[cornishmusic]

I like the idea of the longer neck on the EB4, but how does it compare soundwise with its 70's EB0 counterpart? - is the EB4 the poor relation?, just put together to attract a few long scale potential buyers?

I'm not sure the maple neck on the EB4 has quite the same sound as the EB0?

I would value your opinions!

[jules]

There were longscale EB basses (EB0L and EB3L) before the EB4L - and at the same time the EB4L was launched, all three models were given the maple neck.

The real difference is the pickup - rather than a typical EB humbucker you've got one like this. Nowhere near as fat and dubby.



Sales of EB0/3 basses were pretty good at the turn of the decade, largely due to Andy Fraser, Jack Bruce, etc - who used the bridge pickup on the EB3 a lot. The neck alone can be a bit muddy for a lot of people. The EB4L offered extra clarity, and a bit more tonal variation, a bit less rumble. In reality, the difference probably wasn't worth $50, and they were discontinued very quickly. I think most people would have paid an extra $15 still, and got themselves a Ripper.

June 73 Gibson US price list

$580 Les Paul Triumph
$525 Les Paul Signature
$465 EB3, EB3L
$450 L9-S Ripper
$435 EB-4L
$385 EB0, EB0L
$310 SB350, SB450

[guitarshark]

The EB-4L pickup is acually a compound pickup, as Jules' photo illustrates.
A seperate coil for each string. I owned one of these basses in '76 and it didn't work out for me since I occasionally bend strings or add some finger vibrato, and with this pickup, once you bend the string even slightly past the polepiece, the note is gone...Fender single coil Precision and Tele basses do the same thing, incidentally.
The EB-4L also has a 3-way Tele style blade switch that's connected to an inductor/capacitor network to provide different midrange responses, if I remmber right...don't recall that it did much.
I remember installing a DiMarzio Model One in an EB-4L (a nice dark walnut one!) for a friend a few years later.
Interesing to note is that a few years later Ovation blatantly ripped off the EB-4L's pickup design for their Magnum bass, the only real difference being the addition of trim pots for each coil in order to set the string to string volume balance. They stole the pickup design of a failed Gibson bass for their own destined-to-fail bass! Ah, the Seventies!

[Shaggy]

As a Magnum 1 owner I can confirm that the output-drop with string bending on solo neck pick-up occurs with that bass too!

Otherwise a nice fat, deep tone, and being all Honduras mahogany / set neck (set & bolted) / twin humbucker; quite "Gibson-esque" in tone.

[eb2]

I always felt the EB4L was an odd combo of too much and also too little too late. With less desirable 70s construction features.

Fun pup though. The possibilities with it were amazing. The pic shows how the two coils on each side were wired in series. With that terminal strip, and some multi-conductor wiring you could have each coil have independent controls, or wire them all in series, or parrallel pairs, etc. I bought one of them off ebay a couple of years back for future experimentation. Lucky for me I don't bend. Maybe some big magnetic washers around each pole screw under the cover....

[RUMBLEKAT]

Jules and I were testing his EB-4 tonight alongside various other Gibson basses through a Marshall Super bass head and I have to say I was impressed with the range of tones. If you back off the tone control you can get some good muddy tones reminiscent of the EB-O IMHO.

G

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[godofthunder59]

I found the EB4L totally useless. I bend strings a lot. I turned mine into a EB3 L