Gibson bass, body modification

bea

bea

AmBASSador of the F Clef
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... I am considering to install my spare modded Epiphone mudbucker into my gibson EB-11. Unfortunately the pickup is larger than the existing cavity. Here the idea:

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You can see that the mudbucker will still fit under the pickup cover. If i remove wood from both sides of the cavity, nothing will be visible from the outside, but maybe it is technically even better to leave the neck side alone, have the PU a bit closer toward the bridge and not to weaken the neck joint.

Technically not a problem, but i am hesitating because that's not a cheap bass but a Gibson. So that's more a political question:
would You if You were me?
 
You have been around here long enough to know there are several people who are going to scream " DO IT DO IT ".
Personally I would say guard the neck joint integrity above all else.
 
ChasFred said:
Personally I would say guard the neck joint integrity above all else.
Click to expand...

Which means, move the pickup a few mm away from the neck. Fill and redrill the holes. Glue some rosewood to the end of the fingerboard. Install fret 21.

It all depends on how an EB-11 might become, and what the value of an optically good and soundwise heavily improved EB-11 (or SG bass) might be.
 
Done. At least almost. The holes must be filled and drilled a little bit elsewhere. Tomorrow - doing it now, after midnight, might eventually wake up and disturb my neighbours.

I gave the cavity a little bit of cleanup after taking that picture. BTW: below You see the steel rod i usually suggest as an enhancement of those pickups. What You do not see are the neodymium magnets beneath the two ferrite magnets.

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That's a nice look'n bass. I've pretty much decided, if possible, I'd like my next bass to be a Gibson eb3 bass.
 
Done. From the outside it looks nearly as before. And the sound: well, that mudbucker is a bit darker than the one in the EB-3. Probably because i used more Iron. And the decoupling resistor needs to be twice as large. For whatever reason. Both pickups balance very well, tonally (no surprise), but also in their signal levels.

And the sound? Well, a thunderbucker/firebird-mini-like PU at the bridge, a bit further away than on the ancient EB-3, and a fat and powerful sounding sidewider in the neck, more punchy and a lot more lively than the original. That's how the old EB-3 should have been... and that's where i am now with the EB-11.
 
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