November 2, by gordmiester. Up until now I have sung only praises about the Tacoma Thunderchief and my total admiration of this ABG remains unchanged, however there are some common faults and flaws that I have read about too many times to ignore as being one off occurances.
These faults should be a consideration before making a purchase. Some of these flaws I can confirm first handβ¦. Unfortunately, the spruce top and to a lesser extent, the mahogany sides and back, are very sensitive to dings and denting due to both timbers being fairly soft but mostly because of the minimal finished coating such as vanish that is used to seal the timber. I assume the near absence of a coated finish is to help with the acoustics but that is just me speculating.
In a review, one owner made this comment:. The owner, quoted above, learnt the hard and painful way on just how fragile the Thunderchief is. With my other ABG, the Epiphone El Capitan, I would not be too worried about any of the above mentioned fragility as it has a hard glossy varnished finish and is a very solid and sturdy construction. With that said, the Thunderchief is head and shoulders a better acoustic bass guitar over the Epiphone in all other aspects. Faults and Flaws A common fault of the Tacoma Thunderchief acoustic bass guitar can occur when it is exposed to varying degrees of humidity, which alters the size of the timber fibers and mildly distorts all connective pieces such as the body top and sides.
A separation can occur where the top or back join to the sides as tension is placed there and the glue can give up. What happens is the sides of the bass change in dimension slightly whilst the top or back change at a different rate resulting in a neat split between the join.
The most commonly reported split is the join between the sides and back at the very base of the Thunderchief, just below the output jack pictured below.
