Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Welcome, George!

As you pour through the various "Model of the Week" submissions, you'll find that the 4000 and the 4001S from the early '70s to early '80s were made with a common chassis, some with routes for both pickups. They were set neck design, a bit more economical for the factory to manufacture and without any performance degradation. The 4000 ended production in the early '80s, and the 4001S was replaced by the 4003S (all unbound).

Welcome, George!

Too bad the shop did such a hack job of the routing, certainly not up to RIC's levels of workmanship.

welcome,george--- your bass looks very similar to my 74 4000. the faded white with the black trc and pg. it has no neck pickup,and that's the way it will stay while i own it.....

Thanks folks! Wish this forum had been around back then. I was an uninformed consumer. Just wanted an axe that sounded like Macca's. Paul toured with Wings that summer. And after catching two of their three dates at the Forum, I had to have a RIC. The 1976 product catalog didn't dwell on the neck differences. A 4000 with the added p'up looked like just the ticket.

I've considered cleaning up the hack job with a proper router, but it would only take away more material. As it stands, they did a decent job of removing only the bare minimum to accommodate the pickup.

The "set neck" design doesn't run as deep (top down) as neck through body, so I'm leaving bad enough alone.

Sure do miss the original white. The black on white looked so classy when it was new.

Welcome to the forum, George!

Nothing wrong with a set neck 4001S. I'll put my set neck 4001S up against any 4001. It sounds and plays just as great!

Welcome George!
Yeah, the route is pretty awful, but I think you're right in not cleaning it up. Unless you're going to show it off without the pickguard, who cares? Hey, it works, looks fine with the guard on, and adds a bit of interesting history to the bass...

I would NOT remove more material from the set neck joint just to make it look prettier. Welcome aboard.

Welcome to the forum George.... why take the time to clean something not seen - especially when you could be playing it!!! So how does it sound?

ram wrote:Welcome to the forum George.... why take the time to clean something not seen - especially when you could be playing it!!! So how does it sound?

Absolutely. I also considered refinishing it, and nixed that idea too. Old yeller is more fun to play than to tinker with.

The new neck pickup sounds amazing! And it was a good chance to clean up the solder joints. I made a better ground connection in the new tailpiece too, so noise is way down. Though with all the changes at once, who knows what helped the most?

I've always loved the sound of this bass. Now with the tailpiece lift resolved, volume and noise improved, and a fresh set of Rotosounds, I'm having a delightful time rocking out with an old friend.

And I hesitate to mention this, as it would likely be considered heresy on a RIC forum, but I installed the $65 Allparts tailpiece/bridge.

I'll let you know how it holds up in another 30 years or so.

A better post-repair photo:

Very pretty. Thanks for the pic, George.

George, very nice - I wouldn't refin it either. Play that beast!

George, welcome and what a great old bass. Mark