Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I know Paul is a fan of my Fenderbirds ...

I modified my Fenderbirds by making them active ...

This one here has a fat 15k ohm humbucker bridge pickup and a 4k ohm single coil neck pickup and an audere 4 band preamp ... I can get the John Entwistle tone with this one ... it is a cross between his fenderbird and the alembic Exploiter. This one here has 2 hb1 pickups and a 3 band preamp

sweet man, are those warmoth bodies/necks?

Nope ... The bodies are from A&D Guitar co and the necks are mighty mite ...

They are joy to play, they sound great and they look cool ...

more pics ...

http://www.3dentourage.com/425/fender-bird2.htm

http://www.3dentourage.com/425/fender-bird3.htm

What's up with the strap buttons?

1965 wrote:What's up with the strap buttons?

That's Jeff's patented method of combating neck dive, if I recall....

Jeff's right...I love the look of these, and Jeff has nailed the best combination of parts and finishes.

I remember back in the mid-'60s, when everybody in my area was playing Fenders and the occasional Gretsch would pop up. (I only saw the one new FG Rick 360/12, and it set me up with a heavy hankerin'.) My surf vocal/instrumental group lost its bass player, and my buddy from another, distant, neighborhood in Chicago, Larry, decided to try out. He turned up with a Firebird bass and a Titan bass amp. It was like War of the Worlds..this strange alien presence in our midst (the gear, not Larry, who was quite normal in his Gibsonny way...). After all, Firebirds were what the Jersey Boys (4 Seasons) played on stage, and they were from...(New) Jersey. Never got used to Larry's "look" and he was voted out, although we remained friends for a few more years.

Anyway, Firebirds always seemed so odd to me; fast-forward to Jeff's first post of his 'Birds back in '05. I went, "Whoa!" and I was hooked.

Everytime he posts one of these pics, I start searching the web for parts. I've built up quite a file of my "ideal" stuff for building a couple (a 4 and a 5, of course...). But, "real" customer work always takes over, and I find myself deferring the projects to another time down the road.

Keep the pics coming, I, for one, can't get enough.

Jeff, please tell me more about where you get these bodies from. I have a blocked and bound jazz neck that I think would look great on a t-bird body, but they're pretty hard to come across. I know Warmoth makes them, but I'm looking for less expensive alternatives for this one.

Also I have a bizarre hankering to slap a darkstar pickup in this bass whenever I get around to putting it together. A Fenderstarbird?

jakeox wrote: Also I have a bizarre hankering to slap a darkstar pickup in this bass

Good call!

sloop_john_b wrote:

jakeox wrote: Also I have a bizarre hankering to slap a darkstar pickup in this bass

Good call!

I'm a little worried that the combo may actually crush souls. I don't know that I'm ready for that sort of responsibility.

Here is the body I'm using. Already routed for a darkstar, and finished in shoreline gold. It is routed for a tele bass neck, so I need to figure out if I want to modify it to fit the jazz neck I have, or find a tele neck instead. The pickup might end up costing me more than everything else put together!

jakeox wrote:The pickup might end up costing me more than everything else put together!

The ability to crush souls doesn't come cheap.

jakeox wrote:Jeff, please tell me more about where you get these bodies from. I have a blocked and bound jazz neck that I think would look great on a t-bird body, but they're pretty hard to come across. I know Warmoth makes them, but I'm looking for less expensive alternatives for this one.

Also I have a bizarre hankering to slap a darkstar pickup in this bass whenever I get around to putting it together. A Fenderstarbird?

http://www.warmoth.com/bass/bodies/vint ... hunderbird