916 Alneo T Bird Bass pickups were designed to provide a fuller tone than vintage factory pickups. The pickups Alnico 5 magnets are paired with Neodymium bars adding gauss to the alnico magnets providing the pickup with the power needed for a fuller, fatter tone.
916 Bicentennial Recreation Sets. These are remakes of the 76 Thunderbird bass pickups. Sound samples available below. We designed and manufactured all the parts to make these pickups available. U.S. Steel Stock cut and plated. Laser cut Japanese Vulcanex flat work. Mogami lead wire. Price reflects time and effort of build. Pickups must be used with factory wiring and 100k potentiometers. Wiring visible in images on this page. Pots and wiring have an effect on tone of these pickups.
U.S. Nickel Silver Cover dimensions are 3 5/8″ (91.5mm) x1 1/2″(39mm) x 15/32″(12mm) thick.
Mounting hole spacing measured center to center is 3 9/32″(83.5mm)
Individual Alneo pickups can be ordered, Bicentennial are sets only.
Ray Ransdell –
This is a mini review of Nine One Six Thunderbird pickups
I own a 2019 Epiphone Vintage Pro Thunderbird. A recreation of a vintage 60’s Tbird, equipped with Epiphone 760 ProBuckers, highly regarded as being close to the 60’s Tbird Gibson pickups from the era, although they are a little bass shy according to some.
I upgraded the pots and cap in mine before I got the 916 pickups.
I ordered Raw nickel covers.
The packaging is neat and professional.
Included a nice capacitor and screws, and 2 stickers
On with installation:
Generous length high quality shielded 2 conductor wire.
The original have a cloth single conductor with a braided jacket that also acts as the ground.
Original pickups supported by neoprene rubber blocks.
I elected to use neoprene with embedded springs.
Man those raw covers look killer.
My impressions in comparison:
Wider range, crisper more output, more bottom.
Articulation is improved.
More dynamic, and LESS sensitive to string proximity, I can move the pickups farther away from the strings without loss of tone !!
(The 760’s sound best close) The magnetic pull is slightly more than stock but sustain is not impacted nor is there a chorusing effect at the tail of the notes.
Summarized? Hot looking sounding pickups that improved upon an already good bass: it’s now great!
Spoke with Matt at length during the install, really impressed, super nice and supportive.
Highly knowledgeable and forthcoming with information.
Matt TRULY cares about his customers! Reminds me of conversations I’ve had with Phil Jones, and interactions with Andy Field.
Johan –
Hi, this is my review of the Bicentennial pickups clone from 916pickups. After looking in vein for couple of months, I finally got the contact of Matt from 916pickups. We talked about the project I had to recreate a Bicentennial copy by upgrading a modern Tbird from 2008. Matt did an awesome job on those pickups, he kept me often in touch about the progress of the making and after a while, they were home! I bring my Tbird to my luthier and he was amazed by the high quality of the pickups and the very serious work. Finally, when it was the time for a test, mission was 100% complete, I have 3 original Bicentennial and i have to so say that’s the closer result you can get. The sound and the way the pickups react are very close to an original Bicentennial. I can only recommend! Very serious work, high quality! Even if you live in EU, the shipping cost was really affordable! If you want to add some vintage sound to your modern Thunderbird, just go for it!
PS: for a better result, I highly recommend to upgrade pots and capacitor. On an original Bicentennial, pots are 100k and the capacitor is a 0.47
Cheers, Johan.