Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Sweet gig, Dean! That must have been a rush playing in front of all those people. And no denying that hat!

Thanks Mark. It was quite a rush! In the photo during the staging there was a few people on the sidewalks. Not many. But when we turned the corner onto Ste. Catherine St. we were met by an image like the cross street photo. 12 blocks worth! I happened to be on the side of the float that gave me the entire picture. The other guys were looking out the other side of the float so didn't get the full impact until we were under way on the main. There were sooo many people and everyone was singing along with us as we moved along the route. At one point I couldn't hear anything. The crowd response to our singer's call and response antics was so loud it drowned out the PA and even the drummer who hits hard and was right next to my ears. An hour and a half later we got to the end and we were drained. But what a rush!

That is fantastic Dean. Had to be on the career short list for greatest gigs.

My 4004Cii Ruby and I subbed for the bassist in one of Paulie's bands, The Blackouts, this past Friday night. Of course, that's Paulie on the left.

My Ruby 4004 Laredo!

Spirit Of '56 a couple weekends ago.
And, a gratuitous photo of the band, with me and the Elfin 5. Warren does have his 330 so this pics still has Rick content, and my 4004L and 4001V63 (it's there, trust me! ) are sitting in the rack next to my amp.

Wow, that ruby is sweet! I just might have to buy another bass one of these days...

cjj wrote:I just might have to buy another bass one of these days...

Think about one of these, too!

rickenbrother wrote:My 4004Cii Ruby and I subbed for the bassist in one of Paulie's bands, The Blackouts, this past Friday night. Of course, that's Paulie on the left.

Definition of RickenRockers! Cool photo! Where is the like button?

Jeff, that ruby looks sooo nice!!

What are the special features of the Elfin5? Neat shape to it.

The Elfin 5 is a thick walnut body with an birdseye maple top with the biggest birdseyes I have ever seen on a piece of wood, ziricote fingerboard, 34½" scale length, 1⅞" nit width (which is actually a string retainer as there is a zero fret, 24 fret neck (my fretless Elfin 5 goes up to 26 positions), Harvey Citron humbucking pickups with a passive VPT control setup. There is a pull switch on the tone control to choose how the 4 coils in the two pickups are panned; in the down position the pan control works like a typical one and pans between the two humbucking pickups, when the tone switch is puled the coils split in a way that the control pans from the two outer coils in the FCW position and pans to all four coils in operation in the middle, detented, setting and on to the two inner coils in operation only with the control in the FCCW position. This keeps all blend options fully humbucking, and offers an amazing array of tones that some guys who saw and heard me play the bass at my local GC were surprised there was no active electronics in the bass. I can go Jaco, or Marcus, or Geddy, or just about anything else I want, and the Citron pickups can get real nasty and aggressive along with its more full and polite jazz tones for fusion music. When Martin and I were working out the details of the build we talked about pickup placement; I wanted the two outer coiled placed the same as that on my G&L JB-2 USA bass. The only thing I may want Martin to add to the bass are coil tap switches to allow me to solo either pickup in single coil mode (this, obviously with not retain it's humbucking capabilities) but will give me even more tonal options. Keith uses the best components on his instruments so there are Hipshot Ultralite tuners and A style bridges, and Schaller Strap locks. We even discussed what size fret wire I wanted in the bass! It is so nice to be able to specify so much on a custom bass to get just what you want!

The fretless Elfin 5 I have was already built before I ever saw it but it has the same pickups/electronics package but with close spaced pickups and a spruce top on a thick walnut body and the same kind of ziricote fingerboard wood. I bought that bass from Martin after meeting him at the 2010 NAMM Show; it subsequently went on to Bass Player magazine for a review (which is in the June 2010 issue) before Jonathan Herrera sent the bass directly to me.

I can relate to being able to specify all the details. Sheldon did all that for me with my C1 and PW is performing very much the same thing on my WB, although like your Elfin 5, my C1 was entirely spec'd by me. It can spoil you for off the shelf stuff a bit! While most of us couldn't do it all the time, I think every stringed instrument player should try to live that experience at least once in their life.

Congratulations on your custom! Hope I can manage to hear it sometime.

Thanks much, Dean, these instruments do so much for me, especially finding the right 5 string fretless bass. My three Zon basses I had was the first level up from buying a stock instrument, the Martin Keith's take it that much further up the ladder, and I am quite happy where I am at this point with the two Keiths, three different Rick basses, the G&L for the typical Jazz Bass needs, and the out of this world sounding Rick Turner for more acoustic types of music.

Wow, the new Ruby colour really looks great.

Outing for the Blue Boy last year.

Well it's not a picture of me playing my Rick bass but it is a picture of my Wife Jennifer playing her Rick bass back in the early 90's. I was going through some old pictures and some of you here in Southern California have met Jennifer (she came to SCARF last year) so I thought I'd post it up.

She doesn't play much anymore but still has this 1973 4001. You can't really see it but it does have checkered binding and a toaster (but not full width inlays).

Joey helped us set this bass up last year and he used it in one of his excellent set up videos. Anyway, it's not the greatest picture and you can't see Jens' face, but it's the only one I could find. This was the age before camera phones so we don't have a lot of pictures.

This was taken at the "World Famous" Doll Hut in Anaheim. You can see a bit of my back on the left side of the stage. I used to think that was the coolest shirt, now it just looks like I'm one of Catwomans henchmen from the old '60's Batman TV show .

Oh well, we live and learn