My name is Mike and I am from the south of The Netherlands, Europe. After playing Fender basses mostly for 20 years I recently got an enormous amount of GAS (or RAS
): I want me a Ric 4003!Been playing a lot of 70's Deep Purple lately and got hooked on the sound and looks of the beast.
Anyhow, after reading up on this forum during the last couple of days (thanks for all the wonderful info - I really appreciate it) I started my hunt today. I thought it would be nice to write down some of my experiences here.
As Rickenbackers are hard to get in my country, it’s all about the chase - enjoy!
Day 1 – Ric 4003 Mapleglo (New)
Today at 10AM I visited a local music shop who advertised a brand new mapleglo 4003 on the Dutch Craigslist. They had ordered this particular bass in 2006 and it was delivered last week…talk about some long delivery time! Price was set at 1.895,00 euro’s ($ 2,470.00) which is a couple of 100’s below the normal selling price in The Netherlands.
The owner of the shop poured me a good cup of coffee, took the bass of its hook and set up an Markbass amp. After sitting down I immediately noticed the IMHO horrible setup: string height all over the place, out of tune and bad intonation. A bummer really, but no big deal as this forum provided me with enough information to correct this. This shop had never sold a Ric bass before as they told me, so they must have screwed something up I guess.
They only had to wait 6 years to get it remember!
After playing for a while I noticed that the treble pick up was much, much louder than the bass pick up. Also correctable I think. I really liked the overall feel of this instrument and its impeccable build quality. And it looks great! Can’t get used to the pick up cover so that has to go.
The bass delivered (treble) tone in spades, but on the Markbass I could not get it to growl (I use Tech21 and Ampeg with my Fenders).
After my test drive I took another good look at this beauty of a bass guitar. Buy it now and cancel my afternoon appointment with a privately owned 2006 Fireglo?
No. I need something to reference this baby to. I told the owner this and he understood very well and he will give me a call tomorrow.
Stay tuned for my next report tonight – thanks for reading!
Mike
