The Gibson Grabber was built to be a "working mans" bass with good tonal range and flexibility. The Grabber was built with a new type of bridge that was to help get rid of problems tuning the bass with any gauge strings the player was going to use.
The body was a solid double cutaway made from solid maple. The body had a length of 19-5/8 a width of 14-7/8 and a depth of 1-5/16 The body size was the same for both the Grabber and the Ripper.
The neck was also made from all maple. It was a long scale bass with only 20 frets and had black dot inlays. The heack stock was a pointy shape with chrome plated tuners and had a normal Gibson head stock. This was all then bolted onto the body.
The nut width was 1-5/8 The scale was 34-3/8 Neck pitch was 0° The head pitch was 14°
The Grabber had special a "Tune-O-Matic" bridge with the strings going through the body for better tone. It also came stock with a bridge cover that was just perfect for Gene.
The pickup was a single coil mounted on a slide. However it was not that adjustable. It only had 3 positions that you could put it in. But thoes 3 places each gave a different tone. With it close to the bridge you get a hard firmer sound, with it in closest to the neck you get a big round sound and with it in the midle you got a combo of the two.
The Grabber had one master tone control and one master volume control.
The Gibson Ripper was built to give players what the Grabber gave players but with more punch and power then the what the Grabber could give. The Ripper also had many more tonal options then the Grabber with its 2 super humbucking pickups and what Gibson called the "Q-system". The Ripper had such a wide range of tones it could produce I can't cover them here with out loosing my mind but if you really want the list of what it could do e mail me, my e mail link is on the botom of the front page of the site.
The Ripper as I said above had the same body shape and size of the Grabber. The Ripper was just like the Grabber size wise with the same number of frets and made from maple also. But the Ripper came with either a Ebony or regular maple finger board. The major thing that was different from the Grabber was the more advaced electronic system with a 4 way switch and the 2 humbucking non moveable pickups. The Ripper was also a set neck (the neck was glued onto the body) and it had a normal Gibson head stock.
Gibson gave Gene a dark red Grabber and a black Grabber and also gave him a black Ripper with a ebony finger board. Gene usaly used the Grabbers but mostly the black one. Why I don't know but I read that Gene liked the tone better then the other 2 basses. I have yet to see a picture of Gene playing the Ripper live.
