Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

rickenbrother wrote:

johnallg wrote:

incubus2432 wrote:Now all I have to do is sell the Ci that I haven't even received yet.

Oh, Joey!!!!!!!

John, I should never have played yours!

I figured you had the chance, were considering one, and should use it to best advantage. Then Brian went and changed his mind - a match made just for you!

[sublliminal voice on]Jeff, you will not like a Ci tone and wider neck...[subliminal voice off]

Jeff.....there are a few different spacings available on the Darkstars so I could get one at 3/4" between poles for the bridge and slightly tighter at the neck position.

Mark.....I have seen it in person and played it while JPS had it and IMO MapleGlo is a great "color" for the grain/flame present....certainly a looker. That's one of the reasons why I'm on the fence and exploring other options to changing the facing.

John......let us try to refrain from talking anyone out of the Ci shall we?!?! I don't care if a blood covered circus clown (my biggest fear BTW) is interested......whoever is willing to pony up an offer is fine with me. I'll even consider a slight loss since Mark gave me such a killer deal on the Cii.

Brian, wasn't trying to jeopardize your sale, just playing double devil's advocate. The reason I had Joey try mine at MARF was because he was following the auction you won with an eye to buy. No harm intended.

I took no offense John.....I was just responding in levity.

Actually, I was thinking about this at work today, and Joey can go for it as I really need to sell, not buy anything at the moment.

Nice score, Brian!

....and try not to bloody this one up

My Dark Star project bass is going to be complete this weekend -- definitely looking forward to it. Fred Hammon seems like an easy guy to work with, and I bet he can help you out with the string spacing. Would you go triple Dark Star? Is there even room for that?!

I dunno. Everytime I see the Darkstar pickups, I want to play dominoes.


And I don't even know how to play dominoes.

(It's by Van Morrison, isn't it?)

I'm now leaning towards keeping the Ric p/u's rather than the Darkstars......my 5 string Laredo project will have non-Ric p/u's and electronics already so I think doing the LK 3 p/u mod is the way I'm going. Ahhhhhhh, the ever evolving project. Anyway, going this way necessitates a change in the top wood and with a little searching I came up with a few options that I like......

Quilted maple (for Jared and Paul's lust).....


A nicely grained walnut.....


Some interesting redwood.....


The top will be roughly 1/4" thick. The maple is the safe bet since it will blend nicely tone wise and aesthetically with the Cii maple/walnut/maple sandwich construction. The walnut will also get along nicely and give it a Ci vibe which is cool but I do have the LK so something different would be nice which brings me to the redwood. I love the figuring (or whatever you'd call it) and from what i gather redwood has roughly the same tonal characteristics as walnut so that should be good......my only concern is that the color may be too abrupt of a contrast with the existing walnut/maple. I imagine it could be stained but I'd rather leave it all natural and have plans for a tung oil finish.

So what say you?

Good choices and good analysis Brian. I agree the walnut on top may not give enough variation tone-wise from the Lemmy, as you said. My concern for the redwood, especially with just a tung oil finish, is it will be way too soft to hold up as a top surface. Besides, the quilted maple is hard to beat, and with an 8-er, would provide a complementary tone for the octave strings.

I'm having fun.

Yeah......whay John said.....The Maple is cool!

Quilted maple! Unh unh gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Yeah...what Paul said....The Maple is way cool!

John.... I knew that burled redwood needed a hard topcoat but, for whatever reason, I thought other variations could be treated like walnut and after further research I see that I may be wrong.....as you pointed out. Drats!

The project Cii arrived today and upon eyeballing it for a few I think that the redwood would be "too much" considering the contrast with the maple/walnut/bubinga. So that leaves me with walnut or maple. The walnut would be nice from a complete makeover aspect but the quilted maple, as has been mirrored by opinions above, is probably the best way to go and likely where I'm heading. After looking over the Cii a bit I waver still on whether I should be so drastic in replacing the body top....the truss rod access routes aren't annoying me as much as I thought they would and the existing wood does have a nice flame/grain pattern. BUT I'm really hung up on wanting the LK p/u configuration so there isn't much choice but to break out the router/sander.

One last dilemma (for the moment at least) is that my plan all along was to go with a tung oil finish which means stripping the CV. Not an issue except that this Cii happens to have a finished fretboard. I think I'll just go with a chemical stripping and plan on replacing the fretmarkers. I'd hate to mess up the fretwork with a sanding mishap. I'll have to check the Curmudgeon Forum for an experienced opinion as well.

Off to hunt for more quilted maple......

Quilted maple with a translucent color on it would be stunning, but would add a lot of cost to the project, and also get away from the no-hard-finish-tung oil concept you are headed towards.

As for the redwood, every type of redwood I have seen and worked with has been a really soft piece of wood and even with a thick CV coating would "worm" way too easily.