EB-3 & EB-4 E string questions

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Until recently, I have never seen many Gibson basses in music stores and almost never anything older than 20 years vintage, but lately there have been a TON of them showing up locally. Guitar Satan has a Les Paul Special, a black Victory (with an awful crack at the neck joint), an EB-4 and even a couple of vintage Gretsch basses. On a recent trip to a shop in the trendy part of town, there were several, and I got to play a few that I have never encountered in the wild before. I LOVED the tone of both this EB-3 and this EB-4 but both of them had pathetic E strings. I expected it from the EB-4 (loved the long scale though), but even on EB-3 with the big Sidewinder, the tone was fat as hell, until the E string which was considerably weaker and thinner. My question: is that normal? I also played a Tele Bass and while the tone wasn't as nice, it had even output on all the strings. The test amp was a Phil Jones Briefcase, so it may be possible the big Gibson pickup was overloading the input and I was hearing the built in limiter?  The Fender Bullet bass exhibited the same problem.

They also had quite a few really nice 70's imports for great prices. I finally got to try one of those 32" scale Electra Les Paul copies that seem to infest eBay- nice bass.

[clankenstein]

the eb4l tone in its natural state has enough clean fat bass on the e string to soil yer undies.the only thing a bit weird about the balance of those pickups is the note  getting very quiet as you bend stings.i love my (modified)72 eb4l,fat maho body maple neck and all..the neck dimensions are perfect for my hands-hurrah! 2 point  bridge so it could be 1972?

[amptech]

I LOVED the tone of both this EB-3 and this EB-4 but both of them had pathetic E strings. I expected it from the EB-4 (loved the long scale though), but even on EB-3 with the big Sidewinder, the tone was fat as hell, until the E string which was considerably weaker and thinner. My question: is that normal?

I guess I can only speak from my experience with my own eb´s, but I don´t have any luthier experience and can´t explain it correctly:

I would say the answer is yes, BUT....

I pretty much solved my own 3 eb-bad e string- cases.
I have a ´65 eb6 (converted eb-0)  ´67 eb3 and a ´63 fuzztone. They all had weak E output. To begin with.

The ´65 was really bad, completely dead E, though original and stock all parts. It was beat up a bit, but I bought it to make an eb6 out of it anyway and that solved the problem pretty much. I wound a humbucker for the neck that mathched the string spacing, had the pole pieces mounted on an iron bar to reduce bending fade-outs, used a roller bridge, took great care making the nut with a clean takeoff point, and used .89 thomastiks- jazz round. (0.93 was fine, but 0.89 was better) Tried a set of chromes (.100 E) but then it was out of balance sound wise.

The ´67 was a bow, had a bad nut and a tilt problem with the bridge. A good setup and care taken in balancing the mudbucker poles (it did matter some) did the works here. Again, thomastiks (Jazz flats .93) but with Dáddario chromes .100 it was dull. It has fantastic vibrant playing quality, really rich and fast/easy playing. Using the mute slightly, it sounds like a double bass! The ´67 has a narrower nut and different neck angle- so it´s quite different than the older ones. Again, nut filing and string choice did the works.

The ´63 fuzz tone solves the E problem just with a flick of the switch
Nah, this one had one of them three point bridges installed. I filed and polished the saddles and checked the nut on this one too, but even a full setup left the E dead. I haven´t found the right stings for it, but I´m seeking the perfect roundwound set. I bought the mod bar for it,
and it helped a lot - but this axe is not quite there.

To sum up, approaching weak spots on the eb´s can be quite a task. I´d say that a careful setup and wise string choosing is a ticket to ride.
Buy a nut file set and some bone, really helps a lot with a good nut. But they certainly have personality, there aren´t two that´s exactly the same!

[exiledarchangel]

Is the problem audible on all the pickups or just on the mudbuckers? If that's the case, you can blame mudbuckers' narrow magnetic field. You might be able to extend it and capture that E string better by placing ferrous thingies (like bent nails or something) under its cover, where its magnets lie.

[Basvarken]

That would be the Nail-That-Tone mod





Personally I have never had any problem with the E string on my Epi Newport.

I recommend thicker strings for shortscale basses. 115 E string works great IMHO.

[dadagoboi]

I'd guess dead strings and the Phil Jones were the culprits.

It's not a problem with any of my mudbucker basses, '60, '65 and '67 EBOs and '67 EB2.  I generally use .045-.105 long scale strings on all basses, no matter the scale.  EB2 has chromes, EBOs rounds.

[godofthunder]

 I have always used Roto Sound RS66LD 45-104 standard gauge long scale even on shorties I find the E string very authoritative.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

They didn't have any other bass amps, so I may take one of my behemoths in there for demo and maybe trade if I don't die in the near future. The guy working the counter has been with them for ten or so years and was telling me that the owner has a hard time finding old bass amps and when he does, they're gone pretty quick. Despite what the specs on the Phil Jones are supposed to be, it's a strictly second octave amp. I had the graphic EQ flat except for a little bump in the low mids, but it's like most of Bose's subwoofers: most people think they're hearing bass because of the mids, but it's not really there. I figured on the Fenders with bolt-on necks, the more predominate first harmonics were helping with the illusion until I tried the Bullet Bass.

There are a lot more basses than what is shown on their website, and all of the 70's Fender P and J's sounded and played the way one would expect them to, but none of them had any true low end. The best sounding one of those was a walnut finished, but alder-bodied Precision. I'm not looking for a new bass, but those Gibbies are so different from anything I have now, they caught my interest. I only have two set-neck basses, my Epi Les Paul standard and the Waterstone 12'er. Truth be told, though, the Gibby LP at Guitar Satan has the boom AND feel I like, but they don't do any kind of realistic or fair trading and I'm broke. I don't like trading away anything anyway. I only buy amps and basses that I know will be keepers. The only things I've ever ditched were a Sunn 300T (which I hated) and a 60's US-made Epi 12 string guitar that got me a Marcus Miller.

[4stringer77]

Another tone suck can be the bridge. My shorties greatly benefited from extending the string length behind the saddles of the bridge, especially concerning the E string.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Is the problem audible on all the pickups or just on the mudbuckers? If that's the case, you can blame mudbuckers' narrow magnetic field. You might be able to extend it and capture that E string better by placing ferrous thingies (like bent nails or something) under its cover, where its magnets lie.

It was like that with all pickup selections on both basses. The E was probably 6-8 db, if not more, lower in output than the other strings. Playing up the neck didn't change it. Open A was way louder than fifth fret A on the E and it was that way for ALL the notes on the bottom strings.  All the other strings were even in output. The tone didn't really change, what little of it I could hear. I dig in really hard and the bottom string deficiency was majorly obvious because any time I would play a run, the string noise of the E vibrating acoustically would be louder than the amplified tone, but as soon as I went to a different string, there was electric sound. That's why I suspected the problem to be electronic. Even on the EB-3, the E string itself had plenty of vibration and body resonance.

[clankenstein]

mmmm on the eb4l there are actually 4 coils in there,one for each string, so i guess it is possible that the e string coil could be shorting internally or some other horror scenario.

[Dave W]

Here's the weird innards of an EB-4 pickup. Very narrow magnetic field. As Tony said, gets quiet if you bend much.

[uwe]

Not "much", a little is enough for the strangest tremolo effects as the tone resumes when the string swings back into the magnetic field!

[Pilgrim]

Let me guess....


"It's not a bug, it's a feature"...right? 

[Highlander]

The amazing thing is that someone actually thought it might be a good idea in the first place...