"Rock and Roll" from 1964

This semi-solid bass guitar weighs 8.70 lbs. and has a nice, fat nut width of 1 11/16 inches and a nice, short scale length of 30 1/2 inches. Laminated maple top, back, and sides with maple central block, one-piece mahogany neck, and rosewood fretboard with 20 frets and inlaid pearl dot position markers. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Gibson" logo and pearl crown inlay. Gibson two-on-a-side tuners with metal cloverleaf buttons. One metal-covered humbucking pickup with poles across the middle and with an output of 8.95k. Five-layer (black/white/black/white/black) plastic pickguard. Two controls (one volume, one tone) plus a pushbutton switch and jack input, all on body. Gold plastic bell-shaped knobs with metal tops. Combination bar bridge/stud tailpiece. Minimal belt buckle wear to the back, otherwise this guitar is in exceptionally fine condition. Housed in the original Gibson black hardshell case with purple plush lining (8.50).

"Gibson's second electric bass model established a pattern that would hold true for almost all of the company's basses from that date forward. The EB-2 of 1958 was a 'partner' to a similar guitar model -- in this case, the semi-hollow ES-335. The EB-2 was, in effect, an electric bass neck (complete with banjo-style tuners) glued onto the double-cutaway, 'thinline' body of the ES-335. The earliest model had a single-coil pickup with a brown-plastic cover, but this was soon replaced by a large humbucker with a black-plastic cover...A pushbutton 'baritone' (i.e., bass-cut) control was added in 1959, and conventional right-angle tuners replaced the banjo tuners in 1960...The original EB-2 was dropped in 1961 and reintroduced, with a metal pickup cover, in 1964. A double-pickup version, the EB-2D, joined the line in 1966...Both models were discontinued in 1972. Although not commercially successful, Gibson's short-scale, semi-hollow basses -- and such similar models as the Epiphone Rivoli and Guild Starfire Bass -- were popular with many '60s rock bands because they were easy to play and offered different tonal possibilities than Fender basses" (Jim Roberts, American Basses, pp. 73-74).