Rebuilding a mid-60s Gibson EB-0 bass

Sep 29, 2009

In September 2009, I bought an EB-0 in rough shape. The fretboard was sanded down & the finish had been stripped. I am not so sure about the finish being stripped. None of the important hardware appears to have been removed and reinstalled. Water beads on the surface of the wood. And the back of the neck appears to be finished

The fretboard has definitely been sanded down, and needs replacing. A luthier friend thinks that the fretboard was sanded down to the underlying neck. I am not so sure. You can see were the fret slots are, just barely. And unless Gibson slotted the fretboards after attaching them to the guitar, the underlying neck would not show them. And that approach does not make sense to me. Second, I would expect to see the truss rod if the fretboard were completely gone. Third, there seems to be a faint glue line on the neck, where the rosewood fretboard meets the mahogany neck.

You can see in the photo below how little of the original fret slotting is left.

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Regarding the refinish question. flyguitars has a number of pix of EB-0’s, and none of them have the plain wood headstock. They all appear black. Same on eBay.

The headstock veneer was trimmed around the inlays, and the removed. You can feel it by running your finger along it. And it would appear that the body was stripped & oiled. What kind of oil I don’t know. But I should be able to spray nitro over the oil. So clear nitro it will be.

It appears that none of the hardware was removed when the finish was stripped. So I would expect to find finish under the bridge & knobs. We shall see.

According to my luthier, we can put a new fretboard right on top of the existing fretboard. So I called LMII & ordered one. They don’t do a 30.5” scale, but can get to 30.29”, with a 12” radius. I can live with this.

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This is what it looks like fresh from the shipping box.

Before I start messing with it.

The scale is 30.5”.

20 frets, I think.

According to flyguitars, 20 frets is correct.

1.5” at the nut.

21 3/16” from the nut to the end of the fretboard.

The electronics work, just fine.

The bridge cover & mute are missing.

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