Commemoration - Your Guitar's Manufacture Anniversary

[kiramdear]

Thanks, Mark. For those willing to settle for simple comforts it can be a nice life, but living aboard can also present its special challenges. All in all, I'm very content in my situation and I like the kind of unpretentious and generous people who share the harbor life.

[ram]

Two July babies in the sun.... that is just somehow very correct. at least in the northern hemi...

[seyesbass]

The August 90 CS was bought new in early 1991.
Its the one in the Rick poster with Squire wearing the Big Generator coat.

[beatlefreak]

My 330 DCM will be three years old the last week of this month.

[johnallg]

Oops, me too. My '84 4003 was 25 years old back in June...

How could I have forgotten the 25th???

4003_body.jpg

That should have been mine; I was stupid....

[johnallg]

I always thought it would be kind of cool to have a Dec bass in my collection to coincide with my birthday.

Anybody got a Sept. '56 4000 prototype lying around unplayed/unloved?

Or a Feb. '52 doodle drawing of Rick prototype ideas??

[cjj]

Oops, me too. My '84 4003 was 25 years old back in June...

How could I have forgotten the 25th???

4003_body.jpg

That should have been mine; I was stupid....

Yeah, Steve beat my snipe when it first showed up on ebay. Then I passed on it when he first put it up on ebay. Finally decided I'd hate myself if I didn't buy it when he put it up again...

[johnallg]

Yeah, Steve offered it to me at RIO!! after I played it. I just really couldn't justify having 6 Ricks, and couldn't decide which to move, so I passed. Now I realize 6 isn't such a bad number.

[walker]

So here we are sufficiently into Oct of '09! Any Halloween babies out there?

[rickenbrother]

So here we are sufficiently into Oct of '09! Any Halloween babies out there?

BOO!!

'81 4001S
Don't let the set neck fool you. This 4001S has awesome Rick tone, plays great too. It looks like some former owner stripped it down and painted it with a roller! But I've never seen a Rick with a finish so horrible still look so cool.


'05 4004Cii BBR
Tony Cabibe is partially responsible for me getting this bass. I LOVE this bass! Thanks T!!

[walker]

Black & Blue - perfect colors for Halloween!

It's hard to tell that there's anything wrong with the black finish in that photo - looks kick a$$ to me. Nice grain to the neck wood, too! My '79 4001SLH is a set neck, and the sustain & action is just as good as any of the other basses I own. The fact that's it's not a neck-through construction hardly ever enters my mind.

Gorgeous 4004cii! Love that flame + blue. I'd suggest you start a Blue Flamers Club, but something tells me that you'd end up with some inflated members.

[berth]

1974-10 My b-115 just after I bought it:

[rickenbrother]

It's hard to tell that there's anything wrong with the black finish in that photo - looks kick a$$ to me.

Thanks to my lousy photography skills!

[cjj]

OK, it's November. Well, mid November already! Since I haven't done so in this thread before, I'll mention my '76 Azureglo 4001. This bass has had a bit of a hard life, before I got it anyway. It belonged to a friend of mine, a guitar player who really doesn't play bass. He found it in a pawn shop 6 or 8 years ago and bought it fairly cheap. Anyway, I was talking to him about basses and he knew I liked Ricks, so he said, "I've got this old blue Rick bass, it had a broken neck, but it's been glued back together and works OK, you should check it out." Well, I didn't think a blue Rick sounded too great to start with (I'm really a Mapleglo guy), and the mention of a broken neck just sounded like something I didn't even want to see.

Well, a couple of years later, I was over at his house and we were doing a little jamming. Really a "different" group, a friend of his who's a Buddhist monk was staying there and was playing his sitar and a keyboard. Not your usual rock & roll session, but really fun. Anyway, he dragged out "old blue" as he called it. I started playing it and the neck was so familiar, just like my old '74 4001 (Mapleglo of course) that I'd had to sell a few years earlier due to financial issues.

Well, he said he didn't want to sell it, but I could just keep it. If something happened to him, it would just be mine. Well, I kept bugging him about it and trying to get him to sell it, but he said no, he only sells stuff if he needs to make room for something else. Well, eventually, he decided he needed another guitar or something and asked me if $700 was OK. Needless to say, it's now all mine.

One of these days I may refinish it to it's original factory glory. I've come to really like the Azureglo color even though I never thought I'd like a blue bass. It's got its share of dings and chips, the neck was split be someone adjusting the truss rods wrong, but the repair is stable enough to handle Rotosound Roundwounds. Someone, at one time, used it as a lefty and put a hole in the lower horn for a strap button. But it plays and sounds absolutely fantastic.

[cjj]

And, on to the new. I've got another November baby, this one's only a year old. I was wanting another bass and saw one online at Wildwood Guitars in Colorado. It was a Mapleglo with some amazing flame, so I called them to ask about it. Well, the guy I was talking to said it was pretty nice, but they had just gotten one in that was even better. He offered to go play both of them and let me know which one sounded better. Well, he said they were both pretty good, but the new one looked a lot better and was just a bit more "alive" sounding. He sent some pictures and I agreed it was better looking, so I bought it then and there over the phone.

Well, it did sound great, but since this was a new bass, I decided it needed a few mods. Coming from a 4001/4003 background, I didn't really like single volume and tone controls. So, I did the stacked knob V/T V/T mod to get individual controls for each pickup.