Quantum Strummer
Senior Member
Thanks, Admins, for fixing my thread name typo.
My black T-bird arrived this morning. It's light. Weighs about the same as my '71 S-100 and less than the '73. Well balanced too. Gave it a quick by-ear tuneup after unboxing and plugged it straight into my old Vox Pacemaker. Sounds very nice indeed: clear with mid oomph at the neck, jangly with some hollow twang in the middle (both pickup switches on) and bright & snappy at the bridge. The white bass-cut switch helps the neck pickup and middle config cut through better with the mid-rich Vox revved up, and gives the bridge p'up a useful faux electro-acoustic tonality with the amp running clean.
I have backed off the neck pickup height some. If the T-bird had individual vols for each p'up I would've left it a little higher, but this way I get a great tonal balance with both p'ups on. The bridge p'up is just a touch louder than the neck with this setup. BTW, my notion of swapping the p'ups around disappeared after a few minutes of play. Utterly unnecessary. To my ears anyway.
The alternate vol & tone setup, neck pickup only, sounds the same as the standard setup with the neck p'up selected. At least it does through the Pacemaker. This is different compared to the Jazzmaster & Jaguar, which use different pot and capacitor values in their alt circuits. I've rolled off the T-bird's alt tone knob a bit for a mellow sound, which I can see using as a preset chord comping, thumb strumming voice.
Once I put on a set of my preferred strings—GHS Burnished Nickel Rocker 11s—I'll tweak the polepiece heights and dial in the relief and bridge height & intonation. But the guitar is set up well right out of the gigbag so I shouldn't have to do much. Gotta remove the pickguard overlay too, now that I've memorized where the "Mode Switch" is.
Here are some pics taken with my phone.
Here's a pic showing the pickup heights as I've set them. Haven't touched the bridge p'up actually as it sounds fine as is volume- & tone-wise.
-Dave-
My black T-bird arrived this morning. It's light. Weighs about the same as my '71 S-100 and less than the '73. Well balanced too. Gave it a quick by-ear tuneup after unboxing and plugged it straight into my old Vox Pacemaker. Sounds very nice indeed: clear with mid oomph at the neck, jangly with some hollow twang in the middle (both pickup switches on) and bright & snappy at the bridge. The white bass-cut switch helps the neck pickup and middle config cut through better with the mid-rich Vox revved up, and gives the bridge p'up a useful faux electro-acoustic tonality with the amp running clean.
I have backed off the neck pickup height some. If the T-bird had individual vols for each p'up I would've left it a little higher, but this way I get a great tonal balance with both p'ups on. The bridge p'up is just a touch louder than the neck with this setup. BTW, my notion of swapping the p'ups around disappeared after a few minutes of play. Utterly unnecessary. To my ears anyway.
The alternate vol & tone setup, neck pickup only, sounds the same as the standard setup with the neck p'up selected. At least it does through the Pacemaker. This is different compared to the Jazzmaster & Jaguar, which use different pot and capacitor values in their alt circuits. I've rolled off the T-bird's alt tone knob a bit for a mellow sound, which I can see using as a preset chord comping, thumb strumming voice.
Once I put on a set of my preferred strings—GHS Burnished Nickel Rocker 11s—I'll tweak the polepiece heights and dial in the relief and bridge height & intonation. But the guitar is set up well right out of the gigbag so I shouldn't have to do much. Gotta remove the pickguard overlay too, now that I've memorized where the "Mode Switch" is.
Here are some pics taken with my phone.
Here's a pic showing the pickup heights as I've set them. Haven't touched the bridge p'up actually as it sounds fine as is volume- & tone-wise.
-Dave-
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