garyfanclub
Junior Member
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2019
- Messages
- 12
- Reaction score
- 28
Hello LTG!
After weeks (months?) of lurking and researching here, I finally pulled the trigger on a 1970 M-75 Bluesbird. This particular example is fully hollow, and has the rare-in-this-format HB1s.
So far I’m loving! Tone is excellent, despite the thunky sounding flatwounds currently on the guitar. The HB1s are actually much brighter than I expected, sounding very close to the earlier 1970 M-75 I demo’d against.
Feel-wise the instrument is broken-in but not abused. The neck is narrow but not overly thin at either end. Frets are the glorious flatish frets you see on most 70s guitars.
I did make a couple adjustments upon receipt...
The neck angle is extremely low, which means it’s easy to bottom out the adjustment screws on the stock rosewood (?) bridge. Anyway, was very difficult to get slinky action with the original, especially with flats. Just a call out here for anyone exploring these, you may want to think about a different bridge if you’re into lowish action.
To keep things “period correct” and perhaps stay in the vein of a mod that might have happened 40 years ago, I tracked down an early 70s Muller bridge, which dropped right into the place. Still need to adjust the intonation, but works great! Slightly brighter unplugged tone, but action was immediately better given the lower profile compared to the stock bridge.
Here’s a picture with the 65 Ampeg Reverberocket I’m using it through.
After weeks (months?) of lurking and researching here, I finally pulled the trigger on a 1970 M-75 Bluesbird. This particular example is fully hollow, and has the rare-in-this-format HB1s.
So far I’m loving! Tone is excellent, despite the thunky sounding flatwounds currently on the guitar. The HB1s are actually much brighter than I expected, sounding very close to the earlier 1970 M-75 I demo’d against.
Feel-wise the instrument is broken-in but not abused. The neck is narrow but not overly thin at either end. Frets are the glorious flatish frets you see on most 70s guitars.
I did make a couple adjustments upon receipt...
The neck angle is extremely low, which means it’s easy to bottom out the adjustment screws on the stock rosewood (?) bridge. Anyway, was very difficult to get slinky action with the original, especially with flats. Just a call out here for anyone exploring these, you may want to think about a different bridge if you’re into lowish action.
To keep things “period correct” and perhaps stay in the vein of a mod that might have happened 40 years ago, I tracked down an early 70s Muller bridge, which dropped right into the place. Still need to adjust the intonation, but works great! Slightly brighter unplugged tone, but action was immediately better given the lower profile compared to the stock bridge.
Here’s a picture with the 65 Ampeg Reverberocket I’m using it through.