Thunder I -1982

Calling all Canadians!
Here's a very well restored Thunder. It's been mod'd for string through which ain't necessarily a bad thing.
Dunno where he got the idea that these are "Hammer I" pups, whatever those are. They appear to be Mats originals.

LINK

And hey Dan! SHE'S STILL GOT HER BRASS KNOBS MATEY!!! (well...2 of 'em anyway)

I think he got that idea from the Westone catalogues, Barry. First referred to as Hammer I's in the 1983 UK pricelist.

Barry wrote,

And hey Dan! SHE'S STILL GOT HER BRASS KNOBS MATEY!!! (well...2 of 'em anyway)

It makes a bloody change, the brass monkeys must have had their hands full with all mine!!!!!!

As for the pickups, from what I can tell Westone never referred to the Thunder 1 as having MMK 45's. The catalogues around 1981/82 mention they were fitted with 'Twin Magnet-F450' pickups. There is a single reference to them being called 'HF450' then from '83 onwards they are known as Hammer 1's.

This is only a guess but I reckon the '450' in HF450 refers to MMK 45. The Thunder II had HF530 pickups which would be MMK 53, does that sound right?

By the way, the through body stringing was standard by the time this was made. My T-IA (S/N 2090664) was made a few months before this one and has the same gold headstock logo and single piece string ferrule.

DAN.

Interesting. Thanks.
The .info site seems to point to '82 as the year for string through.
Looks like '81 was quite the year for shaking up the design then, eh?...got rid of the ^&&*(%$ barrel saddle bridge, and changed the stringing as well.

It looks like Westone went through lots of design changes before they got it right.

I have a Sunset Red Thunder I which I still haven't restored yet (a Quest Atak 5 is in surgery at the mo!), and this has six Tele type string ferrules and slightly different saddles with a large round hole in the middle of them instead of the standard slotted saddles?

Sadly this T-I has lost it's serial number along with it's neck plate so I can't date it, but I think it's from around early '82. There is no catalogue shots of this version but there is a few pics of this type in the model info pages, referred to as a version 2.

DAN.
.

DuoFuzz wrote: The catalogues around 1981/82 mention they were fitted with 'Twin Magnet-F450' pickups. There is a single reference to them being called 'HF450' then from '83 onwards they are known as Hammer 1's.

This is only a guess but I reckon the '450' in HF450 refers to MMK 45. The Thunder II had HF530 pickups which would be MMK 53, does that sound right?

Yep; that pretty much sums it up, AFAIK to date! There are one or two fellows at Matt who are well up onthe ins and outs of the MMK series; worth a look...

This is the same as mine without being active... That was the logo mine had before the previous owner rubbed it off. This one seems in decent shape minus some scrapes and little dents here and there... Def a good buy.....

The 82 Ver 2 had the newer string thru bridge instead of the problematic roller bridge.... A great improvement!

P.

Thanks for the correction fellas!
Geez, just when ya think ya got it all figured out, eh?