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.

Comments

nolageek said…
I have one of these but the bridge has been replaced. Do you know if there is an aftermarket Gibson style bridge that would fit in this bass' mounting holes?
Nick said…
have you tried allparts.com? I am also looking for a bone bridge for mine. i can't wait to get mine fixed.
THRILLHO said…
I have one of these too, but mine has a three-way pickup selector in place of the slider switches, and the neck plate has the "Steel Reinforced Neck" imprint. Most of the other SG/EB stlyed copies I see have the standard EB-style pickguard. This is the only other I've seen that matches mine so closely. The one I have is superb and in like-new condition, and I doubt I'll ever sell it.
Unknown said…
I just picked one up. Matches this one's exactly, even have all the original knobs. Plays and sounds great. I'm thinking I want to put some TV Jones thunder trons in it, and some new electronics, the tones don't seem to work. What exactly do the alert switches do? Mine don't do anything but turn the pickups on or off.