Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

That "oops block"...WHAT?

@ walker:
Compliments on the finish - looks old and dirty just like McCartney’s.

I don't understand a few things about the construction methods on the C64.

first, why not route the pickup cavities AFTER gluing the body wings? I mean, that's the way they used to do it when the RM1999 was made, correct? certainly was true through the 70's and 80's.

secondly, why route all the wood away on the neck piece up to the fretboard? Again, the originals still had a quarter inch of wood or so between the cavity and pickup route.

thirdly/lastly, why the heck is that front pickup route so large and deep? the pickups are very shallow and relatively narrow. that's a lot of fudge room, and a lot of supportive material missing.

these things always left me scratching my head as they just seem, well, pretty obvious.

While we're on the subject of the c64's shape, here are some comparison shots. I sourced these from a thread back in '09.

1999RM vs. 4001c64:



4003 vs. 4001c64:

Interesting comparison, Dan. Even that RM looks like it has the bottom wing cut just a little deeper than McCartney's. But it's not like RIC didn't have a chance to use his bass as a template.

For further comparison, my RM is cut pretty close to the Macca bass:



Bob - all those questions are a mystery to me, too. *sigh* I remember the good old days:



For awhile in 1968, RIC used short-pole toasters in the 4001 series basses - simple shallow cavities, stronger necks... too bad it only lasted a year. Some people say that the short-pole toaster pickups are brighter than the long pole, but that's where the tone roll-off pot comes in handy.

...but then that same year they cut those long grooves across the neck for rear access to the truss rods, even though for the life of me I've never heard of anyone having a practical use for rear access to the rods. Hard to win with this company. Oopsenblocker.

Wiker wrote:@ walker: Compliments on the finish - looks old and dirty just like McCartney’s.

Thanks! That's a special "Dirty Vintage" formula I created just for this job.

lucky wrote:Here's the opposite of that - Rick's bass in the normal perspective, and McCartney's reversed:





Great work Mark you nailed it .

I'm not sure how exacting the reproduction was supposed to be, but did anyone notice the shapes of the guards in these two photos are different?

On McCartney's bass: the guard is not flush with the treble surround; it's parallel with the top and control-cavity side, but there's a small gap between the treble surround the and control array.

The part of the guard by the input jack also seems to follow the body outline less on McCartney's bass, and covers slightly more area.

Regardless: it looks pretty excellent, Mark.

Thanks, Sean. As with some parts of the body wood, the C64 pickguard is smaller than McCartney's on the side running below the knobs. Not much I can do about that with Rick's PG obviously, but we never discussed replacing it altogether with a Pickguardian piece, which would be easy enough to do if Rick decides he'd like that aspect more closely replicated.

Based on my instruments, the body wing cut depth may be less important than the depth of the pickup rout in determining the rigidity of the neck angle. I have three basses with the modern cut, and all have good angles with no "fallaway" in the upper register. (All 4003-type models.) However, my '76 4001FL which did have neck angle issues that I bypassed with tailpiece countersinking, has a lower body wing cut very much like Macca's bass. On the other hand the neck pickup rout is quite generous, but this is partly because someone came along and made room for 1/2'' pickup spacing at one point. (Maybe the same guy that thought it needed a P Bass pickup...)

Nic shot of what looks to me as a good neck pickup routing.

download/file.php?id=45049&mode=view

Beautiful job Mark!!!!!! Although....I STILL can't get used to seeing it "Righty"

You have GREAT skill.

FIFY

I can't believe how good this turned out.

sloop_john_b wrote:I can't believe how good this turned out.

I can! Mark is a wiz and he really cares.

Sepp