LeftyBassist.com

El Diablo Guitars in Minneapolis has this 73 Gibson EB-3 for sale for $3,999. Too rich for my blood, but holy smokes what a find. I'm almost positive I've seen this bass linked before either here or at reverb. Looks like it was a custom order.

http://www.eldiabloamps.com/1973-gibson ... ft-handed/

I'm gonna head over there on Wednesday to play this and hopefully that Fender American Deluxe Jazz I also posted here - I will report back with my experience!

Man, how beautiful is that!

Wow- it’s gleaming

I played the bass today at El Diablo and I thought I'd post some thoughts about my experience:

Pros:

-The bass is in great shape, with only minor cosmetic wear and some stickiness to the selector dial
-El Diablo did a great job with setup and the bass played very well - nice low action with no buzzing anywhere. It plays better than my '15 SG!
-The bridge, while not as good as the current Babicz bridges, is definitely an improvement on the awful bridge that came stock on most Gibsons of recent vintage
-Neck dive is not as prevalent as on my SG, possibly due to the cool cutouts in the headstock, and the bass is reasonably light
-When you fully lean into the mudbucker sound it is full of character and instantly recognizable
-Dude, just look at it

Cons:

-The EB-3, like the SG, is just not a very well designed or engineered instrument, especially compared to Fender's offerings. A lot of the design decisions on these instruments just completely baffle me. For instance...
-Pick one dial setting and stick with it because the volume disparity between the two pickups is so ridiculous that you basically have to tailor your rig to that single setting. The mudbucker was overdriving the amp I was using at low volume while the bridge pickup was like an asthmatic whisper during a rainstorm
-One of the selector dial's settings essentially cut all bass frequencies. Why? Only Gibson would know...
-The mudbucker pickup was mounted crooked (you can just see it in the pictures)
-The bridge cover is just large enough to make palm muting difficult
-The bass has two input jacks just to be mysterious

All in all, it's a typical Gibson bass. Striking, full of character, unique sound, badly designed, questionably put together. Like an old Fiat, it will make you fall in love and then repeatedly break your heart.

Man, this is the most accurate (and diplomatic) way to describe the suck factor of Gibson basses. Couldn't agree more. But damn this thing is nice to look at.

Totally agree! So so so well written! Thanks!

Ha ha, poetry

Brilliant! Also applies to Alfa Romeo...just like Fiat

Thanks for the review.

Have always suspected the aim was to help get that honky-clicky sound that carries perfectly over the very bass light speakers of radio & tv sets of the era.

This is a great looking bass, I was wondering about the switching system and looked at the Schematic. In so many ways this justifies that Leo Fender just got it right the first time however in all fairness to Gibson when I look at the list of folks who played this model it was the soundtrack of my teens.

I own a '69 P Bass, which is close enough in manufacture date to consider it a contemporary with the EB-3 and the differences in design and engineering are so enlightening. My P Bass plays and feels like it was made yesterday by skilled and experienced craftsmen, whereas the EB-3 plays and feels like the 45 year old relic that it is. The Fender is simple, light, balanced, and functional. The Gibson is hilariously dysfunctional in all the ways I already described. I've also had some experience playing a '62 P Bass along with an early 60's Hofner, and once again the 62 P Bass felt perfectly modern and playable whereas the Hofner felt like an antique to be looked at rather than an actual instrument to be played.

I think this all just demonstrates what a genius Leo Fender and his compatriots were, having designed not just one but four nearly perfect instruments so early in the lifetime of the electric guitar. I honestly believe those four instruments should be considered among the greatest engineering and design accomplishments in human history. It's almost mind-boggling how much they got right and how little they've had to change since their inception.

Does your magic four include the Strat and Tele as well? (I'm less of a guitar guy.)

Absolutely. They aren't quite as ubiquitous in the guitar world as the Precision and Jazz are in the bass world but they are still towering feats of engineering and design excellence.

I also want to qualify that you can't really fault some of these older bass makers for their design mistakes - it was the infancy of electric basses after all - but I think you absolutely can fault these same companies for not fixing those same mistakes decades later. It's absolutely inexcusable to me that my 2015 SG bass still suffers from terrible neck dive, came with a bridge where the E string saddle literally could not go far enough back to be properly intonated, still uses a proprietary tool to adjust the truss rod, and still has a distinct volume disparity between the bridge and neck pickups to the point where you can't switch between them during a gig.

So, did anyone succeed in making an SG type bass that meets requirements?
I had a Guild JS11 that was really just an alternative version of an EB3. It was very nice, but the humbuckers were too dull and RS66 ate the frets. that's the only things I remember bothering me about that one. It had that mid-range thing that means it always had a recognisable, audible and melodic voice, but you were never going to sound like Stanley Clarke unless the strings were brand new.
In my minds eye I see an EB3 with - 32" scale and put a heavy bridge right at the back end. Lightest possible headstock while keeping 2 per side tuners. Pair of MM type humbuckers. VT/VT controls with rotary selector switch. Mono/stereo output.