Travis Bean TB-500

Not sure of the year but I have # 291. Black finish with no paint on the neck. Someone replaced the origional pickups with EMG's which are extremely HOT. Tuners work great. The action is fantastic.

I would rrather have the origional pickups than the emg's. CAN ANYONE HELP?

Everything is as solid as a rock on this ax. No cracks around the neck.

Never needed any!

Been playin for 30 years. If it were stolen? Well, you don't wanna know.

i have one TB 500 since eight years already.the guitar stays in tune for weeks after playing severe sessions.If you use it to record you can have the warmest jazzy sound i have ever heard, but if you like fender telecaster "cutting" sound you get the most agressive sound as well.It is a bit heavy but i don t mind very much, i try to use it more in studio.I never had a problem with this guitar, never a string out of tune. The volume is sometimes too loud and a bit distorted so i recommend you not to use it with the pick ups at the maximun volume.
i don t know what else i should say.It is not a legend, it s just a very good sounding guitar, probably the best i have heard.I live in a recording studio so believe me i played many different ones. I m not going to sell this guitar until i die, and when i die, i d like my son or my woman to play it. That s all ! danke sehr
ernst

i use a vox ac 30 with a sans amp stomp box and sometimes a digital delay . It sounds great clean and distorted. sometimes i put a fuzz an the end of the chain.With both distorted sounds together it gets like sonic youth or like neil young.

never out of tune. what else should i say?

no customer report. I live in germany where you have to be very careful with technicians because they tend to try always to fool the customners, not reliable people especially if you are not blond and speak with foreign accent.I would never let touch a german technician my travis bean guitar.

8 years.

I d love to receive pictures from other travis bean guitars.

These are as basic as it gets and that's the beauty. Two singles p-90 style pick-ups, two way switch, volume and tone. The tone pot is much more useful than on most guitars, as you really can shape the sound of the guitar with it.

I can really rate the features because that's not what a Travis Bean is about

You get two very separate sounds out of a Travis. One is the microphonic bassy sound of of the neck pickup and the other the harsh metallic bridge pickup. The front pickup clean is hands down the best clean tone I've ever heard. I'd give it a 10, but the rear pickup is too harsh at high gain. I had mine replaced with a single-size humbucker to warm the sound up a bit and increase the output.

The TB500 really is not a object of beauty in the same way as a Custom Les Paul, PRS etc, it's very a function-over-form guitar. Personally I love the shape of the TB500, but there is no exotic woods or Pearl inlays etc. It has a really cool individual body shape plus the cut-out T in the headstock rules...

Built like a tank...

None, and expensive to repair, original parts are impossible to find

It's great to own a piece of history and have a guitar that no more than 351 other people have :-). It can't be replaced so it's head to comment on what I'd replace it with...

My TB 500 is a 1978 or possibly 1979 model, either way it is number 214 of 352 ever made.
It basically has the same chassis as the TB 1000 model Travis Beans but the neck lays into a recess in the body as opposed to slotting into the body and leaving the neck plate exposed on the back like on the TB 1000 models.
The neck is made of Reynolds alnuminium and is finished in Black Imron paint which is wearing off quite badly and chipping on the headstock and neck itself. The fingerboard is rosewood I believe and has basic dot marker inlays. It has the distinctive "T" cut out in the headstock and the serial number is crudely stamped just under the bottom of the "T".
Everything important os fixed onto the neck: the bridge, the string routing and the pickups are all part of the chassis.
The body is just a slab board chunk of wood, nothing too exotic. It's about an inch and a half all round, maybe a little less. The body is actually pretty small and kind of Fender-ish in design. A little like a Jaguar or maybe even a Mosrite guitar.

It has the two original Travis Bean pickups which are modelled on the Soap Bar P90 pickups found mostly in Gibson guitars but hand wound and a lot more powerful. You just get a basic 3 way selector and two knob controls for overall tone and volume.
It's finished in a creamy white which has yellowed considerably on the front and back wheras the edges and belt buckle areas are white.
It came with a shitty non original case which I keep meaning to replace.
In short, the neck construction is unbelievably complex and amazing and the electronics and body are very simple but effective.

The TB 500 is my perfect guitar, it has a bizarre kind of sustain and tone. Each string seems to be amplified individually and to an equal volume and the EQ of the guitar seems to clearly split up Bass, Middle and Treble frequencies so the whole sound is crystal clear, not like a Telecaster which is very bright sounding but much much bassier. I run it to a modern Fender Twin and use a booster pedal to get more gain when I need it. You don't need too much gain to get a powerful sound out of the guitar. It doesn't over drive an amp too easily despite being shockingly powerful so it would be nearly impossible to get that creamy kind of neck pick up sound that a Les Paul gives but I've never wanted that sound so I couldn't care less.
The treble pick up is a little too harsh sounding for me on it's own but when combined with the thickness of the neck pickup it's a perfect combination.
You can get a certain degree of variety with the pick up selection but I tend to keep it in the middle and then occasionally flick the switch to the neck pick up alone if I want something to be really bassy.

When I got the guitar the allen bolts that connect the pick ups to the chassis were too tight as someone had mistaken them for the joints that hold the neck chassis to the body and tightened them too far. this meant the guitar "creaked" (a sound which came through the amp strangely). This was easily rectified. When they guitar was taken apart I was surprised at how crude the routing was in it but then again this was supposed to be Travis' budget model.
I do suffer string breakages a lot more on this guitar than my others although I think this is down to poorly smoothed saddles on the bridge and intend to get this sorted as soon as i can.
There are quite noticable cracks where the neck heel and body meet although they are only as deep as the lacquer and are down to the over tightning of the pick up screws I mentioned earlier.
The body is covered in chips and dings but I like that!

I bash the hell out of this guitar live and apart from string breakages it is totally indestructable. Anyone who has ever seen the band Shellac can vouch for the strength of these guitars.
All the hardware is well crafted and I trust the electrics and design 100%. The body is a little flimsy but seems sturd enough and I find the weight of the guitar about right for me although the neck can weigh down a bit after a long spell of playing.

I have never dealt with the company.
There is a great network of enthusiastic owners who can offer support and advice though.

I have been playing for about 6 years or so and tour and play regularly. The TB 500 is used alongside a Fender Jaguar and a Fender Telecaster.
If someone stole my TB500 I would be distraught! I think the design is so perfect I would hate to think of not owning it. It is a lot more powerful than either of my Fenders and the attack and sustain is something I have always wanted from a guitar but had never found until i grabbed this one. I searched for a long while for it and I am not dissapointed.
I love Travis Beans so much I am in the process of buying a TB1000 Artist model as we speak. If you see one and can afford it don't pass it up!

A Bean which is to the 1000 models as a SG is to a Les Paul. It has the same aluminum headstock to tail design that all Beans do, but with a thinner neck and body, and strat type body complete with pickguard. Single volume and tone knobs with pickup selector. Two single coil pickups. Very simple.

When I got this, it had replacement pickups in it. The sound is very bright and bassy, the signature Bean sound. The sustain is not nearly as dramatic as with a 1000 model, but considering that it's probably 10 lbs. lighter, it's to be expected. Probably enough for most situations. The guitar sounds great clean or distorted.

The action is fine, and the finish is still in great shape despite being 20+ years old. There's the standard loosening up that happens when you have a plastic pickguard, but nothing major. Once I had the bridge properly set up and sufficently heavy strings on, everything was wonderful.

See above. The only possible complaint that I have is that the strings pass through wood before entering the metal section, and occasionally get misalligned. It's sometimes annoying to get them out at home...I could just imagine the trouble on stage.

I've never had need to contact the company.

While I don't really like this guitar quite as much as my 1000 Artist, it's really a great guitar. There were obviously corners cut in the production compared to the other models, but it still blows the doors off most every other guitar out there. And it's nice to not have a backache at the end of the evening.