Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hi Ed....
I will look for your bass photo...
My date is OA ....
I had a theory about this...
My tail has the dreadfull lift..I measured it and it is .075" lift at the back .... I see that the back angle, behind the saddle is greatly reduced when tail rises... So considering the .105 diameter and the reduced back-angle, this "could" play a role in the way the E string is working... Just a theory..
I would really love to X-RAY the bass neck and see exactly where and what the truss rods are doing when all snugged up...
When i play the bass acoustically with my ear on the body..ALL the notes seems prety much the same, that including the E-string...

Chris

Here's at least a couple pictures...I swear I was not drunk in that first one. Just took an awkward step!

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if the bass sounds good acoustically then it may be pickup height ...

I had a 75 that looked just like yours and it had Grovers, silk screened truss rod cover, 1/2" spacing etc. small headstock, many earlier features. If mine had had a toaster in it it would have been identical to a late 73. Many 72's did not have thumb rests, mine doesn't and never did. Our 75's were probably left over bodies and parts as has been said in this forum many times by the Ric Oracle who is better known as the owner.
It also had the same problem you had BTW, many times you can solve that problem by tweaking the truss rods just a tiny bit one way or the other, it is usually in the set up somewhere, I've seen it in 4003's and have actually caused it and cured it myself several times. I've owned many and had several with that problem and usually managed to fix it by changing the settings of either the action, truss rods, pickups, bridge or some combination of those things. Take it all apart and put it together if you can't fix it, it may surprise you what you can find.
This topic was covered many many times two or three years ago, JH's solution was the truss rod tweak which has always helped me, you tweak it maybe 1/16 of a turn, not enough to change the action, I would start there.
I only drop JH's name so you will know it is a real solution.

Name dropper!

Geeesss...

haha! You can't argue with advice from the guy who owns the company right? It does work though, the truss rods resonate and sometimes will damp certain notes and you change the resonant frequency by tightening or loosening the truss rods. If the bass was once fine it can be made to be fine again.

I checked my out my 4001 last night again without plugging it in, just acoustically..The E-string is dead... It most likely is a resonance problem, I did not have this before the set-up... Now I am thinking if this repair guy swapped out my truss-rods for a ****** ones he had laying around...
Repair guys are notorious for stealing and swapping out for good parts..especially with amplifiers...And especially when the parts are no longer available..
I bet if I lined up 40 original truss-rods and measured the resonance and harmonic spectrum of each, that each one will be slightly different...due to process variation as well as the way the steel was formed..as well as variation over the years in % of composition of available steel...I bet there are the "repaired" truss rods floating around out there..the ones that have been re-straightened a million times and been cut down and re-threaded...
AT this point..it looks like I need a full strip down and then analysis of the parts..ect...before proceeding any further..

Chris