Here's a little more on the history of the Gibson EB1 Violin Bass
A little introduction to the history of the violin bass.
Asked about the make of the first violin bass of the world, many self-styled experts say immediately: "Gibson with the EB-1". Perhaps it's not the wrong answer but already the question is wrong if we don't define precisely what a violin bass exactly is. You don't have to saw through a violin body to find out that it's hollow. This hollowbody is part of the principles used for these instruments to generate their distinctive sound. So let's find out, which of the first violin basses really deserves this term.
Gibson EB-1
After World War II the onset of rock and roll music adamently demanded new musical instruments and as soon as Rickenbackers 'Frying Pan' turned into the first public available electric guitar, the double-bass men often had a problem to be heard in the mix.
While Leo Fender succeeded with his Telecaster guitar, he tried to expand this success by inventing his first Precision Bass, based on his experience with the Telecaster. Although his invention was geared towards jobless guitar players who should be able to accept job offers as bass players with the guitar-like instrument, he also hoped for acceptance by the double-bass players. But many of them hesitated to try this new way, mainly because they were not used to play some sort of 'guitar' which was hanging around their necks instead of playing it upright as they were used to all the years before. Thus, the sales of the Precision Bass didn't meet the expectations.
One of Fenders Competitors during these times was the successor of the 1918 departed Orville Gibson, who noticed the sluggish sales of the precision bass and decided to offer something to the market that could trick the mental refusal of the bass players. It's a fact, that Gibson already experimented with an electrical upright bass in 1938, but during WWII they didn't continue its developments and the two prototypes vanished in the storeroom. Remembering that project the company eventually came out with their own model of a sort of 'precision' bass (Fender had called it 'Precision' because it was the first fretted bass that should give guitarists a familiar feeling) but keeping the shape as close as possible to the well known double-bass. Needless to say that they had to make its body smaller as it first of all should be bearable for those willing to try the new way of bass playing.
So Gibson took a piece of mahogany, machined it to the shape of a common bowed instrument and gave it a four string neck, little shorter than the 'longscale' seen before from Fender. In order to attract also the old fashioned bass players, they attached an endpin that could be unscrewed and replaced by a pole, so the instrument could also be played upright. With painted f hole-fakes the downsized double-bass was called 'Gibson Electric Bass' and joined the scene in 1953, about two years after Fenders Precision Bass.
EB-1
1955
No one really can deny that a solid piece of wood, weighing 11,681lbs (5,3kg) and an attachable iron bar on its bottom has nothing to do with a fragile violin. The saw that left a violin-shape in the timber didn't hollow it out and therefore the result wasn't actually a violin-like body and therefore the instrument definitely wasn't a violin bass! Less important but perhaps worth mentioning is the fact, that a delicate hollow body would have been problematic with holding the upright stand. As far as I know, this is why only few attempts were made in this direction e.g. by Crown or Egmond/Lion using an end-to-end sustain block in the middle of the body that virtually eliminated the lightweight advantage.
Until 1958 Gibson unsucessfully tried to overtake Fender in bass sales with their Electric Bass but eventually the idea was discarded by introducing the new EB-2 type because the export sales for the heavy mahogany chunk had barely reached some hundred instruments. In the same year, not long before the production of the unfortunate 'Gibson Electric Bass' was abandoned, it was renamed to 'EB-1'. For more than 10 years the EB-1 was not produced until in the late sixties the first wave of nostalgia rerequested the instruments of the fifties. In 1969 Gibson gave the EB-1 a new chance, this time with a Humbucker, different tuners and bridge. But they judged the market wrong again, this time with an export rate that didn't reach the two digit range and the production was closed three years later in 1972.
Although the EB-1 nowadays has only a relevance for collectors, it was a target of copiers over the years, simply because Japanese guitar manufacturers copied nearly everything coming from a successful company. As a tribute that this ancestor of electric basses deserves, a collection of violin shaped solid bodied basses and EB-1 copies is also covered on this site. However the only official copy was the 1999 introduced EB-1 reissue model from Epiphone, even though this time it was again not the most successful instrument on the bass market.
Small photo of a 1955 model with the upright stand on this site;
history of the violin bass
thanks.
