Epiphone EB-1 mods

[markseb1]

I've had this bass for a couple of years and had it set up pretty well with all of the original hardware, but there were a couple of things that bugged me. First, I could not get the action on the A string adjusted down to .125 inch like the other 3 and the G string was way to close to the edge of the neck from the 8th fret on towards the body. The neck was not aligned to the body well.

Another thing that bugged me was that the bridge was sitting very high off of the body, even with the action adjusted low at .125 inch.

I decided to replace the stock bridge with a Hipshot Supertone bridge made to be a direct fit for Gibson/Epi 3-point bridges. All was not as easy as expected, though. When I got the new bridge I realized that even though there was a 1/4 inch of adjustment for string height with the Supertone bridge, it wasn't going to be enough to get .125 inch action. I removed the neck and found that it was shimmed 1/16 inch under the heel at the factory for some reason which caused the stock bridge to be about 3/16" off of the body. I threw away the shim

and adjusted the neck in the pocket for better alignment with the body

I then installed the new bridge per the instructions. I did have to drill out both bolt holes slightly to get it to fit the Epi bridge screw spacing, but it was no big deal. Once installed I restrung the bass, set the neck relief at .015 inch at the 8th fret, adjusted the action to .125 inch for all strings (no fret buzz), set the intonation, and then adjusted the string spacing to equal distance between the strings.

The bass plays much better with increased sustain (at least a 50% improvement). The strings sit closer to the pickup and the sound is much better. I would highly recommend the Supertone bridge for any Epi/Gibson bass. My next project is a new pickup.