Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

dog wrote:After 40 years of pounding loud rock'n'roll through my ears, ....... sounds the same to me.

You have that problem, too?

What? I SAID - WHAT?

I knew I wasn't alone. I just couldn't hear anyone creeping up on me.

I didn't go back to the stock bridge, but I DID swap out my original brass Hipshot for an aluminum one. HUGE difference in weight, and a very noticeable difference in tone. The brass gave the bass a much darker tone, which I didn't really have a problem with for the most part. My reason for the change to aluminum was the weight. But I have to say, I'm very happy with the tone having more of a classic Ric quality to it now. I've got a '92 "hot" toaster at the neck, and a '06 high gain with adjustable pole pieces in the treble spot on my '89 4003S. Those combined with the adjustability of the Hipshot bridge saddles makes for a very awesome bass! Not to mention the neck...

VRICKY63 wrote:The Hipshot is so superior to the RIC ...............I can not even comment.

Apparently it's not for every Rick bass owner.

I'm considering trying the Hipshot on my C64 only because tail lift is starting to become an issue. It's strange though when I had my 4003, that bridge/tailpiece was pretty solid, but the lift on the C64 is pretty noticeable and my V63 is getting there.

So when people say the brass bridge is "darker" sounding than the aluminum or stock bridge, what does that mean? Like more thumpy? Less clanky? I'm not really sure what "dark" is, tonewise.

Jake Bartalone and I had this discussion several weeks ago when I bought his brass HS and swapped my aluminum HS out. These were recorded through a very clean preamp (Great River ME-1NV) with no eq at all. A 2008 4003. Fair warning before you download, they are each about 2.3MB in size and .wav files. I did not want to lose anything converting to .mp3's.

http://www.brucealan.com/projects/HipshotAluminum.wav
http://www.brucealan.com/projects/HipshotBrass.wav

Those give an idea how the darkness comes into play. Quite a boost on the lower mids that just wasn't a frequency I generally like to have boosted when recording a Rick.

Great side by side comparison. Maybe my ears aren't ruined after all. Glad I bought aluminum.

dog wrote:Maybe my ears aren't ruined after all.

Ron, it's not going high enough in frequency to test your hearing.

Oh, there is definitely a difference in tone between the HS and the stock bridge. That's why I want back to stock! Ha. I like a really clean fundamental tone and the HS was too muddy for me. Also, I didn't mention this, but my bass sustained worse with it than with the stock bridge. I'm not certain but I feel like that extra mass may just "lose" a lot of the string vibration rather than promoting it--the physics aren't as simple as the boys and girls in marketing make them out to be. And as for intonation, I don't mind the stock model, because you only have to do it once a year if even that. Some might say once every ten depending how stable your bass is.

In any case I just wish people would put this issue to bed. Some prefer one, some the other... and that's just fine. Making broad generalizations about which one is better seems goofy. It's difficult to be scientific about it, and often many of us find the science exposes a truth uglier than we imagined. On another forum, that was very pro-Badass bridge, somebody did an A-B test between a stock P-Bass and the same bass with a Badass II. Guess which bridge won unanimously? That's right, the stock Fender bridge. Not dissing aftermarket stuff at all, but just because it claims to be better doesn't mean it is. It really comes down to individual players and their needs. So no more sweeping generalizations please...

...everybody should have Magnepan speakers in their home stereo system as they are the best sounding speakers, without a shadow of a doubt. I have them, so all people should have them, too.

How's that for not generalizing, Joshua?

jps wrote:...everybody should have Magnepan speakers in their home stereo system as they are the best sounding speakers, without a shadow of a doubt. I have them, so all people should have them, too.

How's that for not generalizing, Joshua?

Yeah, but you were still sweeping!