Columbus EB-3 Copy - First Impressions

Well, I had a bit of a play with the bass before I started taking bits off for clean up.

First impressions are good. The finish is translucent (and pretty bashed about, but it is 40-odd years old), which means obvious plywood is obvious, but overall the quality of the materials and workmanship isn't at all bad and the neck appears to have been carved from a single piece rather than two as is common on cheaper necks with angled headstocks. The fretboard is nice and smooth, all the (quite small, considering I'm used to medium jumbos) frets are in good nick and the binding is very well done. The bridge is some weird floating thingy that seems to be a hybrid of the old Gibson 2-point bridges and the original Danelectro bridges and the strings are bent almost at right angles between the bit where the ball ends anchor (which is quite sturdily fixed to the body) and the bridge itself. Oh, and it turns out the 'saddle' isn't fixed to the bridge and has been stamped out of some cheap, thin metal.

It's pretty comfortable to play sat on my knee (the guy kept the strap buttons, so I presume they must've been expensive ones for strap locks or something) and despite the deeeeeep neck pocket upper fret access isn't too much of a pain (though keeping this once I've put new strap buttons on it will necessitate relocating the one that was on the neck). Plugged in it gives a good sound... with the neck pickup. The bridge pickup is, frankly, useless on its own and sucks a lot of tone out of the thing when both are on. Don't know if this is because it's a rubbish pickup or if it just needs bringing closer to the strings, I'll find out when I've cleaned it up and put the strings back on! The volume and tone pots are not at all scratchy and all seem to work fine. Might replace the caps though, they've got those cheapo green ones at the moment. The switch is on its last legs, it has a lot of side-to-side movement and no longer 'clicks' when used so that'll need replacing too.

Next week I'll be doing the full clean up and replacing the nut as the current one is seriously damaged and I just happen to have a brass one lying around because of a parts order where I first got the wrong stuff, but then got the right stuff but was allowed to keep the wrong stuff. Win.