FG 4005 today. The bridge pickup sounded, as expected, very thin and weak. A .0047mF cap on a pickup so close to the bridge is lethal.

So I suggested shunting shunt it. Five minutes later we plugged her in. Wow!!! HELLO bridge pickup! Where have you been hiding in the last 47 years?!

The bass sounds soooo much better now both in the bridge position (previously totally useless) and with both pickups on.

Bypassing the cap in a 4005 is much more dramatic than in a 4001/pre-'85 4003.

Ilan, this is interesting. How do I know whether the cap is not already bypassed on my 4005? The treble pup on mine sounds utterly bony (as you would expect with that type of a position), but it's not really thin, I would expect the cap to produce an even thinner sound. If that's not asking too much: How does the cap look in the circuit and what must I do to shunt it? (My 4005 doesn't have the toasters, it's a 1979 model with the hi gain ones.)

Yes, I know I have five Rics and should know this already, but at least four of them were never capped or had the cap removed by a pre-owner and funnily enough I never bothered a thought whether my 4005 is capped or not, I always took that to be solely a 4001/early 4003 feature.

[ilan]

Look under the pickguard. If the harness has 3 caps (2 large and 1 small) then it's there (the smaller one). To shunt it, just take a small piece of insulated wire (just like all other wires in the harness) and solder it to both legs of the smaller capacitor. No need to remove or unsolder the cap itself: the signal will choose the path of least resistance. You can try it first without soldering - just wrap the ends of the shunt wire to the two points where the .047 cap is soldered.

[uwe]

Toda rabah!

[Highlander]

Uwe ... 1/72 ... Airfix

It will be 70 years, this June, since dad was flown out of Burma on a Sunderland ... presently preparing 230 Sqn's summer newsletter and an article about that ...

Paul ... perfect fins ... museum quality can be too clinical for my taste but I can't have anything less than awe at the quality of those ... I like to add all the relevant distressing that they would have ... I'm going to work on a specific Sunderland but am still researching the true colours, as there are no relevant records I can find for them ...

This is a still from some footage I have from the rescue op - the only images (about 2 seconds) that exist of the pair of them on the upper Brahmaputra - I can even tell you the time and date from the alighting of "Daisy" in the background - I have been posting them on WWII Talk with quasi-permission from the IWM to try and initiate recognition of those rescued - hopefully I'll complete this book this year ... 16 years of off-and-on research and still pawing through files ...
It was simply nuts flying these aircraft through mountain passes and into central Burma to Lake Indawgyi - up to their operational ceiling to clear the mountains at times and during the start of the monsoon season ... 13 successful flights and a reputed 577 injured and sick troops rescued ... dad was wounded 3 times in 18 days of battle - shot, grenade shrapnel, and a mortar strike on the last day as they were evacuating their position ... took him 4 days, crossing mountains, to get to the rescue location ... no food or ammo left ... of his platoon of 40 men, only six survived ... of the circa 3000 that went in with his brigade, less than a third survived ... God bless General Stilwell for pushing sick, tired, ill-equipped, jungle fighters into a suicide mission, far too close to the rear of the front-line, all for his vanity ...