SB-400 heads up

[ajkula66]

I had my EB-0F for part of the same time as my EB-0L, the longer scale was noticeably clearer but had just as much boom.

EB-0F is one of the very few Gibson basses that I've never ever seen, let alone played and at the prices that they seem to command nowadays it will probably stay that way...

[Dave W]

EB-0F is one of the very few Gibson basses that I've never ever seen, let alone played and at the prices that they seem to command nowadays it will probably stay that way...

Mine wasn't cheap back in the 90s. No idea where it is now.

Grog has one. I believe Uwe has one too.

I've had the police come many times during band practices, but never when I'm just playing alone.  When it's just me, I usually don't turn up much.  That's a funny story, though, and it isn't hard for me at all to imagine how that happened.

Although that was at my old house, it's why my Mesa rig now resides in the basement.

[Grog]

Nowadays, when Gibson talks about reproducing original humbuckers, they talk about random windings & loose coils (MHS humbuckers). I never hear anybody talk about Mudbuckers in the same way but I think it was more pronounced in the larger bass pickup coils than it was in the guitar pickups. I have several EB basses with mudbuckers & they all sound a bit different. Most are a bit raspy, my 67 EB-2 is all low end smooth balls! That bass has invited the cops to a few gigs in the past. It smoked a few voice coils back in the day.................. The SB series is on the opposite end of the balls spectrum as the EB series.

[westen44]

Mine wasn't cheap back in the 90s. No idea where it is now.

Grog has one. I believe Uwe has one too.



Although that was at my old house, it's why my Mesa rig now resides in the basement.

It can be a drag living in a residential neighborhood where they expect you to be quiet.  There is a band, though, which plays Latino music across the alley that I'm a little surprised can get by with that.   But I haven't heard them in quite a while; so maybe somebody complained. 

[amptech]

EB-0F is one of the very few Gibson basses that I've never ever seen, let alone played and at the prices that they seem to command nowadays it will probably stay that way...

Got mine from a Denmark street shop for £500 in 2009 or something. But again, they thought someone had routed it to make room for extra batteries and put a large pickguard on to hide it. Ok, the original p/g was not there, but it was a non cracked headstock 1963 EB0F nonetheless. Still my best playing EB.

I almost bid on another one later, also listed as a 'hackjob EB0'. The fuzztone cct is easy to build if missing (if you want it..) So nothing's impossible. The two or three crazy prized on ebay have been auctioned again and again from Japanese sellers - but I don't think they will sell at that price.

I also think Jules tried to sell his a year back, good project at a good price. Maybe it's still up for sale?

[Grog]

With only 265 EB-0F's produced over 50 years ago, they must be getting scarce...........

[Dave W]

Nowadays, when Gibson talks about reproducing original humbuckers, they talk about random windings & loose coils (MHS humbuckers). I never hear anybody talk about Mudbuckers in the same way but I think it was more pronounced in the larger bass pickup coils than it was in the guitar pickups. I have several EB basses with mudbuckers & they all sound a bit different. Most are a bit raspy, my 67 EB-2 is all low end smooth balls! That bass has invited the cops to a few gigs in the past. It smoked a few voice coils back in the day.................. The SB series is on the opposite end of the balls spectrum as the EB series.

I don't think anything Gibson produces today is like a PAF in its materials, but the truth is that PAFs varied in tone quite a bit. You can't replicate things like random winding and coil tightness or looseness in a new pickup unless the those things were consistent in the originals, which were anything but consistent.

Likewise with the mudbuckers. Specs are very close over the years but they definitely don't all sound the same.

IIRC Uwe had one that sounded completely different and found that a single coil P-bass pickup had been stuffed under the chrome cover.

[uwe]

That's right, on my Newport! Clearest sounding mudbucker I ever had. Except that it really was/is a Seymour Duncan/Bartolini/DiMarzio/BassLines or something single coil lurking underneath that mudbucker cover. Talk about false pretenses! But it sounds good and I've kept it that way. It's like an orgasm being faked for you, it might not be the real thing, but the serious effort that went into it is still commendable!

Come to think of it, the LP Junior EB-0 (the TV yellow one to counter that notorious glare effect of old black & white TV ...)



you found me had (initially) a remarkably different sounding mudbucker as well, all middish and nicely overdriven. After years it turned out the pup winding was broke and when it failed to work anymore at all I had to get it repaired and now it sounds like any other mudbucker - sigh! Reminds me of Dusty Hill's beloved original Telecaster pup whose sound he loved so much and wanted replicated and no pup could match it until his luthier found out that it was damaged (and then proceeded to build similarly damaged custom pups for Dusty).

[Dave W]

I know someone who has one of these hidden under the chrome cover of his EB-3. Unless you're right up close, the empty screw holes in the cover aren't noticeable.

[ilan]

Now you are giving me GAS for an EB0 with a Ric toaster under the cover.

[Chris P.]

I once bougth a reissue Epiphone Rivoli. It had a good but not very well hidden neckbreak and it was dead cheap. Still got it, with a Darkstar in the neck position and a Duesenberg humbucker at the bridge.

When I bought it I plugged it in and I thought: yes, this is the sound I expected. I started looking at the mudbucker and I saw something strange under the holes. I removed the chrome cover and underneath it was a Seymour Duncan Jazz plckup, with the sides (plastic only) sawn off, to fit! because of the short scale, mahogany neck, set neck and body it still sounded as I expected! In the end a pickup pickups a sound and of course a good pickup makes a bass sound better, but the type of sound/character is really the bass.

I once had a bad, thin sounding USA Jazz Bass and even with a humbucker mounted under the chrome Jazz pickup cover, it sounded thin.
My reissue Mustang sounded just good and with a Nordstrand it sounds fuller and bigger and more as I hoped/wanted.

[Dave W]

Now you are giving me GAS for an EB0 with a Ric toaster under the cover.

Why not? Go for it!

If someone made a mudbucker sized cover with no polepiece holes, you could hide a lot of different pickup types under there.

A few months ago, a local repair guru told me he installed a TV Jones ThunderTron in a 60s EB-0 for a customer, but not under the chrome cover. He just made a new cover out of pickguard material and used the pickguard mount version of the ThunderTron. He said it doesn't look much different than any pickup with a mounting ring, and it sounded great.

[ilan]

If someone made a mudbucker sized cover with no polepiece holes, you could hide a lot of different pickup types under there.

Or you can cut the heads off 4 slot-head machine screws and then superglue the severed heads to the holes in a standard cover.

[Dave W]

Or you can cut the heads off 4 slot-head machine screws and then superglue the severed heads to the holes in a standard cover.

True. I guess it all depends on whether or not you want to fool people into thinking you have the world's first crystal clear mudbucker.

[ajkula66]

True. I guess it all depends on whether or not you want to fool people into thinking you have the world's first crystal clear mudbucker.

Speaking of "crystal clear mudbucker" I heard some clips of Sentell's "Unmudbucker" and was very intrigued. Looks crazy as well

http://www.sentellpickups.net/bass.html

Too bad that he only takes PayPal which is an absolute "no go" for me...