The Last Bass Outpost

I double checked my 1981 Replacement Parts Catalog. Both pickups in the guitar & the bass pickup have a part number of 13649. 

The new VG Price Guide is suppose to hit the bookstores today, it will be interesting to see how the current economic environment will effect the values of our collections. My RD Artist is about the heaviest bass I've ever had. One origional LP Bass that I picked up in a store once was the only Gibson bass that seemed heavier to me.
An Ovation Bass that was floating around a few years ago seemed to have been the heavyweight champion. 

There were three EB-0F's floating around this town about that time, two were at another local store before he died of a brain aneurism. I bought mine at his estate sale. It surfaced at several guitar shows for under $300 dollars before he bought it. I bought the handrest off of it & a few years later bought it & put it's handrest back on. I've never seen another around here. One year we had three Les Paul Signature Basses in town. I owned two of them, (traded one for a better one), I've never seen any more LP Sigs either.

It was in Willie's for about a year or so. After a lot of negotiating, I was able to swap the pickup cover with the one on my EB0-F. I also traded my 67 EB-2 pickguard, that had a cutaway for a handrest that was never installed, for the pickguard it had. It isn't very often a guitar shows up that is in rough enough shape to swap parts off of it. A few years latter it showed up at a guitar show in Elgin Ill, still had my parts on it. 

It could be refinished in Sparkling Burgandy. That finished was used at the time to cover up repaired cracks in the tops due to improper kiln drying of laminate wood. (I'm pretty sure anyway??) Regardless, it was an option at the time & even though it was to cover up a screw-up, those guitars are worth more in most cases than the ones that were done properly. 

Jules...........Did you ever get the red 20/20 in one piece? Are you digging it? I bought mine to pair off with a 1985 Gibson Futura, a neck through the body guitar similar to the Corvus. Both the 20/20 & the Futura/Corvus should have been headless guitars, Gibson marketing people got involved & the outcome was two of the most confusing models Gibson produced. The Corvus at least made it on Guitar Hero, maybe the 20/20 is next..........................

When I bought a NOS control plate to replace the broken one, I wanted to try to make it less likely to crack again. These are getting hard to come by & are quite expensive. Very few of these basses have survived without a nasty crack by the guitar jack. I made a .015 thick spring steel plate that is hardly visable when installed under the plate & stiffens it considerably. I have about a dozen extra ones & would be willing to send one to a few fellow Les Paul Triumph Bass owners who want to avoid cracking their contol plates. Any interest?

That's how I found this sight in the first place, Googling Gibson 20/20........... It took me a year to convince myself to buy it! It makes some of my other stuff look normal......