Double Bass Gibson 3/4 upright...HELP ID

Its my understanding that Gibson took over Epiphone around 1954. So there were no pre-war Gibson basses. Gibson discontinued making upright basses in 1965 according to George Gruhn's Guide to Vintage Guitars. Gibson put out a BV student model in 1958 but I don't have any serial or model numbers to help you out. When Epiphone were making their basses the B-1 model had a dark cherry red sunburst finish with an ebonized fingerboard and tailpiece.
Thats about all I have in my archives. Maybe someone else can help you out with the serial numbers to get your bass pinpointed a little better as to the year.
Hope this helps a bit.

Martin Chapman.

I have a vague recollection of a Gibson electric bass circa 1930ish. But I could be wrong, I suppose.

-dh

I know a guy that has a blonde epiphone upright, but he's sort of disappeared from the planet so I can't get any more information.

Just to clarify my post....I was referring to upright basses all the way through.

Martin.

OK, I've done a bit of research on my recollection of the Gibson bass that I was referring to.

http://www.bassplayer.com/z2000/0001/cent1.shtml

Has the following item:

1938–40: Gibson electric upright. A hollowbody with a thick maple top, 42" scale, and frets filed flush to fingerboard.

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In a cached version of the Clevinger homepage, I found:

A photo of an electric upright bass designed by Lloyd Loar appears in a book, "The Gibson Story" by Julius Bellson. The Lloyd Loar bass is allegedly dated 1924 and is possibly the first electric double bass. The year 1924 however, has been disputed by Gibson's official historian Walter Carter. * For various reasons, Gibson did not see fit to put this bass into production. The bass used an electro-static pickup with sound problems common to such primitive pickups, like popping and scratching noises. Amplification of bass frequencies was as yet undeveloped, so there was no practical way of hearing the instrument anyway.

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I've been unsuccessful in locating an on-line picture of either the 1924 or 1938 basses. Not that it's likely that this is what the original poster had, but it is an interesting bit of history.

-dh (feeling pedantic)