Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

That's a great photo. Very clearly shows the bass.

First thing he did to the original bass was fit a Thunderbird pickup (that and sand off the salmon pink finish!!!!). He "bought two of the pickups in the West End" (of London, famous for its guitar shops).He also apparently wired it wrong and didn't find out 'til years later; I've been informed the output was (would you believe) really low. The brass scratchplate etc came later, if you watch the vids even up to Ace of Spades (which I consider a later album ) it had a white one.

The three main basses he used in the early Motorhead period were the original, the maple-necked one and the white BT one. You can see them on the inside sleeve of No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith, and I saw all 3 at various times during the early days. I always felt the first sounded the best, although I always loved his sound anyway.

How many basses, pick ups on basses, handrests on basses...This whole thread seems like Overkill to me....

wints wrote:How many basses, pick ups on basses, handrests on basses...This whole thread seems like Overkill to me....

Everything louder than everything else!

Eden.

wim wrote:Has anyone got more info on what kind of mods this bass went through?
It seems to be a skunkstripe 4001, but the pickup positions etc are not correct, and I can not distinguish a pickguard on it.
Both pickups seem to be HB's sunk into the wood and the pickupcover is screwed on.
There's a video where John Hall has Lemmy's original bass (a RM 1999?) and talks about restoring it to original conditions.
Is there any news on that one?

Looking at that pic of that early 4001s bass, it is amazing that besides all the mods, Lemmy still clinged to the original bridge??? Either it must be better than most of the forumites stated, or Lemmy just gives a damn about intonation (does he really have to?)???

I noticed in one the earlier pictures that his strings seem to be of a pretty heavy gauge.

heinpete wrote:Looking at that pic of that early 4001s bass, it is amazing that besides all the mods, Lemmy still clinged to the original bridge??? Either it must be better than most of the forumites stated, or Lemmy just gives a damn about intonation (does he really have to?)???

The stock bridge intonates just fine. I don't know what all of this "It's awful!!!" stuff is about; the deal is, if the bridge is working properly and the tailpiece isn't lifting much/at all, it is a great piece of hardware to have on your bass in my experience. If it has "issues" that's a whole other matter.

rictified wrote:I noticed in one the earlier pictures that his strings seem to be of a pretty heavy gauge.

Bob...Good to see you here!

There was a very heavily used JG Jan 73 on eBay France a while back that was meant to have been used by Lemmy back in the mid 70's. It was @$3000 USD and had no takers IIRC.

wints wrote:

rictified wrote:I noticed in one the earlier pictures that his strings seem to be of a pretty heavy gauge.

Bob...Good to see you here!

There was a very heavily used JG Jan 73 on eBay France a while back that was meant to have been used by Lemmy back in the mid 70's. It was @$3000 USD and had no takers IIRC.

What's up Andy?

wints wrote:How many basses, pick ups on basses, handrests on basses...This whole thread seems like Overkill to me....

Nice