iiipopes on the forum here was nice enough to let me come down and spent the day tweaking some guitars for me. In addition to being a very smart and nice guy, he just happens to own a beautiful looking and sounding 4002. The best way I can describe it as the best of a Ric and a P Bass tone in one package. It is probably the coolest bass I have ever played. I am convinced that with enough time and experience, I could make this bass do whatever I wanted tonewise and it would do it well. Definitely my vote for the bass Ric should do a reissue of! I hope cassius will chime in as he knows this bass and has even had the very distinct pleasure of gigging it! Well enough of my rambling... here is what you came for:
Having played Gary Clauson's (doctorwho) 4002 at a mini-jam, I can chime in and say that these are definitely awesome basses! Great woods, great pickups with interesting tone due to the pickup placement (unbelieveable growl!), and the XLR output are definitely cool features!
I'm not holding my breath for a reissue, but that would be awesome!
Low End Lover wrote:Definitely my vote for the bass Ric should do a reissue of!
A thousand times yes. I know people roll their eyes at reissue requests but, as you correctly pointed out, this thing is a whole 'nother animal and a great one to boot. Maybe I'm biased though... Scott has put so much careful work into optimizing this bass with string choice and all the finer details of a professional setup, that I wonder if I don't also love it because of his contributions. Scott has left an indelible mark on me and how I take care of my instruments.
Low End Lover wrote:I hope cassius will chime in as he knows this bass and has even had the very distinct pleasure of gigging it!
I did indeed get to gig this bass once--it was a quiet Sunday afternoon at one of my jazz trio's coffee shop gigs on the square of Springfield, MO and Scott brought this bass and a hollowbody guitar along with his family. He let me play the 4002 and my guitarist the guitar. The thing I noticed about the 4002 in a gig setting is that even though it has about a million different tones locked inside of it, it is easy to dial in. It "sits" in a mix really well. At one point I soloed the neck pickup with Scott's special cap bypass mod and I remember Scott comparing it to Sting's tone. For another song we often played, Chick Corea's "Spain", I let the bridge pickup take the lead and every note had articulation and vivacity many of us crave in bass tone. Both pickups full-on with a bit of tone rolled off of either one was a very easy tone to fit into a song. I know the pickups are in same spot as on a Jazz Bass but this bass has a much, much bigger sound than any Jazz I have ever played with less of the nasal quality in the sound, maybe because the scale is shorter (have you ever heard how huge a 30'' scale Hofner can sound in person?). I think I can agree with the idea that it sounds like a Precision Bass in some ways, yet remains very distinctly Rickenbacker. Not to neglect the guitar Scott also brought, I believe it was an Epiphone that he had put a lot of quality work into, and my guitarist was raving about it for the next several weeks. I remember how sweet it sounded.
This bass is probably the perfect bass for a guy like Scott, it is distinctly his. All of the careful thought and consideration that make him who he is has joined with the essence of this bass and let it blossom into something incredible, which is something I hope to achieve with my Rics as well. Any time I think of the bass, I think of Scott, and vice-versa. I don't think I'd get any more thrill playing Chris Squire's RM1999 than I have already experienced playing Scott's 4002. But ultimately, as glad as I am to have played this bass, I'm even more glad to have met Scott, who I know Jason will agree is a truly stand-up fellow, a careful technician, and an extremely thoughtful musician who plays a wide array of instruments. Next time I'm in Missouri I'm going to see if I can swing by. Maybe the three of us can have an Ozarks mini-con.
In addition to everything else we all know about a 4002, this one has a really chunky, almost "U" shaped neck, and about a 8-inch crown radius, so it's really curved making the ebony fingerboard also thick. I'm sure the extra wood in the neck helps it tonally, but with the lightweight Schaller machines, it does not neck dive. I string it with GHS Progressives 45-60-80-105 to get close to the gauges of a RIC set, and they're very well balanced in both tone and feel. The alloy that GHS Progressives are made out of has more iron and less nickel, which for me has two benefits: 1) with more iron, they interact with the pickups better, giving even more tone, and 2) the chemistry of my perspiration eats nickel, and these are the only strings (other than the new Fender 9050CL set, which also seems to have more iron than others) that don't just die to a helpless "thud" after just one gig. I still replace the E string early, but at least it's just one string and not the whole set every time.
Yes, I bought it sight unseen almost 20 years ago, and from the first moment I opened its blue plush case it just locked in. I never have to think about it, I just play it. Speaking of its growl, it is different from 4001/3 or even 4004 growl. The best way I can describe it is to compare it to a Fender ad some years ago that advertised their "upgraded" basses as, "Daddy's Home." Well, with the 4002, it's, "Daddy's Home...and he's HUNGRY!" (You may interpret that however you will!)
Now, it won't behave for everybody. I went to a friend's jam a few years ago, and one guy tried it out who was only used to thumping a plank. He couldn't get anything out of it but pickup slap and pulling the strings sharp. I mean, he had it sounding bad through an Ampeg SVT. Now, I knew it wasn't the amp, because I had an SVT head myself for a couple of years a long, long time ago. At that point, I knew exactly where all the guys on TalkBass who deride Ricks were coming from. But after he was done, I put it on, and ended up being the guy holding down the fort for the rest of the jam for the rest of the afternoon well into the evening.
I've heard of various 4002's that may have wiring variations, but mine is wired exactly like the diagram on the RIC website, only with one change I made. What I did to it was to put a push-pull on the neck volume pot so its .01 inline capacitor can be in or out, with out, or direct wiring of the neck pickup, being the default. With the pickups in different positions, a little larger cap is needed in the treble pickup, hence the .01, instead of the .0047 that is in the 4001/3, as there is even less fundamental in the tone at that particular pickup position.
Finally, even if RIC left off the low-Z interleafed windings on the bridge pickup and just made it as a straight 2-pickup with Ric-O-Sound, it would be great to see them in production again. Yeah, I know, expected cost versus expected demand. But other companies with their "boutique" basses for $3000 and up are still in business, with nothing out there, except possibly Dingwall's fanned frets for some folks, that is any better than what a 4002 already has.
iiipopes wrote:Finally, even if RIC left off the low-Z interleafed windings on the bridge pickup and just made it as a straight 2-pickup with Ric-O-Sound, it would be great to see them in production again. Yeah, I know, expected cost versus expected demand. But other companies with their "boutique" basses for $3000 and up are still in business, with nothing out there, except possibly Dingwall's fanned frets for some folks, that is any better than what a 4002 already has.
jdogric12 wrote:Just one????? You all lie like rugs!!!!!!!!!
Comments such as these usually refer to adding (at least) the 4005 to the "reissue" list. I've played a 4005. I prefer my 4002. I am probably in a minority that I don't care for the 4005.
