5 string maple fingerboard 4003 questions

[kssound]

well, I was going through my posts and pictures and ran into this. I did try and see if there was polishing compound under the black paint and could get none of the paint to flake off as it would if it had a layer of compound under it. I enhanced the blue and contrast of the picture to make the letters show up better.


And for those who have asked, here is the nut end of the truss rods as I originally received it.


I'm working on getting it authenticated/debunked. We will see what the outcome is. I'm certain that its a factory build, I'm pretty certain its the original fingerboard and after finding the "BLK" written in the control cutout, I'm pretty certain its the original paint. It was 3 years old when I got it, who knows what happened to it before I obtained it.

[rickfan60]

That is definitely factory work. Can you show a picture of the other end of the neck under the guard? Those are acorn nuts at the headstock not the usual 1/4" standoffs. It could be that the rods are in backwards (yikes!) . I have an '86 4003S/5 (first year) an the adjusters are on the headstock end. I have never seen one adjusted from the body end.

[bails]

Do RIC spray the finish before the truss rods go in, or after?

The acorn nuts look like they are sprayed black, but all of my Rickenbacker truss rod nuts are bare metal, which means either RIC spray before the rods go in, or my rods have all been scraped of the finish at some point when they were adjusted.

[rickfan60]

They are painted after the rods are installed. The acorns are somewhat exposed in the neck pickup route and do get sprayed from time to time.

[aceonbass]

RIC truss rods are probably only adjusted at the headstock currently for convenience sake. Alembics as well as lots of other basses are adjusted at the body end. I'd reverse them for the same reason, but I'm sure it doesn't hurt anything to have them the way they are.

[rickfan60]

There is the matter of a bearing plate (the adjusting nuts would simply crush the wood otherwise) and the fact that the top-adjust rods are shorter than the body-adjust rods. It would not be a trivial matter to reverse them AND have them work properly. There needs to be adequate surface area under the nuts to prevent serious wood compression.

[aceonbass]

The nuts don't have a thrust bearing plate under them when they're at the body end. Other than there being more room at the body end, I don't see any difference in function with the rods reversed. There's still rosewood above and maple underneath and from side to side and the truss rod channel is the same dimensions at either end. I'd still put the rods back the other way though.

[kssound]

That is definitely factory work. Can you show a picture of the other end of the neck under the guard? Those are acorn nuts at the headstock not the usual 1/4" standoffs. It could be that the rods are in backwards (yikes!) . I have an '86 4003S/5 (first year) an the adjusters are on the headstock end. I have never seen one adjusted from the body end.

Here's the other end. My 4001's have a plate at the top with a long nut. This appears to be standard from about 83 to 86 to have the "reverse adjustment" truss rods.

[rickfan60]

That looks kosher to me. So it has two unique features, a maple fingerboard AND body-end adjusters. There can't be many like that. I would not be surprised if you never found another. It is probably a factory one-off or maybe even a custom build.

[rickfan60]

The nuts don't have a thrust bearing plate under them when they're at the body end. Other than there being more room at the body end, I don't see any difference in function with the rods reversed. There's still rosewood above and maple underneath and from side to side and the truss rod channel is the same dimensions at either end. I'd still put the rods back the other way though.

But there is always a load bearing plate under the adjusters. The anchor end should have one too IMHO. I have seen a few with badly compressed wood just above the anchors because of the small surface area under the acorns. That is one reason why I always use the old style truss adjustment technique of manually setting the neck even when adjusting the new style rods. Even though they are designed to move the neck, it just makes sense to me to give them a helping hand.

[cjj]

Hmm, all this discussion on which end the truss rods adjust from on this one seem like Deja Vu, like a couple of pages back...

[kssound]

well....
I've done a bit of homework and consulted with a couple of old RIC employees including Brian Carmen who was the factory manager at the time this was built.

Brian says "The truss rod nuts might not be original and the knobs are definitely not original" He also mentioned that, except for the knobs, there are 4 more of them out there somewhere! They made a sample run of 5 and were trying some new ideas.

One idea was the maple fingerboard to eliminate the splitting problem with the neck especially with the extra stress of a 5 string. It was also mentioned that the dot markers were an odd size as that was the size material they had in stock when they made them. Another item was that these were the first of the 5 strings and they didn't much like the looks of it so they regrouped and the 4003S/5 was the result.

[cjj]

WAY cool!!!!

[rickfan60]

well....
I've done a bit of homework and consulted with a couple of old RIC employees including Brian Carmen who was the factory manager at the time this was built.

Brian says "The truss rod nuts might not be original and the knobs are definitely not original" He also mentioned that, except for the knobs, there are 4 more of them out there somewhere! They made a sample run of 5 and were trying some new ideas.

One idea was the maple fingerboard to eliminate the splitting problem with the neck especially with the extra stress of a 5 string. It was also mentioned that the dot markers were an odd size as that was the size material they had in stock when they made them. Another item was that these were the first of the 5 strings and they didn't much like the looks of it so they regrouped and the 4003S/5 was the result.

That is interesting stuff. Thanks for that. What is different about the knobs? I did not blow up the pic but they look like the standard silver-tops from here.

[johnallg]

Scott, that is so cool you found that out. Great info and thanks for sharing. Makes your bass a pretty rare one indeed.