Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I just took the TRC and pickguard off my 78 Azureglo 4001. The finish is thick, the cavities are all painted except for one little place where it looks like tape had been in the middle under the controls. That is original. Looks exactly like mine that I've owned now for about 7 years. I don't know why they painted the cavities but they did.

My guess is that it is original, but Ed is a bit concerned. At first he thought he had a faker but I showed him that it is a real 4001. As you can see, the tuners don't exactly all match as two have slotted gear screws and the other two are Phillips; perhaps they are replacements, I do not really know. Ed bought the bass second hand, I am not sure how long ago, though.

The truss rod bar is aluminum, as it should be. The bass has a Bartolini Jazz pickup in the treble position but he does have the original hi-gain pickup. The brass nut and a refret were done by Kurt Wright, a local 'luthier'; he also resprayed the fingerboard with nitro but he did a good job with it. Years ago when I had my Alembic Exploiter I had Kurt make it fretless and he did make it very nice, indeed.

My '80 AZ 4001 looked just like this one, thick finish and exactly that shade of blue. My vote would be it's original.

Same with my '76. It's always difficult to tell from photos, but it certainly looks like mine did.

Case closed

I've heard that some Rick basses that left the factory in the late 70's with mixed phillips / slot-head tuner post screws.

A local friend of Ted Staberow and I has a nice mid 70's AG 4001 that he bought brand new that came with one slot head, the rest phillips. So its possible it left the factory like that.

I'd wonder about the missing black tuner mats though. That bass was made during RIC's wavy Grover revival. Maybe it was born with Grovers that exploded and were then replaced with the RIC open-backed tuners.

If you mean the rubber gaskets that went under the tuners, not all of them had them.

Hey, what happened to Ted?

I mentioned in another thread that Ted has been "distracted" lately by family, job, and other interests. I'm sure he will return here when things settle down a bit.