When Green Day was still an underground punk band in the early ’90s, not yet selling out arenas and topping charts, but rather sleeping in vans and touring on a budget of pennies, Mike Dirnt went to grab his Peavey Patriot before a show in Minneapolis and found it in shambles. That left him with no bass to perform on, until his friend Scott Cook showed him his new Gibson Grabber G3, which Dirnt immediately fell in love with. Getting Cook to sell it to him in installments, Dirnt now had an instrument that would become his signature sound and stamp his sonic DNA on classic Green Day albums Kerplunk (1991), Dookie (1994), and Insomniac (1995). 

To this day, Dirnt has kept that exact bass in his playing arsenal, taking it on the road for every Green Day tour and busting it out for songs from their early catalog. But in 2023 rumors begin swirling around the bass world that Gibson would be reintroducing the Grabber G3 under their Epiphone brand, which was somewhat confirmed by Dirnt’s use of them during two years of touring without any explanation. In mid-November, Epiphone made the announcement that Dirnt’s signature Grabber would be hitting the market, which made the world of low end rush to get their hands on one as quickly as possible.

For those elitists who scoff at the Epiphone logo on the headstock instead of Gibson’s, fear not. The bass was crafted by both parties, boasting Gibson USA pickups, a double-cutaway maple body, and a 34-inch scale three-piece maple neck. Depending on the finish, players can choose between an ebony (Silverburst) or maple (Natural) fretboard, each featuring dot inlays and 20 medium-jumbo frets. The string-through body is set with a Leo Quann Badass II bridge, and Dirnt even insisted on packaging with an extra truss plate so that you can customize yours with your own design.

We caught up with Dirnt to talk shop about his new signature build and to learn how hands on he got in the process of seeing his dream bass come to life.

This bass has been rumored for a long time, and you’d been seen playing them live. How does it feel to final have these signature basses out?

It’s so exciting for me, as you can see, I’m holding one in my hands right now. They just killed it. When we first started in on this, I was told that they couldn’t do it under the Gibson brand because they don’t do bolt-on necks for basses. Epiphone handles all of that now. But I love that Gibson built the pickups for these and all of the little details that matter. I do see some people saying that $1300 for an Epiphone is too much and I say they need to put it in their hands first, you have no idea. This thing is built world class. It is just phenomenal. I put it through the ringer for two years onstage, in the rain, in the sun, in the humidity, through travel, everything, and it just sounds better than ever. It’s built so solidly.

This model was inspired by your original Gibson Grabber G3. What drew you to that bass in the first place?

I had my original Gibson G3 when I was a teenager and just never put it down. I got it when I was 18 and I played it constantly from that point on. At one point Tré pushed my amps over on top of it, and it broke the headstock. Another time he tried to spare my bass from that happening again by pushing my amps to the side but it accidentally broke the neck. So clearly it went through some shit. Every individual Grabber was different back in the day and it was a little hit or miss, so it was hard to replicate that particular one. Some were made of maple and some were made of bass wood, which I know because I smashed one onstage during one of the worst shows of my life. It broke into a ton of little wood cubes!

How hands on were you in the process of coming up with this model?

Very. I’ve got to give credit to (Green Day guitar and bass tech) Bill Schneider who helped me keep this instrument true to the original tone and feel. We got lucky with a few things. We threw an ebony fingerboard on one of the models and it’s very hard, so you get the punch of maple, but it’s buttery and has a buttery feel. It doesn’t get sticky like it can get sometimes on a dry rosewood board. You get a little lateral fatigue when it’s sticky like that, especially during a sweaty humid show. The maple fingerboard model is super hard, too, and punchy sounding.

With the pickups, they took apart and analyzed my old ones and even looked at the Bartolini I had swapped in after my bridge pickup broke while we were on tour in Europe in the ’90s. The basses are strung through the body and we added a Leo Quan Badass Bridge II. That bridge actually fits the bass better. The original ashtray standard bridge would sort of max out, but this one feels better scale-wise. The neck has a little narrowness from its C-profile, but it’s not like a Jazz Bass. It splits the difference between a Grabber and a Fender and it feels perfect. The bass probably weighs about 8-9 lbs, but it’s worth the weight. And it’s very well balanced, which puts me in a more advantageous playing position.

In addition to all the specs, I’m a car guy and I used to always look for a radio delete plate for my cars. So for these basses I threw in a delete plate for the truss rod cover. You can take the original off and make your own; carve your name in or leave it blank. The original has my name on it, but I wanted to give you the option to do whatever you wanted on it.

How do you usually dial these basses in when you play them live?

I’m kind of a purist. I want the basses to sound through an amp like they do acoustically. If I like it acoustically and it resonates loudly and then it sounds like that amplified, with everything on the amp set at midnight, then that’s my tone. I play the basses wide open, with the master volume and master tone knobs all the way up. And I keep the three-way pickup selector toggle in the middle because I like all three pickups on. Then I take a little piece of duct tape and put it on the toggle so that it doesn’t go into other positions when I’m rocking around. I like to keep my settings simple so I don’t have to think about them. That’s why I love this bass, because I can just set it and forget it. I play this with a little bit of grit and sometimes I hit an overdrive, and that’s it. I just want the natural sound of this bass coming through.

You have a very distinct pick attack. How do these basses respond to it?

Amazingly well. These are perfect for playing with your fingers, slapping, tapping, anything you want to do, but I mainly play with a pick and they are a beast for that. When I play I get these little pops within the bass line, like Ross Valory gets with Journey. You can hear those nuances on this bass. Overall you get a lot of punch, which comes from the tension of the string, but it also cuts through the wall of guitars and drums beatifully. I’m playing alongside a loud ass drummer who bangs the hell out of his kit with huge toms, and a loud ass guitarist who cranks it up and rips, and still my bass cuts through everything. Our sound guy raves about how good these basses sound. They make his job a lot easier.

The natural finish is recognizable on the maple fingerboard model, but the Silverburst finish on the ebony board model is something entirely new. How did that come about?

I’ve been playing with Antigua finishes for a while and I’ve been painting my basses for many years. Sometimes it’s faster and easier to do the thing yourself, ya know? I set out to find something that will be distinct, that I haven’t seen on a lot of basses, and after trying a lot of options I just loved the Silverburst look, so we went with it. I love how it looks with the ebony fretboard!

You’ve been playing these basses live for a couple of years, which led to much speculation and hype about them. Were you getting a lot questions about them?

I told a few people in the vault about it, like yourself, but until you say it’s coming out, it’s not real. A lot of this came about from Bill Schneider’s relationship with Gibson and Fender. I always had this back channel of communication with everybody, and I’ve talked about these basses so much with them over the years. I always said if we’re ever going to make them, we have to do it right. That was my only stipulation. It wasn’t the version they were putting out in the early-’90s, it isn’t a sliding pickup Grabber, none of the other shit. We had to build a quality instrument that sounds good every time. I don’t need more garbage, and honestly, I didn’t need a shitty version of this. I have plenty of basses to play already. Whatever money I make on this thing I’m giving to music charities. I don’t need anything else. I just want to spread the gospel on this thing and let others have as much joy playing it as I do.

How similar is this model to your original Gibson basses?

Honestly, they are identical twins. And that reminds me that I owe Billy Corgan a bass because when that drone came into the stadium last year (Comerica Park in Detroit, 2024) and we had to rush offstage, I had to toss my G3 onto a road case and it started to slide off and Billy dove and saved it, but one of the pickups broke. So other than that, these sound identical. As I’ve started playing these more and more, I realized I didn’t have to keep hammering on my original G3 anymore. I can finally let it rest. I’ve had two re-fretting jobs on the original, and it’s so beat up. Everybody thinks that Billy pulls out a backup Blue guitar (Fernandes Stratocaster), he’s been playing the exact same guitar for his entire life. Everyone on that stage is hyper aware of it! It’s also communicable at this time [laughs]. I’ve seen him change the bridge and stickers over and over and that thing has a lot of DNA in it. Same with my bass.

How happy are you overall with the creation and execution of these basses?

I couldn’t be happier with them. If you get one and you don’t like the sound and it’s not your thing, that’s fine, but you can’t poke a hole in these things. If your problem is that it says Epiphone on the headstock, then you’re too hung up on name brands. They’ve been making exceptional instruments for as long as I can remember. They worked as one company [Epiphone and Gibson] on this. They were both involved in every meeting and every step, and you can feel it and hear it. It’s not lost on me how spoiled I am to have a Gibson and a Fender signature model. That’s some unicorn shit right there!

Get your tickets to see Mike Dirnt perform and accept the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2026 Bass Magazine Awards. Tickets available: HERE

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