Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Thanks Sheena, Peter and John.

In real life it's ten times nicer than it looks in the pics that I posted.

Brian, I know exactly what you mean about the color. Here are two pics of my 4001 Walnut (gloss, not satin finish), one that shows it to be redder than it is, and one that has been tweaked to be extremely close to the actual color:



Note how the tweaking distorted the adjacent Fireglo's color to way-too-pink.

Gary,

After looking at your pictures, (nice basses btw) you have me wondering now if mine is indeed Autumnglo. How do you tell the difference between Walnut and AG? They look awfully similar in photographs.

In the 70's, Autumnglo and Walnut were the same finish - the difference was AG was matte, while WAL was glossy.

I don't know about you Brian, but AG + black plastic is one of my favorite color combos. Give it a try!

John my bass is not super glossy like my JG 4003 is, but is not exactly a matte finish either. The seller told me it was AG. But now I have some doubt about the veracity of his statement.

Also, don't know if this helps, but AG was made for the Canadian market, WAL for the US market.

THIS is walnut;

Really John?

You're pulling my leg. Right?

I kid you not, i've definitley heard that before.

So perhaps the seller was correct when he said it was AG.

My bass does have a bit of a shine though. Well I won't lose sleep over it. I am sure that someone with a lot more knowledge of Rickenbacker finishes than I have will correctly identify the color for me.

root beer glo

That's what friends are for.

Brian - your bass is just like my first Rickenbacker bass. I purchased it in the Toronto area around 1982-3 and it was a 4001 in the same finish as yours. Definitely a gloss finish. Perhaps yours has just lost a bit of it's shine over the years. I'd call the finish Walnut - a very subtle light brown burst.
As a side note, I sold that bass to a shop in Toronto in the early 90's. It had a replacement bridge and Alembic pickups (yeah, I know, I know...), but I included the original bridge and electronics when it was sold. If anyone out there recognizes this bass, I'd sure love to hear about it.

Thanks Steve,

Phew! Now I can sleep tonight.

That's a great story. I wonder where your bass ended up.

Gary I like the black on the Fireglo.