NAD: Thunderstar Bass Amp

GAD

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OK. Is there a good B&B in the neighborhood? I'l bring the '67 and Newark Street so you have good basses and a mediocre player, if you need one, and you can test the amp with what it was build for and write the Starfire bass comparison.

LOL - no B&Bs. I promise I'll record some bass through it at least for the review. My daughter plays bass and she's got one, though it's not a Guild. Still, she may have something better to say with a bass than I would, which would probably amount to the intro from Pink Floyd's Money, and if you tell me you don't know that one, I'm going to go sit in the corner and cry.
 

Nuuska

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I'm kind of surprised not to see a pc board in there. . . .


Hello

I see no PC-board - tag board might be correct name.
PC stands for Printed Circuit


But the innards of that amp chassis look fantastic for the age. I'm sure you will have plenty of joy from it. Those tubes need good cleaning or replacing before they catch fire . . . or is it just rust on tube ?
 
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Yes, I know what a pc board is. Thunder basses and Thunderbirds from the beige tolex period on had pc boards that the preamp sockets were soldered to. This TStar bass doesn't, which is why I made the comment. Every amo seems like a different technique in ampbuilding.
 

fronobulax

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LOL - no B&Bs. I promise I'll record some bass through it at least for the review. My daughter plays bass and she's got one, though it's not a Guild. Still, she may have something better to say with a bass than I would, which would probably amount to the intro from Pink Floyd's Money, and if you tell me you don't know that one, I'm going to go sit in the corner and cry.

Hehe. I could probably crank out Money if I practiced. Glad she's still playing bass. Given her sometime rejection of "Daddy's gear" I look forward to her comments incorporated into your review.
 

Nuuska

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I think Nuuska simply missed the word "not" in your original statement. (I'm kind of surprised not to see a pc board in there. . . .)
Ralf


THAT is exactly what happened - I stand corrected - facing corner for doubting . . . I will not shake ashes, because it would be messy.
 

adorshki

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LOL - no B&Bs. I promise I'll record some bass through it at least for the review. My daughter plays bass and she's got one, though it's not a Guild. Still, she may have something better to say with a bass than I would, which would probably amount to the intro from Pink Floyd's Money, and if you tell me you don't know that one, I'm going to go sit in the corner and cry.
Surely you could master "The Beat Goes On", "Sunshine Of Your Love", and "Smoke on the Water".
BUT:
It's easy to forget that using a Bassman to achieve a "thicker" lead tone was a common trick in the '60's and '70's, the one who comes to mind immediately is John Cippolina of Quicksilver Messenger Service.
And when I saw the comment yesterday I remembered seeing an interview with a rockabilly player who said the trick to getting rockabilly tone was to plug into a reverb tank and then into a Bassman head.:)glee:)
I could swear I saw it on an old (ca '98-'03) Guild webpage from a guy endorsing the X160 but couldn't find it again yesterday.
For those interested, I was using the Wayback Machine to look for old Guild product specs, there's some interesting Corona-era info in there but it takes time and patience to check each snapshot:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.guildguitars.com
 
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eltuce

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Errrrr.... I guess I had my story wrong. Amp must have been her husband's. I just assumed it was her dad's since he passed away recently. Anyway, carry on and enjoy!
 

GAD

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My restoration of the cabinet is almost done and I think it looks freaking great. On to the amp chassis next which might be a bit of a challenge, but apart from its apparent desire to try and kill me, it seems to be pretty sound so that work will be largely cosmetic aside from neutering its homicidal tendencies.
 

GAD

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Nice three prong plug, snipptysnip of the deathcap and Bob's yer uncle!

Bob will, indeed, be your uncle. So far the toughest nut to crack is the grill cloth. It’s not bad, but the cab looks so nice now it sticks out. Tonght I’m trying resolve and that will probably be my last attempt because it’s one of the things that’s not easily replaced.

I’m thinking of doing an entire article on the restoration.
 

mellowgerman

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One of my favorite bass amps I've ever played through! I really miss mine. I had the blue-face model as well. I like my current Thunderbass amp too, but the Thunderstar Bass amp was a little more my flavor and I wish I could articulate exactly why.
 

Guildedagain

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Back when I didn't know better, I'd take the speaker out of a cab, put it in the shower, spray the grille cloth top to bottom with 409, wait a little bit, and start rinsing with hot water, and just watch the grunge wash out and down the drain.

Dry the cab out quickly and viola, near restored grille cloth.

No brushing of any kind, just spray and rinse.
 

GAD

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Before and after.

Guild-Thunderstar-Bass-Before-Top.jpg



1969-Guild-Thunderstar-Bass-Head-Restored.jpg
 

GAD

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I'm not real happy with the speaker grill, and I may have made it worse, so I'm not posting that until I know for sure. I'll write up a detailed article with everything I did, how, and why. Of course there will be lots of pics.

For now, I've removed the death cap, added a temporary 3-prong plug (I have a longer one on the way with proper strain reliefs), removed the aux AC outlet from the circuit, removed and de-rusted literally every piece of metal I could get to outside of the chassis including the nuts on the input jacks and the individual screws on the amp corners, cleaned the knobs, de-oxed the pots, scrubbed tolex until I can't feel my shoulder, glued loose bits, cleaned all the nasty dust off of the tubes, and added new weather-stripping between the chassis and the front panel.

After a half-bottle of phosphoric acid goo over six applications did almost nothing to the chassis rust, I took a rotary metal brush to it. The chassis is a disaster. The rust was 1/8" thick in spots, but it's only on the top. Honestly, the only right way to solve that was to take everything out and sandblast the chassis, but I was unwilling to put in that much effort since this has burned a lot of time already and point-to-point wiring kind of freaks me out when thinking about a full disassembly. I gave up on the idea of trying to restore the chassis and settled for trying to stop any more rust.

It's time for a post-amp-overhaul-cocktail. :very_drunk:
 

GAD

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One of my favorite bass amps I've ever played through! I really miss mine. I had the blue-face model as well. I like my current Thunderbass amp too, but the Thunderstar Bass amp was a little more my flavor and I wish I could articulate exactly why.

Do you remember what cabinet you had? Or did you just have the head?
 
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