Hi Mack,

For me, I like all these million Qs; always happy to talk bass and thanks for your positive comments on the site. I’ve only got indirect experience of this bass. One was bought by a kid I knew and he didn’t play it much in front of me (I think he didn’t want to “show himself up” – as if) and I don’t tend to grab righty basses unless I really have to. He was also using one of those really terrible starter combos with an 8″ speaker. Still, it’s definitely got a low end and different to those “sounds like chicken” Precision copies.

There are a few quirks to the T-bird, so I’d better get them out of the way. It is neck heavy, and it can come off its strap. Both unwelcomes can be attributed to the upper horn strap button forced by the design. It’s nowhere near the 12th fret and that big lump of headstock doesn’t help. An easy fix (and well worth making a small hole) is to fix a (preferably Straplok) button at the edge of the neck pocket, adjacent to the neckplate. Solves the head-dive.

Quirk #2 is that the saddles are held in place by the strings. Someone posted here that they took all the strings off and tilted the body. Suddenly, they had a pile of parts on the floor. Make a mental note to change one string at a time (I do this anyway) and keep the body flat.

Quirk #3 comes from that headstock. T-birds won’t fit in standard cases or even stock gigbags. The headstock pokes out.

All that said, the pups are apparently very good and it’s a contender for rock bass without paying out too much. Despite the way it looks, the Epiphone is a bolt-on (maple neck, alder body) rather than the mahogany/walnut neck-thru, mahogany body of the Gibson. It still seems to cut it, though. As you’ve probably seen, the big-store standard new price of the Epi is $399, so $300 used wouldn’t ordinarily be a great used buy. HST, the descn sounds like last year’s Arctic White Ltd Ed which is no longer offered so, if you’re sold on that colour, you might consider it worth having. I don’t think you’d lose much if you decided to sell it later anyway.

Lee_UK, whom I’ve mentioned before re: Ashdown amps and cabs, bought a Gibson Thunderbird when he took up bass. I really must tell him to haul his buttocks into the Bass cat and post some replies to your points. Incidentally, I think a T-bird through a valve amp would be a top rocking combination. Ampeg SVTs cost an arm and a leg and, in good old Blighty, a 100W EL34 amp would be fairly easy to get without paying too much but they are rarer and more expensive your side of the pond. Even so, it’d be tempting to get hold of something to suit.

Let us know if you go for the T-Bird, and whether you like it.