1973 4001 Lineup

[anoukane]

Be sure to share pics of those which are being refinished.

May in refinished bright white. Delicious

[johnallg]

They look fantastic Mark! But fancy having 7 basses - you can only play one at a time!!

Change basses to instruments and isn't that kinda like the pot calling the kettle black?!

Mark, those look wonderful, and it is so neat to see the progression of a highly changing short period in RIC history. You need to do the couch pic again when all 7 are home at last.

Oh, and your wife is very astute and also very understanding. Keep her!

[henry5]

Mark, one word........wow........

[albi4001]

I´m impressed. What a wonderful collection.
Congratulations. I love this checkerboardbinding.

[rhampshire]

That is an AWESOME lineup right there!

[ajish4]

Excellent Mark,

BEAUTIFUL each & every one!

We are so close! We HAVE to have our mini confluence of Florida members!

[sloop_john_b]

No '72's? Pssssh.

[1965]

They look fantastic Mark! But fancy having 7 basses - you can only play one at a time!!

One for each day of the week?

[cheyenne]

Very cool Marc! Exceptional collection!

[2112]

Nice!
I'll take the JG.

I bet they all sound sooooo sweet.

[Spanky(Andy)]

Andrew- all basses pictured are original finish, the eggplant one is really hard to capture correctly in a picture, like a 75th DCM it looks black unless it's in a bright light. The missing January will be refinished trans-burgundy, the missing May will be refinished bright white.

Mark,

Many thanks for your reply. Out of curiosity, how long has it taken you to accumulate these 7 beautiful basses in such amazing condition (I'm not concerned about the cash side of it)? Was it a goal to buy and collect 1973 instruments, or something that simply started with one or two basses and snowballed?

I've only recently discovered the beauty of early 70's 4001s...

Andy

[wints]

Nice portfolio there showing the changes thru early to mid 73.

We do need a FL confluence sometime.

That's Florida, not fretless...

[markbass99]

Andrew, I'll try to give you a little history on how this collection happened. When I was 18 in 1977 I bought a 73 jetglo 4001(with C/B), I already had a late 60's jazz and was drawn to the 4001 model through Geddy Lee and Chris Squire. I played in some bands off and on until I got married in 1982 and got a government job and eventually sold everything off, including my mid 70's SVT rig. Fifteen or so years later I wanted to get back into playing and bought a 2002 jetglo 4003. It was okay but was missing something and the neck was thicker than the 4001. I found a dark burgundy 73 4001 on ebay and bought that for $1700 in 2004. I sold my 02 4003 and a p-bass and decided to put that money into finding more 4001's with checkered binding, they were flying under the radar at that time and were very affordable. I also thought it would be cool to see if I could try to get one for each month of 1973 as there were many changes in the manufacturing of the 4001 at that time occuring on a monthly basis. Supposedly these changes were caused by Chris Squires popularity at the time, Yessongs had just been released and Roundabout was all over the airwaves. This caused a surge of 4001 orders and like today, RIC had to figure out a way to make them faster. So by mid 1973 the checkered binding was eliminated and the inlays had changed along with some hardware changes.

It has taken me about four years to collect these with the lowest price being $1700 and the highest at $3700. There was a lot off luck involved, learning how deal with vintage guitar brokers(CME !), the magical place that is Ebay, and some of the great forumites here have also been involved. I have had to be very focused and not distracted by all the other ricks out there like C. S.'s, 75th DCM's, color of the years, Tux's, Blackstars, etc. I have also tried to collect a variety of colors which was another challenge, I knew there would be a couple of refins along the way so that has helped. There were a lot of 73's made and like you have seen, a lot of abused and modded (routed) ones out there to thin the supply down. There's one on ebay right now with a Badass bridge in it, and I hate to say it, but it's all Geddy's fault.. .

Here's me with my first one in 1979- Wish I could get that one back !

[ricosound]

Beautiful collection. Is it you assumption that successive months will illustrate the feature transitions? We have seen that depending on production work flow and reworks that a dated serial number doesn't mean it hasn't been around the factory awhile. Especially odd colors and options. Exact production date or not it is interesting to see the progression and worthy of a collection theme

[markbass99]

My collection as it stands right now shows an accurate transition the way we (as a forum of experts) understand it to have happened during that first seven months of 1973. There were some exceptions but I think if you tried to build another collection like mine as a random sample of the first seven months, you would end up with the same results. I have been very lucky to come across so many that still had their original parts. So many 4001's of this era were modified with different tuners, bridges, and pickups. I have kept a close eye on all the 73's that show up on ebay and elsewhere and have scrutinized a lot of the details (like type of nut) and compared them to my collection to see how they stacked up for consistancy of small details. Most of the time you can pinpoint some of the changes or the high probability of a certain feature to the month it happened. That's the beauty of the RIC s/n system, much better than what Fender uses.