Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I'm currently waiting for my luthier to finish my 4003 to 4003/8 conversion. I'm going for the potato headstock shape. The octave strings will be first so the headstock will be upside down from Squire's bass. I can't stress enough the importance of proper tuner spacing. Just cramming them in there will have strings wrapping around other string posts and octave tuner heads too close to the edge of the headstock. I beleive RIC used Schaller M4's all the way around so that the strings could be reversed if a player wanted them the other way.

I've seen the OLP 5 to 12, the same guy also did a genuine Stingray 4 to 8 over on "12 string bass dot net"

did I hear Potato?



You don't know the power of the Carb Side, I must obey...

thanks for posting the pic of my old faithful Dave! I think I've said it here before, but to get a tuner arrangement where everything could turn without hitting everything else (!!) I shuffled the tuners around on a card cutout of the headstock before reaching for the drill... I think I tweaked the neck after the first set of strings went on - its been a few years now and the neck is straight as ever... I thought i'd be clever and have a rather wider octave spacing (the 4004 neck has the extra width anyway over a 4001) for some vague idea of playing the octave strings separately, but in practise I don't do that... AND my 4004 was NOT pristine!! It didn't feel like I was depriving the world of a great player to do it...!!