Bob, I know where you are coming from, but your best bet might be to get a couple of HB-1 pickups and modify one of the 4001 or 4003 basses you own. 4004 basses are HARD to get!!!!!! The 4001/4003 already have the tone controls you need, and can be changed back to original pickups if you sell it and the money you save will pay for the HB-1 pickups. You would basically have a 4004 at a reduced cost, and the fancier fretboard with sharktooth inlays, and your familiar tone controls. Modifying a 4004 as you state will probably decrease it's resale value while costing you more than an already high priced 4004 to begin with. The back of the guitar would have to be routed for the extra pot, unless you threw away the selector switch (perfectly acceptable since you can roll off the pickup you don't want to use; it's the same as switching but slower). I have considered this mod myself, and it would make setting tone almost the same as on my OLP MM2 Stingray. This mod would be easily reversible when reselling, so save the switch.
If you want to buy the pots to make the change, consider the ALPS Blue Velvet pots available from Angela Instruments for $25 each. They are WAAAAYYY better than the pots that come standard in Rickenbackers, or just about any other guitar. The buttery smooth feel screams quality.
Still, if you got your hands on a good 4004, I doubt you would want to let it go. The lack of extraneous things........pickguards, pickup covers, bindings, and inlays is what gives it its appeal. The identical pickups give you two identical thumbrests, and you may find that is your best "tone control" feature after you nail your best basic tone. The 4004 is all about doing more with less.
I still say that something VERY similar to the 4004 is the Peavey Grind 4 NTB. It has the tone & volume control features 4003 owners like and two huge humbuckers. It is basically the import version of the Cirrus bass, and I have a music video where a guy plays a Cirrus bass and it is an awesome bass and the music reviews say the same thing. The Grind basses get great reviews also, and you can play one NOW while the 4004 search goes on. Living in Peru, you WILL most definitely search for a 4004 for some time unless you have a Genie that grants wishes. Ever notice that few 4004 owners are selling their basses? They are rare even on eBay, and even prime RIC dealers like Ed Roman or Mike Parks have practically no idea when they will see their next one. I sniped mine at the last minute on eBay, and the bidding was fast and furious. Really, my advice would be to grab a Grind bass now, then order a new 4004 (or search for a used 4004 if you feel lucky) and wait while you play the Grind bass. I am seriously considering ordering a Grind 4 NTB bass myself to save my 4004 from rough trips. It might fit in a RIC 4001/4003/4004 case, so you could save yourself $120 by not ordering a case. It does have a VERY long top horn though. I like the 24-fret NTB neck, and the Grind body has a J-bass bottom while the Cirrus body has a P-bass bottom. I like the Grind body better because it is a cross between a 4004 and J-bass body, plus humbuckers and a 2 up/2 down tuning key layout like on Rickenbackers. Really, there would be almost no problem switching between a Rickenbacker bass and a Peavey Grind bass. I think Peavey knew the Rickenbacker style was superior to the Fender style when they came out with the Cirrus and Grind series. The Rickenbacker influence IS obvious, while obviously NOT being a Rickenbacker, so I am thinking that Peavey is the first company to come close to a Rickenbacker bass without getting a lawsuit filed in the process. However, the Cirrus series is much costlier, so Rickenbacker will never lose a sale due to lower pricing. The Grind series is a different story.
Vintage VS Modern
Moderators: rickenbrother, ajish4
I once owned an old Peavey folded bass cab and an early model 150W solid state head, so I had a self imposed fine paid pre-emptively. 
Peavey sound quality has risen a lot since then, and their stuff is generally very reliable. An Ampeg SVT-810E cab costs $950, and a Peavey Pro 810 cab costs $1350, at Musician's Friend prices. The better Peavey amps and guitars are really very good. I wouldn't mind having an EVH Wolfgang either, and a 5150 to plug into. It's the range of gear that Peavey makes that amazes me. I was recently reading about the company and the factories it had scattered all over the place. Their website is huge. Too bad a lot of people tend to remember them by some of their cheaper and less distinguished gear. Marshall and Vox built some amps that were break-a-matics, but I never heard Peavey owners saying their Peavey amps were unreliable. Peavey gear is a lot more than guitars and amps, and few audio gear companies, if any, produce the range of gear that they do. I've been anticipating Peavey stereos, home theater gear, and big screen TV's to show up, and I'll not be surprised if it does. Would you rather have a Marshall TV if Marshall built TV's? I didn't think so.
I'll bet their BAM 210 combo is a really good little bass gig amp.
Peavey sound quality has risen a lot since then, and their stuff is generally very reliable. An Ampeg SVT-810E cab costs $950, and a Peavey Pro 810 cab costs $1350, at Musician's Friend prices. The better Peavey amps and guitars are really very good. I wouldn't mind having an EVH Wolfgang either, and a 5150 to plug into. It's the range of gear that Peavey makes that amazes me. I was recently reading about the company and the factories it had scattered all over the place. Their website is huge. Too bad a lot of people tend to remember them by some of their cheaper and less distinguished gear. Marshall and Vox built some amps that were break-a-matics, but I never heard Peavey owners saying their Peavey amps were unreliable. Peavey gear is a lot more than guitars and amps, and few audio gear companies, if any, produce the range of gear that they do. I've been anticipating Peavey stereos, home theater gear, and big screen TV's to show up, and I'll not be surprised if it does. Would you rather have a Marshall TV if Marshall built TV's? I didn't think so.
I'll bet their BAM 210 combo is a really good little bass gig amp.
Bob, maybe I should start spelling it "Peevie".
I assure you, I once owned a 1975 P-bass, and that s-curved neck was self-imposed fine enough. It was living proof that Fender employees once did acid on the job. Who else could spray on blonde paint and get a psychedelic ripple effect? Or drill screw holes off center with a drill press and jig? I have about 468 more P words to print before my fine is used up. It made my Peevie amp seem nice by comparison. I got about what I paid for them when I sold them, but I had to throw in a 2x15 Fender Bassman cab that had two junky Radio Shack guitar speakers in it. "Buzzfartman" would have been a better name for that cab. It ALSO made the Peevie amp seem nice by comparison. The Peevie never peeved any of its owners with any major breakdowns as far as I know. It probably sounded good in a disco band, and ended up in a country band the last I heard, still doing chest massages.
See Bob, Dano had some common sense and converted a Rick bass that he already had and got virtually a 4004 bass for very little additional scratch. That's a fine example of the Philco mod ethic. RIC doesn't mind selling you the 4004 pickups right now, but you gotta wait at least a year for a 4004 bass. I say convert your 4001 or 4003 that you already own, or find on the used market at a bargain price. What you MIGHT want to do, Bob, is just buy ONE HB-1 pickup and put it in the neck position (where it fits the best). That would give you the best features of the 4001/4003 and 4004 in a single bass. I doubt if many Rick slingers have that particular flavor of Rick bass. You could still get 4001 treble tone that the 4004 can't get, and also hit the audience like a big butt body slam from Rosie O'Donnell with that fat 4004 humbucker.
I assure you, I once owned a 1975 P-bass, and that s-curved neck was self-imposed fine enough. It was living proof that Fender employees once did acid on the job. Who else could spray on blonde paint and get a psychedelic ripple effect? Or drill screw holes off center with a drill press and jig? I have about 468 more P words to print before my fine is used up. It made my Peevie amp seem nice by comparison. I got about what I paid for them when I sold them, but I had to throw in a 2x15 Fender Bassman cab that had two junky Radio Shack guitar speakers in it. "Buzzfartman" would have been a better name for that cab. It ALSO made the Peevie amp seem nice by comparison. The Peevie never peeved any of its owners with any major breakdowns as far as I know. It probably sounded good in a disco band, and ended up in a country band the last I heard, still doing chest massages.
See Bob, Dano had some common sense and converted a Rick bass that he already had and got virtually a 4004 bass for very little additional scratch. That's a fine example of the Philco mod ethic. RIC doesn't mind selling you the 4004 pickups right now, but you gotta wait at least a year for a 4004 bass. I say convert your 4001 or 4003 that you already own, or find on the used market at a bargain price. What you MIGHT want to do, Bob, is just buy ONE HB-1 pickup and put it in the neck position (where it fits the best). That would give you the best features of the 4001/4003 and 4004 in a single bass. I doubt if many Rick slingers have that particular flavor of Rick bass. You could still get 4001 treble tone that the 4004 can't get, and also hit the audience like a big butt body slam from Rosie O'Donnell with that fat 4004 humbucker.
EEEWWWWW!-
dano
When I was contemplating buying my OLP MM2, several reviewers commented on the extremely powerful bottom end it has. Well, when listening to it alone, you might get that impression because of the single coil treble response you can dial in with the controls because it uses a split coil humbucker. When you switch to the 4004 bass however, you realize it just ain't so. The neck pickup on the 4004 is simply subterranean, like a subway train going by your house or something. It is so far away from the bridge that it is usually about half way between the bridge and the fret you are using. That emphasizes the note fundamental to the max while reducing overtones to the minimum. Most bass pickups have too much upper harmonic content on an open E string to make up for the loss of the fundamental, giving a psychoacoustic impression that the fundamental is equally loud. When played through a cab that is flat to nearly 40 Hz (most aren't), the rumble can be felt as much as heard, almost like an earthquake. If you adjust amp tone where the open E string sounds as loud as the higher notes, it is actually MUCH louder due to the falloff of human hearing at such low frequencies. You will truly "shake the house down", or so it seems. The 4004 is made for modern bass amps that really do go low, not those bass amps of years past that were guitar amps with slightly different speaker cabs and over emphasized the harmonics when playing the lowest octave. Even my mid 70's era Peavey 1x18 folded horn cab could not play an open E as loudly as an E one octave higher. You will never hear what a 4004 can do until you hook it up to a bass amp that is flat to at least 41 Hz.
The strange thing about the 4004 played through a system capable of good 40 Hz output is that the furniture will be rattling like crazy without the sound actually appearing to be all that loud.
A cheap $40 Radio Shack sound level meter and a test CD will tell you exactly what your system is putting out without your ears playing tricks on you. Your can test your PA system or bass amp with CD input this way also. Most pro sound reinforcement gear will sacrifice true low end for higher efficiency. My home stereo system is actually flat to 30 Hz, with useable output down to 25 Hz. It only has 87-89 dB efficiency, and that is the price you pay for lower bass extension. It will sound like it is weaker at 30 Hz to your ears, but the sound level meter tells the truth. If the test is done at a very high level, the apparent falloff at 30 Hz appears to be much less to your ears. This is what audiophiles mean by searching for the right playback level where the recording "snaps into focus". It's quite apparent with true audiophile gear that is linear across the musical spectrum and maintains that linearity at all volume levels. I hear it more with classical music, as it is played at a set playback level determined by the output of acoustic instruments. The double basses sound weak until the proper volume is reached. Beethoven doubled the number of double basses in some of his symphonies, so those are good places to check this effect. His symphonies were the first symphonies that really rocked, as any bass fan that listens to classical music knows. He said, "Bass is the basis of western music". He may have said it to justify his doubling of bass players, as the only people before him that kicked booty in the bass were the organ players like Bach. He was the first classical composer to become financially independent from public concerts attended by ticket buyers who were mostly NOT from the upper classes with preconceived notions of proper orchestral tone, and he knew that they wanted the joint to be rocking, or they wouldn't buy another ticket later and make him wealthier. There were lots of broken strings after one of his concerts, according to what I have read. The 7th Symphony, "Symphony of Rhythm", is the closest thing to a rock concert that the 19th century ever saw. Just listen to the last movement cranked up on your stereo. It doesn't "snap into focus" until the sound is quite loud, just like you would have heard at one of his live concerts. A lot of people who don't like Beethoven's music just never listened to it loud enough. When I finally learned how this effect worked, his music really grabbed me, and the neighbors wanted to grab me also.
There's no use buying a 4004 if you are going to castrate it by plugging it into something like an Avalon cab that is tuned to something like 63 Hz.
A cheap $40 Radio Shack sound level meter and a test CD will tell you exactly what your system is putting out without your ears playing tricks on you. Your can test your PA system or bass amp with CD input this way also. Most pro sound reinforcement gear will sacrifice true low end for higher efficiency. My home stereo system is actually flat to 30 Hz, with useable output down to 25 Hz. It only has 87-89 dB efficiency, and that is the price you pay for lower bass extension. It will sound like it is weaker at 30 Hz to your ears, but the sound level meter tells the truth. If the test is done at a very high level, the apparent falloff at 30 Hz appears to be much less to your ears. This is what audiophiles mean by searching for the right playback level where the recording "snaps into focus". It's quite apparent with true audiophile gear that is linear across the musical spectrum and maintains that linearity at all volume levels. I hear it more with classical music, as it is played at a set playback level determined by the output of acoustic instruments. The double basses sound weak until the proper volume is reached. Beethoven doubled the number of double basses in some of his symphonies, so those are good places to check this effect. His symphonies were the first symphonies that really rocked, as any bass fan that listens to classical music knows. He said, "Bass is the basis of western music". He may have said it to justify his doubling of bass players, as the only people before him that kicked booty in the bass were the organ players like Bach. He was the first classical composer to become financially independent from public concerts attended by ticket buyers who were mostly NOT from the upper classes with preconceived notions of proper orchestral tone, and he knew that they wanted the joint to be rocking, or they wouldn't buy another ticket later and make him wealthier. There were lots of broken strings after one of his concerts, according to what I have read. The 7th Symphony, "Symphony of Rhythm", is the closest thing to a rock concert that the 19th century ever saw. Just listen to the last movement cranked up on your stereo. It doesn't "snap into focus" until the sound is quite loud, just like you would have heard at one of his live concerts. A lot of people who don't like Beethoven's music just never listened to it loud enough. When I finally learned how this effect worked, his music really grabbed me, and the neighbors wanted to grab me also.
There's no use buying a 4004 if you are going to castrate it by plugging it into something like an Avalon cab that is tuned to something like 63 Hz.
Yeah, Phil and Dave,
That is why a bass amp needs lots of watts as I'm sure you know, for the loooow notes, the fundamentals. A guitar starts one octave up from a bass and look at the size and wattage of a guitar amp compared to a bass amp. To equalize the volume, you either have to get BIG or get a LOT of watts to compete with the guitars, especially if you like the bottom like I do, and I assume you guys too.
When I was a kid just starting out about the biggest thing you could get was a Dual Showman, and that was out of my league, as far as money went, and even those were nothing like the modern amps of today, and no I won't even mention which was the first of the modern amps that revolutionized bass amps in sound and volume, haha! (it wasn't an Acoustic or a Sunn though)
I have said this before but still believe it, that the 60's guys used to play way up on the neck because the amps back then simply couldn't reproduce the bottom octave very well loudly, they were underpowered, but sounded great on the 2nd octave, like a B-15 does. 30 watts goes a long way from around 80 Htz.
I was using two SVT cabs a few years ago, and brought my 71 bassman head to the gig with me as they also operated at 2 and 4 ohms like SVT heads. It sounded great on the higher notes and had adequate volume but the lower you went the muddier it got until below the low A it was just about unuseable, and then you just had mud. and with 16 ten inch speakers you know the distortion was ALL the amp, not the speakers, but if I just used the 2nd octave and up all the time it would have been fine.
I read somewhere once that a mid range sound needs something like 10 times the amount of watts to be heard the same distance, look at the size of a violin and the size af a double bass, and the violin is considerably louder. I know that the size is tuned to reinforce the frequency of the respective instruments, but to have equal volume as a violin, how big would the chamber in a double bass have to be for a 40 ft. long fundametal wave? the chamber in a violin is probably a full wave, how about a double bass, an eighth maybe?
I think if I ever do try the HB's I'll probably try both, and I just might, I like that nice smooth clear sound you can get from a humbucker for certan kinds of music, and I definitely like the bottom you can get from HB's
That is why a bass amp needs lots of watts as I'm sure you know, for the loooow notes, the fundamentals. A guitar starts one octave up from a bass and look at the size and wattage of a guitar amp compared to a bass amp. To equalize the volume, you either have to get BIG or get a LOT of watts to compete with the guitars, especially if you like the bottom like I do, and I assume you guys too.
When I was a kid just starting out about the biggest thing you could get was a Dual Showman, and that was out of my league, as far as money went, and even those were nothing like the modern amps of today, and no I won't even mention which was the first of the modern amps that revolutionized bass amps in sound and volume, haha! (it wasn't an Acoustic or a Sunn though)
I have said this before but still believe it, that the 60's guys used to play way up on the neck because the amps back then simply couldn't reproduce the bottom octave very well loudly, they were underpowered, but sounded great on the 2nd octave, like a B-15 does. 30 watts goes a long way from around 80 Htz.
I was using two SVT cabs a few years ago, and brought my 71 bassman head to the gig with me as they also operated at 2 and 4 ohms like SVT heads. It sounded great on the higher notes and had adequate volume but the lower you went the muddier it got until below the low A it was just about unuseable, and then you just had mud. and with 16 ten inch speakers you know the distortion was ALL the amp, not the speakers, but if I just used the 2nd octave and up all the time it would have been fine.
I read somewhere once that a mid range sound needs something like 10 times the amount of watts to be heard the same distance, look at the size of a violin and the size af a double bass, and the violin is considerably louder. I know that the size is tuned to reinforce the frequency of the respective instruments, but to have equal volume as a violin, how big would the chamber in a double bass have to be for a 40 ft. long fundametal wave? the chamber in a violin is probably a full wave, how about a double bass, an eighth maybe?
I think if I ever do try the HB's I'll probably try both, and I just might, I like that nice smooth clear sound you can get from a humbucker for certan kinds of music, and I definitely like the bottom you can get from HB's
Bob, wasn't that Dual Showman cab a 2x15 design, or was the Bassman cab a 2x15 design? I had a Fender 2x15 cab that Elvin Ericsson of Ericsson Steel Guitars of Clearbrook, Minnesota, sold me cheap back in 1977 (nice steel guitars, if you ever run across one. They were all hand made by Elvin in small quantities). It had no speakers in it, so I bought two 15" Radio Shack guitar speakers. They cost quite a bit more than I gave for the cab. I think the cab had no acoustic damping material in it when I got it, and it wasn't a very deep cab. It was supposed to look impressive if you were looking at it straight on from the audience. It wasn't braced very well either. In fact, my Peavey folded horn cab put it to shame in construction quality. The Peavey even had built-in wheels, and you rocked the cab backwards in order to roll it around. The Radio Shack speakers buzzed and farted when I drove the Fender cab with my 150W Peavey head, and the front and back of that Fender cab was fairly resonant due to lack of bracing. I called it a "Buzzfartman" cab, and it was rather useless for bass, but it would have been passable for guitar.......if you played in a northern Minnesota club with typically drunken and musically unsophisticated patrons. Up there, tuck-n-roll Kustom gear was what the fancy pants musicians used. Understand, Bob, this was a place where every other person had either seen, had their car stalled, or had been personally abducted by UFO aliens..........if you believed their stories. That Fender cab was A-OK to them, and my Peavey bass amp and Fender P-bass were some kind of exotic Cadillac quality music gear. You guys laugh at Peavey, but the guy that bought my Peavey amp was glad to get it. If he had been using nothing but cabs like that Fender "dual-whatever" P.O.S., I could actually understand why.
Also, Bob, I have an old music video of The Who in concert. Both Pete Townshend and John Entwistle were playing through multiple stacks of Hiwatt amps. They sounded rather good to me, given the limitatons of live concert sound and recording techniques of the day. I hear those Hiwatt amps were really built, WAAAYYYYY beyond what Marshall, Vox, Fender, and most others were building at the time. Point-to-point military spec wiring, 13-ply Baltic birch plywood cabs, Partridge transformers, and Fane speakers. Fane speakers are something you rarely hear about, considering all the flap that Celestion gets, but they look to be one hell of a lot better made speaker than a Celestion to me. Those Partridge transformers are so good that many a Hiwatt amp has been gutted by audiophiles that just wanted that huge output transformer (this is a problem with eBay Hiwatts, you are liable to get a gutted amp that has a lesser transformer, like a generic Hammond, installed). I hear that the Hiwatt guitar head made a better bass head than just about any other bass head of its day, other than an SVT. I'm not sure that there was much difference between the Hiwatt bass amps and guitar amps, other than the speaker cabs. Hiwatt made a 200W version. All I know, Pete and John were tearing it up with their stacks of Hiwatt amps. Those amps were seriously expensive on this side of the Big Pond back in the 70's. I hear they were very clean up to insane volume levels, and some kind of pedal was necessary to get distorted sounds like a Marshall. An amp for experts and connoisseurs that knew what they were doing.
Phil, the old Marshalls were the same, no master volumes, so you had to disort the output tubes, much better sound to my ears but as you put it, insanely loud, and I blew up a 100 watt hiwatt amp (guitar) I borrowed once with my two Sunn 2000S cabs, unbeknownst to me one of the speakers had excursed (like that one?) itself too much and one of the little wires pulled out of the cone, they were 16 ohm speakers wired in parallel for 8 ohms so one still worked, and I couldn't tell the difference, discerning musician that I was when I was twenty years old. Anyway, first my Marshall Major head went and then I borrowed a Hiwatt and that lasted about an hour, I don't remember what I ended up with but it worked.
The highwatt sounded terrible for bass but the impedance mismatch that eventually blew it up was probably responsible.
Both the dual showman and the bassman's were double 15's and yes they had hardly any bracing, they were ok with the 50 watt bassman head, and the dual showman was ok with the 85 watt showman head but they couldn't take serious power levels like today amps can put out. The showman cab was a little bigger than a bassman, and maybe a little deeper.
Actually the dual showman was a pretty good sounding amp, mine had JBL D-130's which were guitar speakers, then those rotted out (the surrounds) and I too put ratty radio shack 15's in mine, they sounded terrible and were much less efficient. I guess the voice coils were farther away from the magnet so they would last because the construction was .. well you know, radio shack construction.
I don't remember what Hiwatts cost here, but they were not real common, and I think The Who were probably responsible for their getting exposure over here.
And actually I have heard some Peaveys that sounded good, but the stigma, you know? haha
One last thing, a guitar player in my band tried my 200 watt Marshall Major for his guitar once, it sounded great but would peel the paint off the walls.
And I knew a guitar player who used an SVT a few times, he said it sounded great but burned out the speakers. Sounded like a big loud V4 and those were very very loud themselves, also a 100 watt Ampeg guitar head. The stones toured with all SVT's for the whole band for the "Get Your Ya Ya's Out!" album and tour. I think they each had three, at Altimont they have a wall of SVT's behind them. (no master volumes, 300 watts @ less than 2% distortion pushed to the distortion point, how many watts do you think the peaks were Phil? haha!
The highwatt sounded terrible for bass but the impedance mismatch that eventually blew it up was probably responsible.
Both the dual showman and the bassman's were double 15's and yes they had hardly any bracing, they were ok with the 50 watt bassman head, and the dual showman was ok with the 85 watt showman head but they couldn't take serious power levels like today amps can put out. The showman cab was a little bigger than a bassman, and maybe a little deeper.
Actually the dual showman was a pretty good sounding amp, mine had JBL D-130's which were guitar speakers, then those rotted out (the surrounds) and I too put ratty radio shack 15's in mine, they sounded terrible and were much less efficient. I guess the voice coils were farther away from the magnet so they would last because the construction was .. well you know, radio shack construction.
I don't remember what Hiwatts cost here, but they were not real common, and I think The Who were probably responsible for their getting exposure over here.
And actually I have heard some Peaveys that sounded good, but the stigma, you know? haha
One last thing, a guitar player in my band tried my 200 watt Marshall Major for his guitar once, it sounded great but would peel the paint off the walls.
And I knew a guitar player who used an SVT a few times, he said it sounded great but burned out the speakers. Sounded like a big loud V4 and those were very very loud themselves, also a 100 watt Ampeg guitar head. The stones toured with all SVT's for the whole band for the "Get Your Ya Ya's Out!" album and tour. I think they each had three, at Altimont they have a wall of SVT's behind them. (no master volumes, 300 watts @ less than 2% distortion pushed to the distortion point, how many watts do you think the peaks were Phil? haha!