73fg4001 arrived

marc61 · Post by **marc61** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 4:03 pm

I'll put up pictures over the weekend(if I can maket them small enough).I brought it in to my luthier. He's shimming up the nut a bit. He mentioned that one of the tops on the truss rods appeared slightly bent but, that he didn't think it was a problem.

I will say this, the guy's not fond of Ricks but was all over this.He repairs dozens and dozens of guitars every week and said he hasn't seen the old checkerboard binding in a long time.

A friend of mine who's played all sorts of guitars and basses over the years saw it and seemed excited by it as well. He made a good point. If you compare it to Fenders and other basses of the day, it's really undervalued.May be another reason why we're seeing such a recent hike in prices.

jmh · Post by **jmh** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 7:52 pm

From my experience, the truss rod tops get easily bent when someone uses those small wrenches. I bought the correct one from Rickenbacker directly, and no more bent tops.

marc61 · Post by **marc61** » Sat Mar 20, 2004 10:44 am

Ricky came home today for his first night in his new home.Still some problems. He needs the bridge part with the saddles. There's nothing holding them in. There's also no mute(no biggie). The toaster sounds great,better than my V63. The treble pickup is another story. Not much output. If it has to be rewound, then I'll just wait for the Lollar guitar horseshoe and slap that in.

It's a fun bass to play.Neck is just to my liking. I took some nice pictures but, don't know how to make them small enough to post. If someone else does,let me know and I'll e-mail them right over.

ken_james · Post by **ken_james** » Sat Mar 20, 2004 11:07 am

Marc, you have mail

marc61 · Post by **marc61** » Sat Mar 20, 2004 11:19 am

To my Yahoo address? I just checked.

bassman · Post by **bassman** » Sat Mar 20, 2004 11:59 am

If you're not happy with the output of your bridge pickup, try bypassing the .0047 cap. You will notice a big difference in the output of the pickup once you've made this very minor modification.
Simply get a piece of #5 thin shielded wire (approx 4"-5") solder one end to the bridge volume pot and the other to the bridge pickup side of the toggle switch and you're done. If you don't like the sound of your bass with it, simply remove the wire.
This should take you 5 minutes total.
When I bought my 73 4001, this was the first thing that I did to it.

ken_james · Post by **ken_james** » Sat Mar 20, 2004 12:07 pm

duplicate post

ken_james · Post by **ken_james** » Sat Mar 20, 2004 12:07 pm

I guess it didn't go through, anyway email me the pics at dedgoat AT cox.net and I'll resize them for you.

marc61 · Post by **marc61** » Sat Mar 20, 2004 2:16 pm

Thanks Kendall. I just sent them from another e-mail address. Yahoo has it's limits.

Jon, sounds simple enough that I can handle it. Will let you know how I make out.

marc61 · Post by **marc61** » Sun Mar 21, 2004 2:01 am

Kendall, I've tried e-mailing you the pictures three times. For some reason it keeps getting returned.

There's gotta be a way I can shrink these down myself.

marc61 · Post by **marc61** » Sun Mar 21, 2004 2:18 am

Well, I did figure out a way to post them here:

http://www.msnusers.com/Rickenpictures/shoebox.msnw

squirebass · Post by **squirebass** » Sun Mar 21, 2004 3:37 am

Hey Marc, I don't see a '73 fg in there, although I liked the pics of the other basses and your old band. How come you only owned the 4008 for five minutes? I've never owned a bass for such a short time, especially not a Rickenbacker!

marc61 · Post by **marc61** » Sun Mar 21, 2004 4:15 am

For some reason, the photos are not in an album.When you see the list of albums, right above it shows a link to the photos(it says 7 photos). Click on that and you'll find'em.

As far as the 8 string, I grabbed it because I knew the guy was selling it cheap. When I got it, I realized that I wasn't ready for it. I needed this FG and I still want a project before I get into multi-strings.

Mike Parks should have it by now.

ken_james · Post by **ken_james** » Sun Mar 21, 2004 5:02 am

Marc,
It looks to be in really good shape, the FG is killer, how does it sound?

marc61 · Post by **marc61** » Sun Mar 21, 2004 5:22 am

It really sounds great. I'm going to try Jon's "hotwire" technique to get more output from the treble pickup. Other than that, I need to replace the saddles on the bridge. there's no screws holding them in place and it causes a little buzzing.

Bass is very playable in it's current condition however.