Got My Nightbird!

john_kidder

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Nightbird II, Hans says late 1989. What a beautiful guitar it is. Bird's-eye maple top, bound ebony board with narrow diamond inlays, gold fittings, 8-ply body binding, 5 plys on pickguard and headstock, slim narrow neck - Gloryosky, Sandy, I think I'm in heaven. Photos to come.

Plays like a dream, comfortable, beautiful tone, oh what tone, lovely tone, easy action, all the good things one might want. And my oh my, it's awfully pretty. I'll learn a lot with this instrument, I can feel it happening as soon as I begin to play.

I'll report again - in the meantime can anyone give me a quick tutorial on the electronics here? I know I've got EMG humbuckers, with "active electronics" (means what?), and a coil tap switch with a push/pull switch on the tone pot. The switches in combination give me various clean/out of phase/bright/single coil sounds, but it's sort of a random exercise at this point. Any guidance would be helpful.

I note from various sources that a number of players replace the EMGs with Seymour-Duncans or other pickups to lose the active electronics. These pickups sound awfully good to me - who has experience with others in this guitar?

I'm a happy camper again. There's just nothing like a new-to-you guitar, and expecially one so different from my other instruments. SmithfieldFair spoke in an earlier post about how playing his guitars seemed to banish the Christmas blues - all I can say is that it's pretty cheerful here right now.
 

Jeff

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Good news,!!! Hope all goes as well with the F 30.

I'm waiting to hear from someone in the know about active electronics.

My first guess on active electronics would be it takes power (9 volt?) but so many of my assumptions have been proven wrong here I'll just wait till someone who knows fills us in.

Sounds like a bountiful Christmas, if I remember correctly your Nightbird was to be delivered by a Daughter returning home for the holidays.
 

guildzilla

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Can't wait to see the pix, friend John.

I have EMG active pups (1 bucker, 2 single coils) on a Detonator. Requires 9-V battery as Jeff said. Very distinctive and broad range of sound with these. Lots of clarity and punch, I think.

What is the pickup configuration on the Nightbird? I'm guessing two humbuckers. Is that right?

Anyway, suggest you take a spin on the EMG website and related sites. Lots of great information on there. I read somewhere that the battery should be wrapped in tape or foam.
 

john_kidder

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Two EMG humbuckers, 9v battery, yep.

And the pickups are hot compared to the "passive" Gibson humbuckers on my old jazzer - but is the battery simply to power a pre-amp, to deliver a higher amplitude signal, or is there more to it than that?
 

breogan

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The active pickups run on bateries, have a preamp stage and also feature a small circuit that eliminates background hum. If I am not mistaken you can set them to work on 18V with two 9V bateries. But I don' know the berefits of that.

People claim the active pickups to be a bit "sterile" compared to pasive pickups... That can be related with the fact that there are two kinds of active pickups: The ones that are design to sound clean and the ones that are design to sound "obesse metal". The second one are the most popular by far. So most people probably have tried only the ones that sound only good under loads of distortion.

David Gilmour has been playing with active EMG's this last years and EMG even sells now a "David Gilmour Set".

Probably your guitar has ones from the first kind, designed to play clean or with vintage overdrive.

My opinion is... If you like it, don't touch anything!!

Well, remember to replace the batterys... :lol: :lol:
 

ave del noche

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So glad you finally got your Nightbird. I'd also recommend keeping the stock pickups in there until you're sure you don't like them. The EMGs aren't for me, but that doesn't mean they won't suit you.
 

john_kidder

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Believe me, gentlemen, I don't plan on touching anything until I've played this a lot, and figured out what I've got here. It's hard to keep hands off - another hour late to the ofice this morning. Tsk, tsk.

I'm still intrigued by the push/pull switch on the tone pot, and the coil-tap switch. I can hear all sorts of differences, but I'd sure like to know what's supposed to be going on electrically, and what I mught be expecting to hear as a result. Also, I'm running this through a Roland JC-55 right now - should get my Thunderbass and T1-12 back from my tech this week - that'll be interesting as well.

All these questions come from an acoustic guitar player just recently introduced to a whole new dimension - hence the ignorant cries for help. All responses are much appreciated.
 

ave del noche

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Unless yours is wired differently than any other Nightbird I've played, the push/pull pot is the coil tap and should work on both pickups. The mini-toggle switch is a phase inverter (usually for the neck, but I've seen it hooked to the bridge p/u as well). When you are in the down or up position on the 3-way you won't notice anything from using the phase switch. When you're in the middle position, however, flipping the phase switch down should put the two pickups out of phase with each other...giving you a thinner and, well, phased sound. Have Fun!
 

Kap'n

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Congrats!

My conversation with Gruhn seemed to indicate he didn't like the EMG's. I don't like 'em much either. They seem to lose depth of sound somehow, but they stand up well to heavy distortion or processing.

FWIW, I thought the Armstrongs were worse. Thin and nasal. Just my opinion, though. The Duncans that came on the early ones were really nice. Seymour told me they were designed to be like Filtertrons. They missed, but sounded really good anyway. Maybe if the coils were wired parallel?
 

guildzilla

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Maybe there are players out there who completely understand all the terminology and the relevance of each facet and the effect of each at every possible volume, tone, phase, and coil-tap setting, on a guitar as versatile as your Nightbird. Just dial up according to specs and get exactly what they want.

But I'll be damned if I can do that. And I suspect most players can't.

So at worst you're stuck with trial and error, having to learn the guitar by heart and remember and apply the sounds you discover to work best for you and what you're playing.

I think it's a longer process with an electric than with an acoustic, learning the sounds of the instrument and how to apply it.

But, hey, it's a pretty good, gig, huh? Sentenced to spending many hours with this guitar?
 

john_kidder

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guildzilla said:
Maybe there are players out there who . . . just dial up according to specs and get exactly what they want. But I'll be damned if I can do that. . . . So you're stuck with trial and error.

But, hey, it's a pretty good, gig, huh? Sentenced to spending many hours with this guitar?

Pretty good gig, yes. Frustrating, yes. I'm sort of a techie at heart - I look for a systematic, programmatic approach to most problems - "just dial up according to specs and get exactly what I want". And when what I want is very imprecisely defined -"you know, that clean ringing tone, lots of sustain, no discernible vibrato (but yeah, a little reverb does seem to add something" and very imperfectly approached - "no, not quite like that, what happens if you roll the treble off a little, that's OK, let's pull this pot up, whoops, what did that do? seemed to shut off the bridge pickup, push it back, try this switch, no, that's just noisy, oh, maybe I've got too much reverb in the amp . . . . . " Hell's bells, it sort of defeats the purpose of playing the guitar in the first place, and gets you into the business of tuning up the Maserati rather than driving it.

No doubt I'll get to the bottom of a lot of it. But it's a very interesting exercise in humility. You know, when we attain geezerhood we've all had lots of learning experiences in lots of different environments - we can get accustomed to feeling a bit comfortable in the world. And then one plunges into a completely new atmosphere, and one has to learn to breathe all over again. Good for the soul, no doubt.
 

Kap'n

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Yeah. I like knowing what each switch does exactly. It helps me organize the tones in my head, and instinctively know where to go when the mood takes me, rather than getting into "oh...shit" land. :lol:

Then again, I like building my own amps, too.

[um, glop isn't exactly what I typed, but apparently the software likes it better]
 

Jeff

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No doubt I'll get to the bottom of a lot of it


I have much the same problem with amps. Pros I have talked with often say "I never use more that 2 or 3 settings on my amps".
 

john_kidder

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It's pretty difficult and unpredictable, all right. And the pros really do just dial it up.

But then tonight, home from a neighbourhood Christmas party (and an ever-so-rare evening toke with the young folk of Kitsilano), everyone else in bed, a glass of aquavit, and oh glory even when stroked by a rank amateur this guitar is just a beautiful thing to play and a wonder to listen to. I've never sounded so good.

I begin to see why great guitar players play great electric guitars. I could disappear for days in here.
 
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