c.1970 Pan Japanese EB-3 Clone Electric Bass Guitar

This is a really cool short-scale bass (30 1/2" scale) made in Japan, probably around 1965-1970 or so. Rumor has it that these are from the Matsumoku plant and they might as well be -- it's a nice-quality bass, definitely in the direct style of the Gibson EB-0 and EB-3 basses. It even has the same cherry finish.

My work on this was just a light cleaning and setup. I picked this up from a friend locally who's parting with some of his instrument collection. As a fan of short-scale basses, I'm pretty tempted by this one. It plays beautifully and has a good, wide-ranging tone to match. These always sound best to my ear with good flatwound strings on them but the roundwounds on it now sound just fine.

The body is a solid 2-piece hunk of Japanese ash in a cherry finish (yep, solid, not laminate like many "SG bass" copies) and the neck appears to be some sort of Asian-variant in the mahogany-ish family. The fretboard is a nice solid piece of rosewood and has a light radius to it. Action is perfect at 3/32" at the 12th with a good straight neck and working trussrod.

One of these tuners has a bent shaft but they all work well.

Real pearl dots in a nice rosewood board. The frets are all in great shape, too. I didn't even need to touch them except for polishing.

Pickups sound great -- one bridge, one neck.

One replacement volume knob. Aside from this, all the hardware is all original.

Nice easily adjustable bridge.

Bolt-on neck. The finish shows use-wear but is in pretty good shape.

The slightly contoured sides at the waist make this comfortable in the lap.