🎸 Stray Of The Day 🎸

❤️ Meet Garnet! ❤️

Epiphone Thunderbird IV • 2001 • Made in Korea • Transparent Red

Yesterday we brought you a black Jackson Kelly with enough sharp edges to require its own risk assessment.

Today we’re calming things down.

Sort of.

Because while Garnet may have exchanged gloss black and pointy for deep transparent red and enormous amounts of mahogany, he is still a Thunderbird.

And Thunderbirds have never been particularly interested in subtlety.

🏷️ Adoption Fee: £395 including fitted Gator hard case 🏷️

Garnet dates to 2001, from Epiphone’s Korean production era, and at approximately 25 years old he’s reached that slightly alarming point where guitars we still think of as relatively modern are beginning to qualify as genuinely old.

We’re choosing not to examine what that means for us personally.

Construction here is classic Thunderbird IV: a mahogany body carrying that unmistakable reverse-offset silhouette, paired with a bolt-on maple neck and rosewood fingerboard.

Across its full 34-inch scale there are 20 frets, with simple dot markers and a neck that feels considerably more conventional beneath your hand than absolutely anything about the body attached to it.

At the other end sits one of the most recognisable headstocks in bass history.

It’s enormous.

It’s beautiful.

It has four substantial black tuners hanging from it.

And it would like to discuss neck dive with you.

Thunderbird owners will understand.

A pair of Epiphone TB Plus humbuckers occupy the business end, and despite their appearance these are entirely passive, controlled by two individual volume knobs and a master tone.

No batteries.

No active preamp.

No tiny plastic compartment waiting until halfway through a gig to remind you that you haven’t changed a 9V since 2019.

Just plug him in and make thunder.

The rest of the hardware is suitably black, including Epiphone’s substantial three-point bridge, while that huge cream Thunderbird pickguard provides approximately the only concession to subtlety anywhere on the instrument.

As always, Garnet hasn’t simply had a cloth waved vaguely in his direction before being photographed.

He’s been through the workshop, stripped down and thoroughly cleaned, with his hardware and electronics checked over before being restrung and properly set up. His frets have received our usual attention too, levelled where required before being crowned and polished.

And he has cleaned up beautifully.

That deep transparent red finish allows the mahogany grain to show through underneath, and depending on the light it moves from warm cherry into a much darker wine red.

There are signs that Garnet has actually existed during his quarter-century on Earth.

There are two marks to the rear of the neck, along with some light surface scratches and a handful of small knocks around the instrument. Nothing we’d consider remotely alarming, and nothing unusual for a bass of this age, but they’re there and we’d rather tell you about them.

Overall, though, he presents remarkably well.

And then there’s the case.

Thunderbirds are not small.

Garnet is approximately three postcodes long.

Fortunately, he comes with a proper fitted Gator hard case, meaning you can transport him without wrapping him in a duvet, lowering the rear seats and hoping everybody involved has adequately considered the laws of geometry.

The case is also enormous.

Obviously.

The Thunderbird has always been one of those designs that doesn’t really need explaining.

You either look at one and think:

“That’s unnecessarily enormous.”

Or you look at one and think:

“YES.”

We are very much in the second group.

A 2001 Korean-built Epiphone.

Mahogany body.

Bolt-on maple neck.

Rosewood fingerboard.

34-inch scale.

20 frets.

Twin TB Plus humbuckers.

Passive electronics.

And a silhouette that has spent more than sixty years refusing to become remotely sensible.

We approve.

❤️ Garnet is ready for adoption for £395, including his fitted Gator hard case. ❤️

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