Gibson Thunderbird: Matt Spatial's Thunderstick
The Julia Dream's Matt Spatial primarily plays his Gibson Thunderbird bass. All in all, it's a solid bass -- the quintessential rock bass according to Matt. Matt explains how he gets his tone with the Thunderbird and warns that its neck did snap once.
Also find out how not to get boned on eBay, which isn't as hard as it sounds since auctioning off your bones is against eBay policy anyway.
MATT SPATIAL: Hey. This is Matt Spatial with The Julia Dream, and we are in my band's very dirty, dingy practice space, and actually everything's torn down at the moment because we actually just had a show but I'm going to go a head and take you through what I play, what my rig is, and let's get started.
So, we'll start from the front and work our way back. [LAUGHING]
PATRICK OGLE: Do you use more than one bass?
MATT SPATIAL: Primarily no. On stage, I always use this guy right here, 1992 Gibson Thunderbird.
PATRICK OGLE: Why the Thunderbird?
MATT SPATIAL: You know, the Thunderbird is -- It's kind of a -- It's the quintessential rock bass, you know. There's -- Everything about it, and by rock bass I mean, you know, it spans every genre I mean new wave, punk, you name it, the Thunderbird covers it, and it's just got great tone for it. I mean it just looks cool, you know. The Thunderbird is just a great bass and it just, really I mean for rock tone, it's pretty versatile which some people might actually disagree but I think if you know what to do with it and how to work it, it's a pretty versatile bass. So, I picked this one up on eBay for 900 bucks.
PATRICK OGLE: That's a good price.
MATT SPATIAL: Yeah. Yeah.
PATRICK OGLE: And sometimes you get boned on eBay with something like that.
MATT SPATIAL: Yeah, and I got lucky. I mean this one was in really good condition. Since the time I got it, you know, the one thing that I will say about Thunderbirds is sure enough the neck does snap. [LAUGHING] I don't know if you can even see it now but --
PATRICK OGLE: Put it in the light maybe.
MATT SPATIAL: Yeah. Right there, sure enough my headstock cracked in half about 10 minutes before a show actually.
PATRICK OGLE: What were you doing? It was -- did it?
MATT SPATIAL: It was in the case, and the case just fell forward, and I didn't think anything of it. It was in the case, and I opened it up, strapped on, and like, "Damn, these strings are loose."
PATRICK OGLE: And then you looked over.
MATT SPATIAL: And the headstock is like this, so, but you know, and it's funny though because like, as I was saying before about the tone, you know, I pretty much leave my tone knob at five and I end up abusing my volume knobs for more tone control than anything. When you play with the neck pickup here, it's you definitely get more of like you get your highs and your lows whereas you get more of your midrange from the bridge pickup, and it's almost like the, you know, back in the '70s they used to call like the Disco Smile, you know. It's like you have like your high end and then you bruised up your low end and then you get that big dip in the middle. I feel a lot about that, you know, is kind of going on with the electronics here because it's like you have your Disco Smile right here and then you have your mid range here. It's really strange but that's how it works for some reason [LAUGHING].
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