![]() ![]() The only snag with this is that you need a strap with a very narrow end in order to comfortably be able to get it on. The closest you can get it is on the end of the heel which gets the strap to about the 14th fret if you use straplocks which helps push it out that wee bit further The second thing is to move the front strap bottom as close as you can to the magic 12th fret position. I still have vivid memories of using a standard leather strap when I had my Stingray and having to take the strap off my shoulder and rest it on the other one after a while cos there was no padding to absorb some of the weight Use anything else and you'll be in pain in short order. I am by no means a big hard man, well I am big, but I can comfortably wear this bass all night using this strap. This will also help to combat the fact that its a heavy bugger. ![]() I have a Brooklyn Gear one that I bought from Stringbusters many moons ago which is more or less the same strap. The 3 best things you can do are firstly to buy yourself a big wide ass neoprene strap like a Comfort Strap. This bass has nothing after the 16th fret so that's why it will try to hit the floor any time you let go of the bass. I'm not sure exactly how much but its a lot heavier than it looks, helped by that mahogany body.Īnd on to the big issue (nothing to do with the homeless) - neck dive! Right, for a bass to balance properly you really need the front strap button to be around the 12th fret. Then again, you're a bass player, why would you ever want to above there anyway The heel on the body is quite bulky so it is difficult to easily get up beyond the 17th fret - in fact its almost impossible. The neck is superslim, like the slimmest Rickenbacker neck you've ever played and like the Rick, the taper from nut to body end is very small which makes it more comfortable to play in my opinion The solution is either to lower the pickups quite a bit or use the active input/pad on your amp. The pickups on this are very growly, helped in part by the mahogany body to produce a very gnarly animal which can very easily overdrive your preamp. This requires a different technique which also combats neck dive Thunderbirds are completely different to play than your usual Fender or Fender clone by the fact that you have a large upper bout at the bridge end where you would normally have a nice contoured part to rest your forearm on. Why they don't do this in the factory I don't know. This occurs especially when you try to lower the action most of the way down - you may find that as you turn the screw, the insert starts coming out with each turn. One issue that many Epiphones suffer from is the inserts that hold the bridge in are prone to coming out. They are floating so there is minimal contact with the body which we are always led to believe is essential for a bridge to transfer sound from the strings to the body in order to resonate and so on. This bass uses the common 3 point bridge found on on most Gibsons and Epiphones. It wouldn t be deep but it would show up on the finish Scratches are so easy to make, you could even make one with your fingernail. After some time you may find that areas that you are constant contact with become shiny. Its a dull matt paint finish with no apparent laquer top coat. This bass is finished in what could only be described as the easiest to mark finish ever created to go on a guitar. Single piece necks are weaker and therefore can suffer a break more easily. The headstock is joined to the neck by means of a scarf joint which makes it more solid than the single piece Gibson ones, or indeed the Epiphone Explorers that use a single piece of wood for the entire neck. There are no rough fret ends on this bass - in fact I've never come across any rough fret ends on any Epiphone bass I've owned. The neck joint is very tight and everything is situated exactly where it should be. The main differences being the pickups, the controls (or lack of) and the Blackbird Optigrab. That's cos they begin life as the same bass. Some people have noticed that the pickup spacing is different as well but I don't have a standard to check it out.įor the Eagle-eyed, you may notice that this bass is very similar to the Nikki Sixx Blackbird. Main differences include:ġ) Jazz bass width neck ( 1.5" ) as opposed to the standard 1.73"ģ) Ceramic pickups rather than Alnico (I'm assuming that's what they are) Bout time I did a review for my Gothic Thunderbird.Ī very different animal to the standard Epiphone Thunderbird IV. ![]()
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