![]() Early examples had a two-piece full-length neck, but by the end of the first year, a nine-layer laminated neck was employed for better strength.įive years before the Thunderbird, Gibson had committed a cosmetic blunder with the too-futuristic Flying V and Explorer guitars (at least one Explorer bass was built). Companions to the Firebird guitars, Thunderbirds featured neck-through construction with body sides glued to the neck block. Gibson opted to get into the full-scale electric bass market in earnest with the introduction of the redoubtable Thunderbird model in 1963. The two were normally short-scale, but were available in full-scale variants for a few years starting in ’69. The next solidbody Gibson bass was the ’59 EB-0, which would go through several cosmetic and electronic changes as it and a two-pickup EB-3 became Gibson’s mainstay electric basses in the ’60s. Only 546 were shipped before the instrument was discontinued in 1958, supplanted by the EB-2. Gibson’s response came in 1953 with the Electric Bass (its actual moniker), which was a short-scale (301?2″) mahogany-bodied, violin-shaped instrument with a telescopic end pin that allowed it to be played upright. Sure, it built a couple of electric uprights in the late 1930s and the semi-hollow EB-2 in ’58, but all too often its solidbody basses played catch-up with Fender instruments.įender introduced its full-scale (34″) solidbody Precision Bass in 1951, and it quickly caught on. In spite of its laudable history, the Gibson company’s solidbody electric basses have never been much of a factor in the market. 1965 Gibson Thunderbird bass, serial #263668. ![]()
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