EB-2 factory "second"

[cmnjr]

i have a couple of EB-2's; the one in the best shape, which is superb, appears to be a factory second (gather Gibson did this for a while in the 60's and early 70's); it has a very prominent "2" pressed into the headstock just under the serial number
 
however - inside the body is a sticker which includes the serial number and states the bass to be authentic and guaranteed free of any defects
 
i can detect nothing at all about the guitar that would have made it a factory second
 
could the "2" mean something else?
if it is a factory second, would this be considered a major or minor flaw?
 
thanks,
cmnjr

[Gibson_Guy]

A VERY minor finish flaw, that now, after all these years is undetectable.

[Simon Langley]

I just purchased an EB-2 with this same marking but mine is above the serial number. Part of the serial number is under the A and D string tuners. One thing I noticed is that the serial number appears to be stamped before the finish is applied and the 2 after so I would assume it was some sort of finish flaw that made it a 2nd but at this point it is difficult to tell.

[jules]

Hi Simon

what year EB2 is it? What colour is it?

There were some interesting problems they were having with finishes around '66 or so.

[eb2]

They were having a lot of problems with the body laminates on the EB2 and the ES 335s.  They were splittling during the finishing process as the top layer as the wood got damp and sanded, and then settled over the feedback block.  Look for hairline cracks in the wood laminate along the area where the center block is inside, usually along the outside of the E and G strings between the mudbucker and the bridge.  They eventually started to do the Burgundy sparkle finish to cover that up, and have a first quality bass or guitar instead of a second.

For most Gibson seconds it is almost impossible to tell what the flaw was back then if it isn't obvious now.

[Simon Langley]

Mine is indeed a 1966 Model. Finished in cherry. No evidence of body cracks as described above. There is an unusual "smudge" on the lower front and binding that doesn't seem to be age wear or consistent with the type of wear that is on the rest of the bass. They only other abnormality that I can tell is that it has nickel plated tuners while the rest of the hardware is chrome plated.

[Simon Langley]

[jules]

Heres the quote about finish problems from Walter Carters 'Gibson Guitars - 100 years of an American icon' book

One day, while walking through the finishing department, (Stan) Rendall noticed that many ES-335s were being painted sparkling burgundy, which he calls a "camouflage" finish intended to cover flaws. "They were having problems with the wood checking", he explains "See, thats a laminated top and back, three pieces. You take the center piece and run it trough a gluer that puts glue on front and back. You then set it between two other pieces, crossbanding it - that's with the grain running one way on one side and the other piece going the opposite. You'd set that in a press, and the pressure would form the top . Well, the wood was checking, so they were filling those checks with wood filler and spraying the guitars sparkling burgundy. But some of those guitars went through finishing as much as seven times. We took an inventory, and there were about 2000 of them as works-in-progress.

I notified Chicago that we were no longer going to produce Electric Spanish guitars until we learned how to do it. We stripped off the parts we could salvage and then sawed up the guitars and put them in an incinerator. That cost a lot of money, probably a quarter-million dollars, but thats what we did. It took about six months until we could figure out what we were doing wrong. It was a moisture problem in the wood. So we put in a little kiln so that we could control it, and from then on we never had any problem with Electric Spanish guitars.