4004/2 v57 photo

[iiipopes]

The pickup placement reminds me a little of a Jazz Bass. I bet this one's a growler.

My son has a Squire J bass. I'll have to check. Jazz basses have a slightly longer scale, but IIRC, the 4002 pup placement, was intended to be modeled after the Jazz Bass.

Wow! Kudos to Dane and John. What a great looking bass. To echo Joey, how does it sound?

It does sound nice! Still has the Ric tone. I just put on some DR Lo-Riders. Both on single coil sounds nice and smooth, and going to humbucking on either one one of them adds meat, and both on humbucking seems fairly heavy. Dane might kill me, but after I get a bit more discretionary cash in a year or so, I want to research toasters, scatterwounds, etc, and perhaps put two of them in instead. But if I don't get around to it, well that's okay as it is really sweet right now anyway. Wait...... I'll get a new 4004, have Dane do it again, but with toasters!

After drooling over those pix for the past 1/2 hour, I can't help but wonder how that procedure would look on my purple 4004Cii. Mmmmm, gold plexi on purple flame maple - I can see it now...

I think it would look killer. Paul Wilczynski had some shots posted a while back of an acoustic he did with a bluish/turq/aqua that looked really sweet with a gold pg and hardware.

But what really drew me to purchasing this actual bass in the first place were those red horns. To me, they represent the perfect balance of scale, contour, finish, and color of a Ric. I really dig it. There's a certain svelte-ness yet seriousness to them.

Yep. The bridge pickup, proportionally, is almost exactly in the same position as a '60's J-bass. The neck pickup is a little farther south, more where the E-A segment of a P-bass pickup is. The way I have described the tone of a 4002 is if you call a J-bass "growly," then with the end-to-end humbuckers, a 4002 is "Pappa bear is home, and he's hungry!

[jwilli]

Hmm, I wonder if any 4004s were produced with the Blue Boy finish...............Dane's work would look great on a bass in that finish.

[sloop_john_b]

Hmm, I wonder if any 4004s were produced with the Blue Boy finish...............Dane's work would look great on a bass in that finish.

Yeah, I had one...good call! I wish Dane was doing these back when I had mine. I always thought the solid color looked odd, too much real estate.

[aceonbass]

The V57 conversion is not for the faint of heart as routing (aka an irreversable mod) is required. Those who think this was a pickguard mod alone are mistaken.

[woodyng]

Dane-was the routing not due to the neck pickup being moved back? Yes,your description of the process in the pm's DID give me pause....sort of why i suggested earlier it would be nice to see some pics of the various steps of the procedure. i am still intrigued by the idea,altho,i also am trying to picture my gold hardware mapleglo with the gold pickguard,not sure if i would find the overall effect as pleasing as it is on the fireglo,or any other color.

[aceonbass]

The bridge pickup was moved about 3/4" rearward by just extending the route, and the top of the bass was routed like a 4002 for the larger control cavity and to mount all the controls to the guard like any RIC with a pickguard. I sent John hi-res pics of the build processs. If he can reduce some and post them here, that might be helpfull.Swapping out your volume controls in your VVT setup for push pulls used as coil taps would give a lot more pickup options that you currently have too. I had gold plastic on my old 4004Cii fretless at one time. A search here my find pics of it.

[coolhandjjl]

This should help. My particular version of the 4004 was built with the neck pup in the 1" from neck position. What's unique about this situation, is should a new tone be needed, I can have Dane make a new PG and remount the pups in their original factory routes.

[woodyng]

thanks,that does help...i am going to ponder this for a bit.
Dane-was that the cii that had the sort-of 4002 pg?

[aceonbass]

Yes it was. Most who saw it agreed that the gold looked better than the black plastic that was innitionally on it. While the cosmetics of the V57 were pretty cool, I think the different sound with the new pickup placement and the different combinations of tapped and untapped HB1's was just as unique.

[coolhandjjl]

thanks,that does help...i am going to ponder this for a bit.
Dane-was that the cii that had the sort-of 4002 pg?

Woody, Dane did make a guitar the Mario bought, it was a 4004cii converted to a 5 string fretless and had three pups, and a 4002 inspired pg. Waas that what you were referring to?
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=397866&hilit=fretless

[woodyng]

well,it was that bass,but i was looking for a picture of it with a gold pickguard,thank you for the link,though. the more i think about covering up the front of my cii with plastic,the less i am liking the idea,the only flame in the wood is in the neck. i think i may just have to wait for another ric bass to "tribute". Sorry,Dane,I really found this bass very inspiring,but i also really like my cii as i currently have it.

[paologregorio]

There was so much talk on another thread about a "4000 V57" reissue that when John's bass turned up on his thread about what pickguard would look best on it, I saw an opportunity to do something really different and solve his dilemma at the same time. I did suggest the Winfield repro bridge setup, but the ABM is a better bridge anyway. I'd really like to do another one of these with a RIHS and maybe a replica of the '61 4001 that Vincent Gallo recently purchased.

Wowza! What will it take to talk Mr. Gallo into showing up with it at this year's SCARF?!

[jps]

What will it take to talk Mr. Gallo into showing up with it at this year's SCARF?!

Probably no less than $1M cash up front (plus expenses) 40 days before his special appearance.

[aceonbass]

Mr.G comes off like he's just a Rick collector like us, and has even extended open invitations to forum members in the SoCal area to come meet with him and see his basses. I tried for three years to do just that while I lived there to no avail. He would answer my emails occasionally saying how busy he was, but that he looked forward to getting together when he was "done shooting" or whatever. Well that day never came, so getting him to a RIC fest is even less likely.

[coolhandjjl]

I took the pics off my host. I'll post them on this site.