Not about a Guild bass, but...

Minnesota Flats

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...I have the impression that many here are interested in semi-hollow basses in general (via their love for Starfires) so I thought this bit of trivia might be of interest. When I stumbled across the following, old video, I was struck more by the somewhat unusual choice of instruments than by the music, itself. The Guitars appear to be Gretsch Corvettes and I initially thought the bass is a Gibson EB2 until I noticed the "banjo" tuners. What is it, I thought? Some sort of Framus, Vox or Hofner, Gibby-style knock-off? (Non-sequitor: note also that the drummer has a prosthetic left hand.)



Turns out that the very earlist EB2 did, in fact, have banjo tuners installed at the factory (see link below). They must not have done this for very long, because I've never seen one of these before. On T-Birds and other early Gibson solid body basses? Yes. But never on an EB:

 

mellowgerman

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Yup! Those early EB2's had banjo tuners. I guess it's sort of in-line with upright tuners, how they stick out toward the back, though they are of course mounted on the sides.
Wonder how well they held tune?
 

Minnesota Flats

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Did they ever get used on Gibson T-Bird bases? I know that they've been mounted on some of the T-Bird 6-string guitars.
 

mellowgerman

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I've never seen them used on a T-Bird bass. Pretty sure they always got the big clover style tuners like Fenders and then switched to Gotoh style tuners when they started reissuing them in the 80's(?)
The earliest 1958 explorer basses however did have banjo tuners too! Here's a blog page on them: https://uniqueguitar.blogspot.com/2014/07/
 

Minnesota Flats

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Interesting. I didn't realize that that design went back that far. I wasn't even aware of it at all till Clapton played an Explorer guitar for a bit back when he was endorsing Musicman amplifiers (late 70s? early 80s?). Interesting that Lonnie Mack's bass player had one: makes a great looking stage partner for Mack's Flying V. Futuristic, baby!

Thanks for the link!
 

Minnesota Flats

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You can really see the banjo tuners pretty clearly starting at about 0:50 of this video. I believe the the cheerleaders were rushed directly to the studio and onto the stage just as soon as the football game ended...

 
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