They were prototypes at first and a few crept out, they even advertised them early on, inter alia a fretless one.
FlyGuitars: Did you have more than one Mahogany RD? Where is it now?
Ralphe Armstrong: No, just that one and a maple fretted one. I sold it years ago to Marion Hayden. She still has it today; she still plays it. She's an excellent musician. She also teaches at University of Michigan.
Go to Jules' excellent site for more:
http://www.flyguitars.com/interviews/ralpheArmstrong.phpThere were even Victory maho prototypes and remember that the Q-80ies and -90ies were after all nothing but Victory shape bodies made of maho rather than maple.
Whenever Gibson strayed away from maple, they would eventually return to it. But the Ripper/Grabber/G-3 era was their first attempt to get away from maho basses so they stuck with alder and maple bodies there for quite a while. In the early 70ies, maho wasn't considered that hot a construction wood, possibly because it is not that much of a looker and natural finish basses became en vogue around that time.
With the current modernistic EB basses, we're witnessing another non-maple phase, this time with swamp ash rather than alder or maple. But maho will return, you just wait.