The Gibson EB-2 is an electricbass guitar model produced by the Gibson Guitar Corporation from 1958 to 1972, with a hiatus from 1962 to 1963. When production ceased in 1972, a total of 8017 instruments had been built, with 2102 of them being EB-2Ds.[1] Willie Moseley, in Vintage Guitar, referred to the bass guitar as possibly "Gibson's biggest bass invention", although it was not a great commercial success, and the Epiphone Rivoli branded version of the model may have sold more copies than the Gibson branded one.[2]
Description
Introduced in 1958, the EB-2 was the bass guitar equivalent of the popular Gibson ES-335. It featured a 335-style semi-hollow body, a short 30.5" scale neck and one large "Sidewinder" humbuckingpickup in the neck position. The electronics consisted of a single volume and tone knob. The EB-2N had natural finish, the EB-2 sunburst. The next year a "Baritone switch" was added, which enhanced or cut the bass frequencies, and later a string mute was added to the bridge.[2] By 1961 the original banjo-style tuners (with the pegs pointing backwards) were replaced by larger open gear tuners with the shaft and large flat buttons projecting from the side of the peghead at a 90-degree angle, which required pieces of wood (ears) to be glued to each side to make a wider peghead to accommodate a larger gear footptint and by 1965 cherry was a color option also.[3]
In 1966, the EB-2D was introduced, which added a mini-humbucker pickup in the bridge position (like the EB-3). Electronics included separate volume and tone controls and a 3-way switch to select the pickups, besides the "baritone" switch.[2][1]
Variants
In 2012 Gibson came out with a "Midtown Standard" bass, a semi-hollow bass loosely based on the EB-2D. Although cosmetically very alike, it supports a long-scale 34" neck, a solid mahogany body with routed tonechambers and a flat maple top, which is considerably smaller than the original 335-shape (somewhere between an ES-335 and a Les Paul shape) and different electronics.[4]
