Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hey fellow bass players. I am giving all of my basses fairly exhaustive setups now that I own this handy little tool called... a tiny, precise ruler. And I was noticing on one of my basses, my 4003 AFG as it were, that the string spacing is not totally even. This is actually my fault in a way. RIC sent this bass from the factory in 2007, with a slight "saddle wobble" on a couple of the strings--oddly it took time for the wobble to actually develop, over a month of steady playing, which still boggles me as the issue is fairly intrinsic to a feature of the saddles that can't easily be changed (post height). Anywho, I called RIC and they sent me new saddles to replace the wobbly ones. I cut the new ones myself and that was over a year ago, when I was just starting out becoming my own guitar tech. Well, I did a decent job, but not perfect. The spacing between A/D and D/G is dead on, but I clammed the E/A space so that it's about 3/32'' off (smaller than the others).

So... I would really like to order new saddles from RIC and get this set up right. However, I don't want to if we're currently experiencing another wave of slightly off-tolerance saddles because then I will have to go through all of that again. Normally I'd be willing to just shim the post from the bottomside of the bridge but these off-tolerance saddles also do bad things for your action--they usually push the string in question further away from the fingerboard than the other saddles, that sit flush to the bridge, do.

The short of it: if you've gotten a 2010 4003, 4001C64, or 4001C64S, did the bridge give you any trouble, or is it solid as a rock? If you haven't had any problems, don't worry your sweet little punkin' head and go looking, because I have found this issue is pretty much either "on" or "off"--99% of the saddles will either wobble or they won't (rather than changing behavior sometimes as mine oddly did, but once they made the "shift" it was permanent...) and if they do wobble you'll hear it when playing unplugged.

Nobody? I thought we had a few 2010 owners here. Maybe no news is good news!!

Yeah, I think so. My 2010 seems just fine...

Saddles aren't that expensive. 5 bucks each? Put 'em on and find out, then file the groove. When I'm filing fresh saddles I measure with a dial caliper to get the groove centered and a triangular file to cut.

If one string is higher than the rest, cut it's groove deeper.

Sorry I hv a 2010 but its a 360 12!

I've got a 2010 MG 4003.

Bridge saddles actually did give me a small issue....developed a bit of looseness over first couple of months.

Became quite audible, and obviously quite annoying!

When I got it setup, action as low as it would go, the luthier took a look, and at first glance thought the offending saddle would have to be replaced or modified. However, with a little tweaking, he sorted the problem.

It's the first saddle issue I've had on any Ric, but in the right hands, problem solved....so not technically a problem at all.

Incidentally, slightly off-topic, but my 2010 4003 has a lot less bottom end than others I've owned.....not a bad thing....it's got a real kind of bouncy, Squire-esque tone (more 4001?). It really cuts through, and I've been gigging it a lot!

With bottom end I find most of my Rics have too much and I have to dial it back in EQ all the time or else club owners complain, so now I set my pickups so that the G string side is a mm closer than the E string side. That seems to even it out.

Thanks for the comments... I know saddles are relatively cheap but shipping and time involved are also factors for me.

"How are the bridge saddles of 2010?"

New bass model, the 2010? ...

aceonbass wrote:The last 5 bridge saddles I ordered from RIC sat TOO TALL AGAIN!The amount of time this takes to fix is completely disproportional to what they cost. The adjusting screw hole is still being drilled about 1MM too low on the saddle post.

aceonbass wrote:The proper files for slotting a string saddle are gauged nut files, NOT triangular files. I don't even think RIC uses those any more.

Probably so. But a few years ago Mike Parks at the Rickenbacker Page told me that a triangular file is what RIC used, so I bought one. I also have gauged nut files and have used them to file Rick saddle slots. Having tried both, I have come to the conclusion that I much prefer the triangular file.

I have used a triangular file, and it seems to work fine for bridge saddles. I have not used one to cut a nut, and I think that I would probably go with round files for that.