1969 Gibson EB-1 Fretless Electric Bass Guitar (Modded)

Yep, EB-1s are terribly cool. This one has definitely lived the rock-n-roll lifestyle, however, as it's been modified extensively and has oodles of wear and tear (both good and bad, but mostly good). These late-'60s EB-1s were basically clones of the earlier '50s Gibson EBs with this violin shape that were intended, when built, to mostly play upright on a very long endpin-post setup. That way you could play upright electric. You'd be legit in your small jazz group... maybe!

Traditionally these basses would be outfitted with only the standard Gibson giant "mudbucker" at the neck position, but this bass has had that pickup swapped for a DiMarzio, fully-adjustable version of the same and a Hi-A (pre-Bartolini-brand Bartolini) pickup at the bridge. Instead of a simple volume/tone setup, the controls have been swapped to a stacked volume/volume, mini-switch for parallel/series switching on the neck pickup, and a master tone switch. That gives you some more funky, Jazz Bass-like mwah tonal colorations as you play around with the settings.

This bass has also had all of its frets pulled and dark lines added to the board, making it fretless. It seems like side dots were either added later/made bigger or the board itself was re-radiused or leveled-down enough that the side dots are showing a bit on the face of the fretboard, too. There's also some good playwear from the strings, too, though the board itself is leveled-off nicely still and so it plays well.

For me, the fretless feel with the tighter radius to the neck, combined with the short scale and more "jazz fusion" controls depart far from the Gibson mold I'd expect this thing to have. It still feels like a Gibson and looks great in its odd-duck way, but it's become its own thing through the various mods it's seen over the years.

Work included: regluing a shallow hairline crack in the headstock, cleaning of the electronics and a new Switchcraft output jack added, general cleaning, and a good setup. The neck is straight, the truss rod works well, and it plays with spot-on 3/32" to hair-over 1/16" bass to treble action height at the 12th fret. The strings are some sort of massive flatwounds -- 105w-45w? That's normal, I know, for the average P-bass thumper, but most short scales of this sort tend to rock 95w-39w or something like that.

Scale length: 30 1/4"
Nut width: 1 1/2"
String spacing at nut: 1 3/16"
String spacing at saddle: 2 1/8"

Body length: 19"
Lower bout width: 11 1/4"
Upper bout width: 9 1/4"

Side depth at endpin: 1 3/4" - 2"

Body wood: mahogany
Neck wood: mahogany
Fretboard: rosewood

Neck shape: ~8-10" radius board with medium, C-shaped rear

Bridge: replacement Badass adjustable

Nut: synthetic

Condition notes: replaced pickups, replaced wiring harness, fretless-ized neck, replaced bridge (older Badass). There's a repaired hairline crack to the headstock running from the E to D tuner mounts on the back but it's shallow and good to go. I did that one up myself. There's tons of wear and tear on the body, it's missing some sort of pickguard and the original bridge cover, and the output jack plate is damaged at the edges (but still working). It's possible the nut is a replacement, too. I'm not sure.