Greetings to all here.
As a newbie, I hope you won't find too many of the questions I have silly, or be bored by the EB0's history.
My background: after high school (1975) I did a two-year diploma program in Jazz Performance at a local college. My main instruments were baritone and tenor sax, but I also played some electric bass. I was very, very poor, and took a horrible weekend gig, bassist in a C&W band. I managed mainly because the band played everything in one key - I didn't need to know very much bass technique. I used a borrowed Rickenbacker bass nicknamed "the Purple Smartie".
I also taught woodwinds at local music stores. One of my employers, come payday, pleaded no cash. Since he was a bit bent, I insisted on payment in kind if he couldn't pay cash. After haggling, I walked out with a 1962 Gibson EB0, s/n 86082. It was not in good shape - the finish was beaten up, and someone had "Improved" it by routing the body and installing a Fender Jazz Bass neck pickup at an angle, halfway between the original Gibson mudbucker and the bridge. (mudbucker had and has the black phenolic cover). The control wiring was a mishmash put together with friction tape and spit. The scratchplate and finger rest were missing. Surprisingly it played reasonably well.
About five years later, I got tired of looking at the horrible finish. So I stripped it - carefully - and found lovely mahogany under the grunge. Rather than the original Cherry, I used a slightly lighter redwood finish which allowed the grain to show, and topped it with a polyurethane clearcoat (What can I say - I was young, ignorant, and not rich).
By this time I was playing sax full time, on and off the road, and using the bass less and less. No more C&W bars! Eventually the EB0 sat in my closet for many years. After 14 years of playing full-time professionally, I decided I didn't want to be on the road at 50, and so got a Masters degree in electrical engineering while still playing in-town gigs and recording commercials, etc. playing sax.
Around 2005, some colleagues and I discovered a mutual interest in forming a garage band, largely influenced by Dire Straits. I extracted the EB0, and plugged in, only to discover that the Fender pickup was not operating. Checks showed the coil was an open-circuit. I rewired the single mudbucker, and played it with one pickup.
However, I hated the look of the empty body cavity where the JB pickup had lived, and also realized that in spite of my refinishing and the earlier butchery, it was still fair example of EB0. Nice wood, neck, action, original machine heads, no cracks, and the mudbucker thumped out the lows. Clearly, some TLC was warranted.
However, around that time a chronic illness forced me toward retirement on disabilty. I went on pension in 2010. This period interfered with the EB0 project (and everything else). After beginning to go stir-crazy - I couldn't play sax due to illness - I acquired a Squier Strat and practice amp. I've been slowly learning the rudiments of guitar playing, bartering lessons. Meanwhile, the EB0 is staring at me with hurt feelings.
I'd like to do some work on this bass, but I am not sure how or where to begin. Option 1 is to install a Jazz Bass neck pickup and try to put together some way of wiring it up with the mudbucker. Option 2 is to have a luthier plug the cavity (which is routed to the shape of the JB pickup, and therefore awkward), then strip the finish and respray to the original cherry red. Expense puts this in the future. Option 3 is a combination of #1 and refinishing. Option 4. is to make some kind of cover for the JB cavity, rewire the mudbucker controls to Gibson specs, and leave it there - butt ugly but working. I may also buy a replacement scratch plate, or make a custom one. Given that it's already been "altered", a custom scratchplate might not look out of place.
I am leaning toward starting with option #1, then later having it refinished by a professional luthier. However:
If I go the route of installing a JB pickup and revising the controls, what pickup to use? There are Chinese JB neck pickups on EBay for $9.00, and at the other end of the scale Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio, Lindy F., etc. Then, there's the actual control circuit. What circuit would work decently, given that the mudbucker has a DC resistance of 30 KOhms, and most JB pickups 6.5 - 7.5 kOhms. Some variant of EB3 wiring?
I realize that I've written a very long post with many questions, and as a newbie (and not much of a bass player), some are probably pretty obvious to the experts. But I've learned there are no stupid questions. I've researched EB0's, various pickups, and read everything I could find - and I still don't really know where or how to begin.
Any opinions welcome. Thanks,
Jim
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Scan of 1970 Epiphone guitar catalogue produced by Rosetti for the UK market. Undated but most likely from mid-late 1970, this was the first UK catalogue to show the new range of Japanese (Matsumoku) Epiphone guitars. Interestingly, these pages show the Epiphone solid bodies with a single-sided Fender-style headstock layout - a feature quickly replaced with a typical two-sided Epiphone headstock almost immediately. Epiphone electric guitars: 9520, 9525; bass guitars: 9521, 9526; acoustic guitars: 6730, 6830, 6834
Scan of 1971 Rosetti catalogue (UK) featuring guitars from from numerous manufacturers worldwide: guitars by Epiphone, Hagstrom, Levin, Hoyer, Egmond, Eros, Moridaira, Kiso-Suzuki, Schaller, and Tatra.
Scan of 1971 Selmer guitar catalogue showing the range of electric and acoustic guitars distributed by the company: guitars by Gibson, Yamaha, Selmer, Hofner and Suzuki. 1960s Selmer had always placed Hofner at the front end of their catalogues, no doubt these were the better sellers - but into the 1970s Hofner were slipping somewhat and only appear at the tail end of this publication, pride of place going to Gibson, and to a lesser extent Yamaha. In fact this is the last Selmer catalogue to include the many Hofner hollow bodies (Committee, President, Senator etc) that had defined the companies output for so many years - to be replaced in the 1972 catalogue by generic solid body 'copies' of Gibson and Fender models. A number of new Gibson models are included for the first time: the SG-100 and SG-200 six string guitars and the SB-300 and SB-400 basses.
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