An Original Mid-Sixties Mersey Beat Bass

This super-playing bass weighs just 9.00 lbs. and has a very fat nut width of over 1 11/16 inches and a nice, short scale length of 30 1/2 inches. Laminated maple body (stained Walnut on the back and sides), 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. Two-on-a-side Kluson right-angle tuners with large cloverleaf metal buttons. One very strong "patent number" humbucking pickup with chrome cover and an output of 17.80k. Two controls (one volume, one tone) plus push-button bass boost, all on lower treble bout. Black plastic bell-shaped "Bell" knobs with metal tops. Combined bar bridge/stop tailpiece. The serial number ("346747") is stamped on the back of the headstock and on an oval orange label inside the bass f-hole. This guitar is in excellent (8.50) and totally original condition. The original pickguard and hand rest have been removed. There are a few very small marks on the guitar and some very minor belt buckle wear on the back of the guitar. Housed in a late 1960s Gibson black semi-hardshell case with red 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).