Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I just added the two extra screws on my 4003S BT bass and it made a difference in low end reinforcement and sustain. It now seems to ring on forever!

And there is now no lift....

Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't stand having bridge lift on my Rick. It constantly bothered me that cheap Peavey basses have more reliable bridges than the Rick bridge. The saddles on mine wiggled around, fell off, and everything. I got that Hipshot replacement and it had all the same problems (plus it weighed about 25 pounds). I got so fed up with all this that I replaced the whole damn thing with a Badass I bridge. Now THAT is a good bridge.

I bought my first Rick bass new over 25 years ago. For all of that 25 years, it has had around 1/16" of tail lift. And for all of those 25 years it has been a fantastic sounding, fantastic playing, reliable instrument. I didn't know that the gap between the end of the tail and the body of the bass wasn't part of the design until I found this forum. I also have a few 80's Ricks with the extra two screws in the tail. They too sound and play fantastic. And I have a '73 4001 with over 1/4" of tail lift. I now know that that 1/4" of tail lift on my '73 is not supposed to be there, but the fact is...the bass is one of my best sounding ones.

So my thoughts on the tail are this: If it looks like it is defective/strained past its limit, then replace it or bend it back and add the two screws. But if it is just lifting off the body a little bit(less than 1/8"), don't worry about it. I think too many people here are getting too worked up over an amount of tail lift that really isn't a problem.

I got that Hipshot replacement and it had all the same problems (plus it weighed about 25 pounds). I got so fed up with all this that I replaced the whole damn thing with a Badass I bridge

You must be quite an aggresive player, I found the Hipshot to be very stable and rock solid.

Tail lift or not I missed out on it.



I'll keep on looking for one to sit next to this.

I don't know, but some guys must put some heavy gauge strings on those basses.

I just stick to 45-105's and there just isn't ANY tail lift on my basses.

One thing I did find however, was that the underneath of the tailpieces (where the actual bridge bit goes) don't sit quite flush to the rout when the 3 screws under the bridge are screwed in place. This has a tendency to itself "lift" the tail slightly when the piece is tightly mounted.

That is easily fixed by putting a couple of washers under the piece, directly under the 3 screws. I did find that on one of the basses, the tailpiece itself wasn't totally flat in the diagonal such that when the piece was screwed in, the opposite corner lifted!

That just meant I had to add one less washer underneath that screw.

godber wrote:Is this amount of lift a cause for concern? I'm looking to buy the bass...

In my opinion, no that is by no means excessive. I've seen brand new basses right out of the case that have that. If you see change on the lift, that's when you have an issue, and while "cracked tails" are not unheard of, it's not as common as you may be led to believe.

godber wrote:Is this amount of lift a cause for concern? I'm looking to buy the bass.

Thats exactly what my new 4003's bridge looks like and it's only two months old.

Put a straight edge along side the tailpiece to see if in fact it is lift or just the top surface of the body not perfectly flat.

Put a straight edge along side the tailpiece to see if in fact it is lift or just the top surface of the body not perfectly flat.

Even better yet...put some washers under the three screws and it will probably go away. If you look at that picture you can see where it's sucking down where those three screws are. It does make a difference.

When the nose and tail are up off the wood, the washers do the trick. That is true, as Steve says, for that FG in the pic.

This is thread #10,000 on tail piece lift, congratulations, this thread has also convinced me that Rickenbacker Basses is full of perseveration, perseveration, perseveration, which I'm very tired of, see ya!

My girlfriend was bent over the kitchen counter....talking on the phone .... she had a very short skirt with some major tail lift ....so I proceeded to........Hipshot/alluminum ! There is no substitute !

Rich, that was a NEW aspect of the theme!

Perseveration- Uncontrollable repetition of a particular response, such as a word, phrase, or gesture, despite the absence or cessation of a stimulus, usually caused by brain injury or other organic disorder.

That's pretty funny Bob! I didn't know that word yesterday.