Help Required - What should I sell this Gibson EB0 Bass Guitar for?

jww

Hello,

Disclaimer: I'm not a bass player, I tried but sucked and gave up years ago.  I have an old Gibson EB0 bass and was wondering what I should sell it for.  A friend pointed me in the direction of this forum and said I would get good advice here.

Here are pictures of the guitar:

http://postimg.org/gallery/1w1cnkgc/b8069fe6/

Any advice gratefully received.

Cheers


Johnny

ICBM

Interesting… but difficult to value.

There are good things and bad things about it!

(Edit: might not be an EB-0L - looks like some short-scale ones had slotted heads too around the time this was made.)

Good: it's old, early 1970s although it's difficult to identify an exact year from Gibson's serial numbering at the time. The side-mounted jack probably puts it around '71 from pictures of other ones online. You could date it accurately from the control pots if any of them are original, but...

Bad: it's been very heavily modified. Neither pickup is original, they're both DiMarzios. If it's an EB-0 it should only have one pickup - the bridge one is an addition. Even the neck pickup would have required some routing to fit I think, and the pickguard has been replaced with a larger one that covers the original mounting. This also means that the control arrangement with four knobs and switch is not original and it has been drilled for the extra controls. If this is not the case and all the pots are original, then it's actually an EB-3 with the wrong truss rod cover! And would have had a bridge pickup - but the routing must still have been enlarged, the DiMarzio is bigger than the original.

It also has the least desirable version of Gibson bass bridge - this one is actually a very poor design and was never any good. The good news is that given the pickup mods, replacing it with a much better one would not devalue it any further.

The case is not original, obviously.

As to value, it's the sort of thing which is of little to no interest to typical vintage-guitar collectors, but might actually be very desirable to someone who wants a great player's vintage bass and isn't fussed about the originality. (Assuming it does actually play and sound good of course!) I'd be surprised if it's worth less than £500 or more than £1000 though.

Hope that helps!

jww

Hello ICBM,

Thank you very much for your detailed advice, I appreciate it very much. Didn't know any of that as I barely know which end is which on a guitar

One last question - Where would you recommend selling it? I was going to try ebay but have heard horror stories about selling items of value on there, so am a little nervous.

Cheers,

Johnny

UnclePsychosis

For selling, try Gumtree or there may be a Facebook "buy and sell music gear" page for your area. 

There is also the classified section over at basschat.co.uk. Listing there costs money but its by far the largest bass-specific website in the UK. You might want to ask over there for people's opinions on value too. 

ICBM

jww said:

Where would you recommend selling it? I was going to try ebay but have heard horror stories about selling items of value on there, so am a little nervous.

I would find a good local shop who will sell it for you on agency/commission. It might take a while but you will get the best price there - particularly if you can get it into someone's hands to actually *play*, before they start asking collector-type questions and trying to knock you down on price because of its originality issues and because they know you don't know that much about it.

I would not risk Ebay - too many potential problems even if you get a completed sale at a decent price. Shipping something like this is risky and expensive, and many couriers are less than honest about what their insurance covers. You aren't likely to get the best price either.

Gumtree locally is a possibility but you will probably get a lot of timewasters.

Or you could do worse than starting with the classifieds here, or on Basschat, as UnclePsychosis said - although bear in mind you may still have to ship it unless you can find someone near enough.

jww

Lovely, thank you ICBM and UnclePsychosis, I appreciate your advice very much. My friend was correct, this is a good forum, full of helpful and knowledgeable people. If I can reciprocate with arcade or pinball machine advice, please seek me out on the jamma+ forum (same username) and I'd be only too happy to help.

There is a music shop in town, so I'll pop along there and see if they can sell it for me - as a starter. Then try classifieds on here and Basschat if that doesn't work.  If I get any news, I'll find and update this thread.

Thanks once again and have a great rest of your week

Cheers,


Johnny

xmrchi

Lovely looking bass if you get a price I'd be interested in it... Incidentally I have guitars I would trade :-)