The Gibson EB-2 is an electric bass guitar model produced by the

Gibson Guitar Corporation Gibson Brands, Inc. (formerly Gibson Guitar Corporation) is an American manufacturer of guitars, other musical instruments, and professional audio equipment from Kalamazoo, Michigan, and now based in Nashville, Tennessee. The company was forme ...

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-2D's. Willie Moseley, in ''

Vintage Guitar A vintage guitar is an older guitar usually sought after and maintained by avid collectors or musicians. The term may indicate either that an instrument is merely old, or that is sought after for its tonal quality, cosmetic appearance, or hist ...

'', referred to the bass guitar as possibly "Gibson's biggest bass invention", although it was not a great commercial success, and the

Epiphone Rivoli The Epiphone Rivoli was a semi-hollowbody electric bass guitar designed by Gibson and built by Epiphone in Kalamazoo, Michigan from 1959 until 1970. From 1993 until 1999, the model was reissued as a part of the Korean-Japanese Epiphone line. Orig ...

branded version of the model may have sold more copies than the Gibson branded one.

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"

humbucking Mains hum, electric hum, cycle hum, or power line hum is a sound associated with alternating current which is twice the frequency of the mains electricity. The fundamental frequency of this sound is usually double that of fundamental 50/60 Hz, '' ...

pickup 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. By 1961 the original banjo-style tuners (with the pegs pointing backwards) were replaced by regular tuners, and by 1965 cherry was a color option also. In 1966, the EB-2D was introduced, which added a

mini-humbucker The mini-humbucker is a humbucking guitar pickup (used in electric guitars). It was originally created by the Epiphone company. The mini-humbucker resembles a Gibson PAF humbucker, but is narrower in size and senses a shorter length of string vib ...

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.

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 Mahogany is a straight-grained, reddish-brown timber of three tropical hardwood species of the genus ''Swietenia'', indigenous to the AmericasBridgewater, Samuel (2012). ''A Natural History of Belize: Inside the Maya Forest''. Austin: Unive ...

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.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gibson EB-2 EB-2