My mother's 1966 4005 O.S. - it lives!

[iiipopes]

Great family stories, great old instrument. But what does a 4005 sound like? Is the bridge pickup even useful that close to the bridge?

My understanding is that the fifth knob is a blend knob, but I don't understand how it works. I've looked at the circuitry, and it didn't make sense to me as a blend knob.

It is essentially a secondary volume control for the neck pickup, in order to "balance" the two pickups to the player's preference when switching back and forth, or tonal variations when both are on.

[Isaac]

Thanks, Jeffrey. that was pretty cool.

[jps]

Here's another one, Isaac. This song was written by a dear friend of mine, his single acoustic guitar and vocal tracks were left with me to add parts to, so I created and played the bass and electric guitar parts. This one is played fingerstyle whereas the previous one was played with a grey Herco nylon pick.

[jps]

Another one of Steve's songs but this time just an acoustic guitar track that I added two electric guitars and the 4005WB to, this time just the neck toaster was used, the bass played with a pick.

[pacealot]

Hey, go for it, it's your guitar. I'm just calling out that your complaint is technically misplaced about the C63. If this guitar wasn't accurate, Beatles fans everywhere would complain that it wasn't "like George's" but being anoraks, they do anyways.

For the record, no '63 instruments had CPI. Some early examples were made in '61 and they disappeared the following year and returned again in '64.

CPI make any Rick better. I make my own inlays and to my eyes they look more accurate than any others I've seen (but of course I'm biased.

Well, we can certainly agree to agree on that! And your inlays are impeccable. I coulda sworn I'd seen pics of transitional '63s with CMOP, but I bow to your expertise. They may have been the '61s you refer to, misattributed (or possibly misconstrued by me). Call me out! In any event, until a magic flaming pie comes down from Heaven with a '66 365 O.S. for me, I'll be an anachronistic iconoclast - I've already bought the crushed pearl and everything!

As to the sound of the 4005 in general, I haven't run my mom's bass through my old rig since getting my hands on it again, so it's still a bit misty in memory, but yes, similarly with low-output HS's or early Hi-Gains with the low-cut cap still in place, the treble pickup only isn't terribly useful on this 4005 either. The meat of its tone is in the neck pickup, but the combined effect of both pickups on gives for a slightly less grunty, more hi-fi top end, which sounds good when played muted with a pick (and that's a heckuva lot easier to do than it is on a 4001/3!). I have ancient recordings of my playing on that bass (my so-called "solo album" - !!! - from about 13 years ago which is up now on SoundCloud features it almost exclusively, but I'm way too embarrassed to put up a link)....

[pacealot]

Excellent sound clips (and playing/arrangements), Jeffrey (no surprise there!). You definitely got a similar range of tones with your '67 as I used to strive for with my mom's bass. Very much recognisably "Ricky," but with a subtly different flavour from the more common 4001/3s. The two model types really complement each other, in my plebeian opinion.

I know RIC will never touch making a 4005 again, but I still think it's a real shame. I'm just incredibly lucky and grateful that this one is still around and that I get another chance to plonk on it and make noise; otherwise, it'd be a pipe dream, and I'd never have known what I would have been missing....

[jps]

Thanks, Paul. Those recording were what i did for recreation while in college, there is a bunch more of that. The bridge pickup cap was already replaced by a piece of wire when I bot the bass in '73 so my impression of the bridge toaster is a bit different from yours since it was all I knew. I would love to have a 4004 Laredo with the bridge pickup about 1/2" away from the bridge, with toasters in both positions.

[pacealot]

That might explain why your treble pickup sounds maybe more, well, useful than I recall my mom's being. Besides being a sucker to try anything Chris Squire did, the other reason I had her bass "stereo'd up" in my later teens was to try to get the most out of the tone "sandwich" so to speak, before I was even aware of the .0047 cap. Ultimately it did work pretty well, provided of course that one didn't ever expect any "proper" bass tone from that pickup. I still split everything between two amps that I possibly can, bass-wise - it's just ingrained in me.

Maybe I'll get inspired in the next few weeks to try to do a quick test recording of the bass to see what she can still do (and if I can still do anything with her!)....

[jps]

My '67 4005WB had ROS on it; the blend pot location is where the ROS jack is. I do not know if that was factory stock or not as it is the only one I have ever seen with no blend pot there. I made my own ROS box back in the mid '70s and tried it out for a bit but ended up going back to mono.

Here is a song my friend Steve wrote that we did some experimenting with. At the time I had a couple different bass amps, an original green-face Furman PQ-3 into a Crown D-150a to a late '70s Bullfrog 2-12 guitar cabinet, and an early '70s Traynor YSR-1 Custom Reverb amp into a front loaded folded horn cabinet I built in the Theatre Department's scene shop at OSU that I put a JBL 2225 driver into. I set the two amps face to face and put my old Western Electric 639B ribbon mic between them so the amps faced the two sides of the figure 8 pattern of the microphone. I ran the 4005WB into a 1974 MXR Phase 90 and into the two amps, using the Traynor's tremolo. We also recorded one bass part at half speed (7 1/2 IPS) so it would end up an octave higher on the final recording (at 15 IPS) (the shimmering tremolo part near the end of the song) that was panned back and forth while mixing the song.