Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

You'll get used to it Lindsay, just take it easy at first.

The first song that I played on my 12 string was Pearl Jams's "Jeremy".

Jared, I am still most definitely interested! I really prefer the 4008 setup to the bass-on-top style of the 4003S/8. Please feel free to email me at hieronymous.three at gmail dot com. Hope this isn't inappropriate for the forum! Please let me know if it is!

I didn't find the transition too bad. In fact, the track above was my first experience with an eight-string. We were recording at Elektra in L.A. at the time and putting down the basic tracks for a concept album that was kind of a folk opera-type thing. Harry Chapin had the studio during the day and being the low men on the Elektra totem pole (really low....like on the part of the pole that's buried in the ground) we had the studio for the night shift. It must have been eight or nine PM every day before we could even start working. I had heard of the 8's, but had never actually seen or heard one in the flesh. I wondered how it would sound on this track and we managed to find one at a 24/7 equipment rental place where you could get just about any type of instrument on an hourly rental basis. We sent somebody out to get it, I opened the case, tuned it up, spent about ten minutes getting used to it and we cut the basic track in a couple takes. Total rental time was only a couple of hours including transporting it to and from the studio. Interestingly, one of the main reasons that I wanted to try one in the first place was that my ultimate dream guitar had always been the Rickenbacker 12-string and this was about as close as a bass player could get to playing one.

I can't remember whether we ran it straight into the board or through my old B-15. It could have been a little brighter but even so, the engineer liked working with it a lot more than my old Frankenstein fretless Gibson which only had a single mudbucker at that time. I never did buy one, since when we played the folk opera live it was one continuous piece with only a half-time intermission. There were no breaks long enough to switch basses between songs (which is why that track cuts-off abruptly at the end) but it worked nicely on the album. I'm slowly saving up bits and pieces to make one unless I stumble across a Ric 8-string that I can afford and happen to have any money at the time.

Congratulations Lindsay. Is it the 12/34 model or the earlier w/Petersson signature at the decal inside?

Thanks, Pekka. I'm no Waterstone expert, but I think it's a kind of transitional 12/34. No signature, 48mm nut width, but the body is 16 inches across, not 15. I understand from reading the forum at 12stringbass.com that some of the 12/34s have TP2 bodies, mine may be one.