Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Forgot to mention in case anyone wanted to know that I used a single piece of hard rock, quarter-sawn maple for the neck and center block. The fingerboard is bubinga and is lacquered. The wings are several pieces of walnut. The scratchplate is white acrylic, and I made it myself. The headstock has a walnut veneer on it. The case is a standard RIC case. It took me about a year to make it from start to finish. It has about 10 coats of clear nitrocellulose on it, and then sanded and buffed to a high gloss. I used a Stewart-Mcdonalds duel truss rod which goes in vertically instead of Rickenbackers double horizontal truss rod setup. As a result I had to make my neck a little thicker in the middle than a RIC, so it ends up being a bit more of a soft V shape.

Hey Greg, that is a beautiful bass! I've been wanting to make my own Ric for a while. Because I was going to go into business, I did an original design for my basses, but I love the shape of the 4001 basses.

My first Ric, a '72 4001 MG, has seen better days. In my customizing frenzy I started to turn it into a pseudo 4002, so I had filled in the body routings and started putting a thin maple top on it. I didn't really know what I was dong back then!

So now I'm thinking of removing the body wings and making new ones from figured maple, using the real body as a template.

One of my very Alembic inspired basses:



7 piece maple/purpleheart set neck (neck is inlaid and runs up to the neck pup), cherry body with purpleheart lamination and a zebrawood top. Phenolic fingerboard. Schaller bridge and three EMG pickups and tone controls.

The thing weighs a ton! (well about 12lbs anyway...)

Hi David, thanks for the compliments. It is the first neck thru design I've made, and I really like making them. More fun to do than a bolt on. I haven't done any glue in designs yet but will in the future. If you use the real body as a template and make new wings for your 4001, it should work fine. I used my '73 as a template while I was making mine, and then sold it when I was done. The '73 was in really bad shape, but I still got $700 for it.

That bass of yours looks heavy! A little too complicated for me, as I prefer just the 4 strings, but if it works for you, thats what counts! I like cherry a lot, and have built a solid body with it. Because of its weight, I think I'll make a semi-hollow with cherry in the future.

Dumb question! Do you use biscuits to join the neck to the wings?

MMMMMMm....biscuits!

I didn't realize I would be conjuring up KFC with my question!

Charly, I don't, but my former guitar making parner has used biscuits on his guitars. It's a good idea, I just don't have a biscuit joiner.

Last night I went into the basement, where I store most of my music gear, and dug my two 4001's from their casses to photograph them. It was quite sad! Unfortunately I haven't had any time to devote to them, and they have been in a state of disrepair for a while now. It's inspiring to see everyone's great looking basses on this forum... made me realize how neglected mine had become!

The bass on the left is the one in question. It was my first Ric, and also my first good bass. As you can see I started to fill in the front routs and resurface the top with maple veneer. I was also quite surprised to see that I had started making it into a lined fretless! I was playing a lot of fretless at the time, but I honestly didn't remember doing this!

It's a nice bass though. As you can see the fingerboard is very orange. I was once told it was tulipwood by a friend who used to work for Tobias. The neck is curly maple, as you can see in the second picture.

I had sworn that I bought this bass in 1972, since that was the year I started high school, and it was a gift from my folks. Even though the features of the bass say it's a '73 (i.e. no checkered binding, no split bridge, and the FB markers don't go to the edge). The bass on the right I had always thought was a mid 60's, because someone told me the serial number was from that time. But I looked it up last night and it's March '73! Since that one does have checkerboard binding, a split bridge... etc. I can only assume my first bass is also a '73, but I bought it in November, which is when my birthday is. I haven't found the jack plate yet, but I know where it is, so I don't recall the serial number off hand.

Ah.. shows how good one's memory is after 32 years!

I do plan on restoring these two basses. You can see the one on the right had a Gibson Sidewinder in the neck position, and I had filled in the bridge cavity and replaced it with a Schaller bridge. I also refinished it in that purple metal flake, since it was also MG. I might do it Jetglo... I always wanted one!

I actually used biscuits on the bass I made. It made it very easy to secure the wings from moving once I had the position decided on. I'd use them again with no hesitation.

Those could be very nice basses David, if you're able to restore them!

How hard is the inlays to do?

Greg, biscuits are great! I've only made one neck though, and I honestly don't remember how the wings were secured when gluing. I'm pretty sure I used this clamping jig that's made from 2x4s with metal hardware. It's made for doing butcher block type laminations, and holds the pieces level while it clamps from the sides. But my former partner helped with the neck through, so we might have used biscuits. In fact I'm thinking we did. The body wings were glued on unshaped... just a square block. I made these about 10 years ago, so the details are a bit fuzzy!

We also made this jig to put a neck angle in using a router. After the neck and body blanks were glued up, we glued a 1/4 piece of korina on top of the neck, where the fingerboard would go, and then used the router jig to taper that from the full thickness over the 26 fret to the nut area, which gave us a nice neck angle.

This is that bass. I recently removed the hardware to change a few things.

Jacob, do you mean like fingerboard inlays? Not too hard. You have the inlay cut out first (making inlays is a true art, and can be very tricky, but you can buy pre-made pearl inlays). Then you find the position you want them in, and mark the location on the fingerboard. One way to do this is use something like double stick tape, or a tiny bit of super glue to hold the inlay in position, and then you spray a little clear lacquer on the board. When you remove the inlay, you see the outline.

Then you can use a small router, like a Dremel Tool, or a laminate trimmer to cut the recess. Usually you leave the inlay slightly "proud" of the surface (i.e. it sticks out a bit) and after filling in any gaps with glue mixed with dust from the fingerboard, you let it dry, and then sand it flush to the surface.

Like anything else, everyone has their own method for doing these things, but there somef good books out on guitar making.

To joint the body wings to the neck and keep it from moving when you clamp it up: Use small finish nails. Tap them in 1/8th of an inch into the body halves,2 per body half, cut them off so a 1/16th inch is protruding, then align and clamp. This is how it is done at Rick. Bisquits are good with gravy but not necessary for building guitars.

These days we generally use small dowel pins that fit holes placed by the CNC machines, but the theory is the same.

On some parts, we actually mill the wood to have small, for lack of a better word, "teats" that engage holes routed out of the opposing part. This is the preferable way as it avoids introducing a component of different mass into the guitar and there are no voids like you get with biscuits. It all stays solid wood this way.

It doesn't matter much in the body but on the neck, head, or fingerboard it can be a problem.

That's a cool idea John. just like tongue and groove. Kinda, almost!