Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I'm not buying the fashion statement theory. Someone wanted to ugly it up on purpose, but I concur with Mr. Hall that there's an ex-somebody involved.

dpowell wrote:

Ever see the '59 Les Paul Standard converted to a left-hander, with an extra cutaway and moved controls?

lp59mod.jpg

The lefthanded people must be stopped!

Ah, I remembered it wrong... controls not moved, but surrounded by 'something" . I forgot about the vibrato thing too.

If you want to see some more horrors, find a book (probably long out of print now) called 'Guitar Electronics For Musicians' by Donald Brosnac... and take a look at the last page. Mr. Brosnac is shown sitting proudly in the middle of a collection of vintage guitars which would nowadays be worth an absolute fortune - except that every one of them has the pickups out of something else fitted in various strange locations! But it was the 1970s, and that's what a lot of people did with guitars...

Including a certain quite well-known guitarist who had a 60s ES-335, which he modified in some way (I can't remember what) that destroyed it. Undeterred, he took one of the pickups from it and hacked a hole in his late-50s Strat so it would fit. He didn't bother with cutting the pickguard to fit, just cut the bit with the controls off and put that back on the body, then nailed the humbucker into the hole he'd made for it and covered the guitar with stripes made from masking tape.

Or something like that. His name was Eddie Van Halen and he changed the world with that mess of a hacked-up Strat.

If you think that's bad you should find out what he did to his amp... not just modified, but unreliable (it ate tubes like they were flash bulbs) and probably highly dangerous too. And his pedalboard, containing among other things the gutted shell of an early Vox Tonebender used to switch something else, and the whole lot held together with duct tape. I have no idea how it even worked properly, let alone survived touring... but it did. Genius knows no limitations!

However, I doubt this applies to whoever cut up that 4003.

I was browsing this book this morning and marveled over the same photo. I'm thinking it has to do with the original publishing date of the book--before the vintage and originality trends took hold? I'll have to look when I get home...

kiramdear wrote:I'm not buying the fashion statement theory. Someone wanted to ugly it up on purpose .....

Of course, that is part of wanting something different. Look at what some people do to their own bodies.

johnallg wrote: And what is it with blue Ricks and cakes?!

Mine is Turquoise.

If your cake is turning turquoise, it's time to throw it away!

jingle_jangle wrote:I was browsing this book this morning and marveled over the same photo. I'm thinking it has to do with the original publishing date of the book--before the vintage and originality trends took hold? I'll have to look when I get home...

Could somebody please scan and post this photo?

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a few electronics-whiz guitar techs knew about the .0047 capacitor and how to bypass it back then. When I bought my '73 4001 a couple years ago it looked like it hadn't been played in 10 or 15 years and its cap was removed. The bass sounds great, btw.

But my point is...The circuit is pretty simple. With all the electronics meddling that was going on in the 70's, isn't it possible that some of the high-profile Rick bass players had theirs bypassed?

Does anybody know for sure that Macca, Squire, Lee, Glover, etc. and their guitar techs left their electronics stock?

Just a thought. I know Macca's bass coming back to RIC in the 70's is very well documented. And I'm guessing that VG could answer for CS's RM1999.

Shame.

rickaddict wrote:Could somebody please scan and post this photo?

Sorry, I lent my copy to someone a while ago and haven't got it back yet. It's actually a very good book if you can find a copy - it is quite dated in many ways (not just the pic of the very mid-70s-styled author and his shop of horrors!), but the basics of how a guitar circuit works haven't changed, of course.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a few electronics-whiz guitar techs knew about the .0047 capacitor and how to bypass it back then. When I bought my '73 4001 a couple years ago it looked like it hadn't been played in 10 or 15 years and its cap was removed. The bass sounds great, btw.

But my point is...The circuit is pretty simple. With all the electronics meddling that was going on in the 70's, isn't it possible that some of the high-profile Rick bass players had theirs bypassed?

I'm fairly sure that I read an interview with Felix Pappalardi of Mountain, who used one of those Gibson EB-1s - actually the bass that the Hofner Violin Bass was copied from or at least inspired by! - and which also had a cap on it's enormous 25K-ohm neck-position humbucker... presumably to stop it blowing the speakers straight out of the front of bass amps of the 1950s . But by the 70s, speakers would take that kind of massive low-end, and I think he mentioned something about 'taking the cap out' of his bass. If so, that would help explain his absolutely earth-shakingly huge bass tone.

I agree, this is not good and everyone is outraged. I don't understand something though.....

.......lots of people thought it was cool to smash up guitars. Is this a worse crime?

It's the expression of rage thing... uncontrolled, it's performance art and a social statement, and the Kids were most definitely Not Alright. This applies to both Townshend and also to the ironic possibility of the intentions of the destruction of the bass that is the inspiration for this thread.

If, in fact, there's a hurt Significant Other responsible for the hack, my hope is that she got satisfaction from her acting out. The bass, its owners, and our own eyes and sensibilities are suffering, in that order.

My own feeling is that it is too contrived, and this defacing was a conscious effort on the part of some misguided, twisted Neanderthal, who was overreaching to make some sort of "statement". Who needs contrived art, and how can it possibly trump honest expression?

(Never thought I'd have anything good to say about wanton destruction of beautiful artifacts...but whoever hacked this bass has even less to say.)

Now, if he'd done it in front of an audience he might have something

BlueAngel wrote:If you want to see some more horrors, find a book (probably long out of print now) called 'Guitar Electronics For Musicians' by Donald Brosnac.

I have that book! Unfortunately, it is still packed away from my move in to the house over two years ago!