Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Popcorn! Get your popcorn right here!

I agree with Jeff. If the ACTUAL product was available from the ORIGINAL manufacturer, who would go to the "cottage industry"? Few if any.

That's not the situation we're in.

I hate to say it but, thank GOD for Ebay.

i think some of this stuff is related to an earlier thread further down the board "question on my Faker"!!!

Guys, I don't mean it to sound like an attack. The subject came up so I asked. I intend no disrespect to the company, the forum, or anyone involved with either. It is just a question.

yep neither do I ... I don't want to make any body mad or look bad ... but I look at it from an end users point of view ...

On the other side part of the reason our Rickenbackers hold their value so well is because Ric enforces its trademark ...

But sometimes getting a certain replacemant part for a Ric can be a challenge ...

We DO offer the horseshoe- on the 4001C Series basses and owners of those instruments have no problem at all to receive spare parts. The horeshoes are and have been in continuous active commerce since the 1950's.

We have no obligation to supply parts separately for retrofit although we may well chose to do so; but the time and circumstances of that would be of our choosing, when it is appropriate to the market and our plans.

Trademarks are a very different animal from a patent in that they only cover the look, feel, and "smell" of a product, rather than the actual functionality. This "trade dress" is an important asset of the company and naturally we protect it carefully for our and our employee's benefit, but it also trickles down to the owners of our product as well.

I like the modern high gain pickups ... but there are a lot of people here that would love to put a horseshoe on their 4001/4003 bass ...

If you issued some 4003 basses with a toaster, a horseshoe, and checkered binding ... you would have a bunch of us drooling and falling over ourselves to see how fast we could order one ... even I might get one of them also ... a 4003vp ... that would be cool for the 75th anniversary ...

Do the current horseshoe pickups put into the 4001C basses have magnetic "shoes"? Are they constructed like late 50's/early 60's pickups?

The original horseshoe was magnetized steel ... the reissue ones have magnets and non-magnetized steel horseshoes ...

The re-issue horseshoe pickups sound like a modern high gain ... they have stronger magnets and more coil windings than the original horseshoe pickups ...

The new horseshoes are great sounding. I put one in my '68 4000 and it really brought that bass back to life. The bass had a Schecter p-style active pickup in it when I got it. The re-issue shoe not only makes it sound like a Rick again, it looks like a Rick again. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I bought the 'shoe' just before the 4001C series went into production or else I would not have been able to buy one.

If the re-issue horseshoe's (or original's) were made available again I think they would be a hot item. The look has certainly become vogue, especially for a lot of the people on this forum.

As they are not, and demand is still strong, it's only a matter of time before something becomes an acceptible alternative. I'm going to have to carve up a couple of old lap steels to get the period correct for my 60's basses, which I hate to do, but....

My take on this is that if there is a market for it, it's going to appear, despite the best efforts of the factory to stop it. If they don't make it available for purchase, then eventually, you're going to see copies of varying quality appearing that will inevitably start getting mistaken for genuine Ric parts, which will impact an otherwise great reputation for quality. You'll probably start seeing more and more low quality forgeries as a result, and the company is going to have to waste time and resources in a fruitless attempt to stop patent and copyright infingements of their products.

It would make more sense to allow the dealer network access to any spare parts. Sales restrictions could apply, but these things are going to appear from some source. I would just rather Ric were the people supplying them.

Would it be THAT terrible to see a 4003 with a toaster or a horseshoe ? I'd rather see it on that than an Ibanez copy.

Wints has got it.

I'd buy a horseshoe in a minute if it were affordable. I will not pay the $300-$450 I've seen recently on eBay. That's insane. IMHO, of course.

I think we all would buy an official RIC horseshoe rather than a generic version if the option was available. As this a part that is already being made (and therefore fairly available one would presume) I'm surprised that JH has let this after parts market get as far as it has.
A run of around 100 competitively priced RIC re-issue horseshoes would probably be accounted for by most here, and would kill the generic market dead for quite some time.