Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

LOL that storys exactly like what happened to me when i brought my 73 back from the states.......except for the small detail that i just walked through.

Yes, you're right Grant...

I just dug out my Machine Head LP and it has lots of pictures on the inner cover taken during the recordings and the 4001 is there with stock pickups.

It is Jetglo though, so maybe Roger had a fireglo 4001 also which had the modifications?

Hey, Grant. Welcome back, as it were.
Yes, Glover's 4001 on the 'Machine Head' inner cover pics sure looks like a 1970/1971. Can't tell whether it is a 21 fretter, though.

Grant: Great Rickenbacker forensic bass work. Thanks for sharing the quote from Roger Glover.

Here's a couple of pics of Roger Glover with a 4001.
I'm just wondering....are they the same bass?
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/hard-rockcity/glover.htm

scroll down for this one:
http://www.hendrixguitars.com/Ba781.htm

The second picture looks more recent, so if it is the same bass, it has been re-modded with a different neck pick up.....it might be the picture, but it doesn't look like the stock pick up on that one.

I had no idea that UK customs were that bad, have things changed?

The first picture is the same one as on the back of "Deepest Purple". In the second one the bass has Bartolinis. It is the same bass to the best of my knowledge. One thing I find strange; I was studying Roger's bass on the video last week and noticed that the "cresting" part of the headstock was thinner than on my Feb 72, which has walnut wings. All the earlier headstocks I've seen i.e. with walnut wings (post 60s large headstock that is)have been like mine. When the walnut was dropped around 72 and the skunk introduced, most of the headstocks seem to have become like Roger's (my '73 4000 and Owen's old '73 appear to be the pretty much the same).Therefore looking at the headstock, given all the Ricks I've ever seen, I'd have thought it was slightly later than mine. I'd have been wrong though! Just goes to show how inconsistent they were in terms of detailing. Great story BTW!

Hey Owen, next time you go to the States bring me back a guitar!(if I'd have done that they'd have caught me and thrown the book at me....I was born with a suspicious-looking face!)

Great story, thanks Grant! I learn so much from this forum.

It's not a 21 fret 4001. Decidedly.

Shaun...
Here's a shot of my '71 4001 headstock

Roger's 4001 was modified just AFTER Made in Japan (spring-summer 1972). You can also hear it in Who Do We Think We Are (Recorded in August 1972): It hasn't the classic ric sound anymore.

I thought I had made it through customs with two Rics last year, you get either a red ticket or a green one in Perú where you disembark (red gets inspected, green no), and i got a green one and thought ahh, I'm all set. I was trying to hurry my wife through who makes a turtle seem like a race horse when someone from the customs office spotted my two basses and said (in Spanish) Come here son, what do you have in those two cases? haha! I paid.

Unlucky Robert! (that'd be me all over..)

Marcello, I'll have to check that out; haven't heard that album in years.

And Grant, sorry its taken me so long to reply. Yeah, your headstock looks pretty much identical to mine (I'm going to have to get a digital camera, or at least a decent scanner). We should try and get some sort of visual library of all these details going, it'd be really useful in the future.