Music videos that feature EB0 to EB4 and SG variant basses...

[Dave W]

If that's a 59/60 EB-0, it's been modified in the cutaway and horns.

[Granny Gremlin]

How can you tell - the dude never steps into the light.  There was one spot where I could see the horns; looked too close to tell.

[Basvarken]

Definitely an LP Jr DC shaped EB-0.

From the same show. Better view on the EB-0

[Dave W]

Definitely an LP Jr DC shaped EB-0.

From the same show. Better view on the EB-0

I don't think so. There's no clean sweep of the curve, the horns aren't right, and the neck pickup isn't as big as the mudbucker but there's no evidence of the cavity being larger.

[doombass]

Rudy Sarzo jamming Crazy Train on an EB-3 with Phil X (they speak fondly of that bass):



Here he switches to an EB:

[Basvarken]

The sound of that EB befits the song Paranoid perfectly. Makes me wonder if Geezer Butler used an EB in the studio for the original recording?

[westen44]

Rudy Sarzo is on the cover of the February Bass Player, although at this point the March issue may already be out.  I bought it several weeks ago, but still haven't had a chance to look at it very much. 

[Dave W]

That original EB/EB-1 sounds great.

[uwe]

Mine sounds a good deal brighter/more middish, not as subwoofy. The way this thing sounds, it might as well be a 69/70 RI with the classic mudbucker. But maybe they dialed it that way because they didn't know any better.

This is more like it ...



And Bob Daisley played his EB-3 on Crazy Train with a pick (he plays with a pick nearly all the time, the ability to do that got him his first decent job with Rainbow) - which made all the difference and on a short scale possibly more so than on a long scale - thru a Marshall with heavy distortion.



Decades later, when Ozzy Sharon had the bass parts replaced, it sounded like this, courtesy of the guy who is now doing service with Hetfield & Co.:



Both tracks have their charming and human inaccuracies, I don't want to turn this into a slagging match between the two Roberts, they are both excellent players. For my taste, the bass sound it too distorted in both cases. I know it's uncool, but I don't like distorted bass!

[doombass]

I have no problem with Trujillo's and Bordin's playing (they're both fine musicians) but I'm still glad I bought the two first CD remastered Ozzy albums before the overdubs were made. As much as they tried to replicate the bass and drums it's not the same, but most of all it was such a douchey deed appearently out of greed and/or grudge held by the manager/wife.

[4stringer77]

Considering the bass alone is leaving much out of the equation. Jack was playing through a Hartke with his typical upside down smiley face EQ. Unless Jack's tech modded the hell out of the pickup or electronics, if you plugged that same EB in to a Fender bassman or a Sunn 200s or 2000s and cranked it up, you'll most likely hear mudd city. Rudy was playing through some sort of solid state Fender amp it seems which will just amplify the low end if it isn't cut from the eq and give you none of the pleasing overdrive a tube amp can provide. It's not distortion, it's overdrive and playing a vintage EB without it is like buying a Ferrari and never going faster than 55mph (88 kph).

[4stringer77]

I think people should know, if they shell out over $10,000 for a 1950s EB, they shouldn't expect it to sound like Jack's from the Royal Albert Hall. Here is something more realistic.

[Dave W]

The single coil EB/EB-1 doesn't sound like a mudbucker. Maybe it ought to -- same number of windings on the same form -- but it doesn't.

[4stringer77]

Admittedly, I've never played a first generation single coil EB. My impression from recordings is they're more alike than different. For example, Felix would have used his fifties EB on Leslie West's first solo album and that sounds much like the same tone as he got on subsequent  albums done with his reissue. The bass he used at Woodstock was also the 50s version and that brought the mud even before it started raining. Then again, Doug Lubhan got a much more defined sound from his EB than I would have expected on Doors tracks like "Strange Days". It also wouldn't be surprising if the variation in pickup winding times could be a contributing factor. It couldn't have been so precise a process in Kalamazoo.

[uwe]

 "... and that brought the mud even before it started raining ...".

  Brilliant!

The 50ies overwound single coil pup (let me tell you, it doesn't like neon light bulbs close by!) sounds a lot hoarser than the true mudbucker of the 69 RI and it doesn't have quite the subwoof might. My 50ies one used to belong to Pappalardi and he built a push/pull vol. control in it that alters the sound between the natural 50ies sound and something more akin to how a 69 RI would sound.