Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I was thinking about two 4001's I've seen over the years that had slightly nonstandard features, and thought it might be fun to see what other odd basses others have seen.

The first was in the window of Manny's music in NYC back in the early 70's. it was a fretless 4001 with what appeared to be finished in autumnglo sunburst, I color I don't remember seeing at that time. I think the body might have had some birds eye figure to it, but I'm not sure anymore. The odd feature was the position markers on the fingerboard, which were ovals, and not triangles. It was a real pretty bass!

The other odd feature was on the very first 4001 I ever played, which belonged to a friend in high school. He had just gotten the bass new. it was in Burgundyglo, and the odd feature was that the checkerboard binding was not black and white squares, but triangles! I've never seen that before or since. This was in 1972.

odd non-standard features???

http://www.3dentourage.com/425/shame.htm

OK, but I meant from the factory....

Every fretless I have seen has had dots like an S model it must have been customized.

It may have been, but it was in the window with the tags on it, and it looked new. I assumed it was some one off thing Ric did.

Do any of you guys remember the "Shadow" with shark-tooth inlays that showed up on the 'bay a while back? I remember JH saying that back in those days this kind of stuff happened once in a while.....where someone in the factory would experiment or do a "one off" type of thing....

This is a funky 64 with a 4 piece body, including the neck, instead of the usual 3.


And a beautiful birds eye maple neck, that you certainly don't see that often on Ric basses.

Chris;

In the “slow days” of the 1980’s, was it not possible to get checker binding on anything?

When I saw that bass for sale, I thought it was a JG / BT, with checker binding.

I once saw a 4080 from the 80’s with C/B.

BTW, did you buy the black bass in question?????

Chris, that was my thought, that they tried out different things every so often. I'm quite sure the fretless I saw was stock.

That Shadow has the same orange wood fingerboard as my first 4001, which also has a curly maple neck. Andrew, that birdseye neck is beautiful!