Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Has anyone got more info on what kind of mods this bass went through?
It seems to be a skunkstripe 4001, but the pickup positions etc are not correct, and I can not distinguish a pickguard on it.
Both pickups seem to be HB's sunk into the wood and the pickupcover is screwed on.
There's a video where John Hall has Lemmy's original bass (a RM 1999?) and talks about restoring it to original conditions.
Is there any news on that one?

It's so heavily modded, there's no reason to think he didn't have a luthier laminate it or just paint an opaque color to get rid of the original (then filled) routing so he could end up with a bass like this. Pretty cool IMO.

One of the first things I played when I got my Ric was Ace Of Spades! Been wanting to do that for awhile.

cassius987 wrote:It's so heavily modded, there's no reason to think he didn't have a luthier laminate it or just paint an opaque color to get rid of the original (then filled) routing so he could end up with a bass like this. Pretty cool IMO.

That seems a lot of work, no?

Low End Lover wrote:One of the first things I played when I got my Ric was Ace Of Spades! Been wanting to do that for awhile.

and did you succeed in annoying the neighbours?

Former forumite phlemmy posted a link to another forum with a lot of info on Lemmy's basses once. If someone has this, could someone PB me this link? I cannot find it. (And it is not on the official iMotorhead forum.)

The eagle sticker is a nice touch.

Or not.

If you gave me this bass, it'd be in the wood chipper in a matter of minutes.

It is a motorhead logo.

deja vu

Either way, it makes me sick to look at it, and I'm not alone. From too feet it's the eagle. And they intended it like that.

I sympathise with Lemmy and his basses. It's music and rock & roll, the Sex Pistols offended in the 70's, it's fashion and we all still like 'em.

wim wrote:

cassius987 wrote:It's so heavily modded, there's no reason to think he didn't have a luthier laminate it or just paint an opaque color to get rid of the original (then filled) routing so he could end up with a bass like this. Pretty cool IMO.

That seems a lot of work, no?

Well if you'll notice, the whole thing seems to have undergone a lot of work. Thus, I'm not ruling out something I normally would...

it's still political and it's still not for RRF discussion.

Ilan, I think he put the sticker on it just to have people react like you do now.
It may be bad taste, it's Lemmy you know, he doesn't care about anyone else's opinion.

You know, it's Lemmy... and it's rock 'n' roll.

You will notice several edits here with the view to sticking to the music and staying away from political issues which will only take this otherwise interesting thread south. I would ask that we refrain from comments of a political nature so that this thread may continue.

Low End Lover wrote:One of the first things I played when I got my Ric was Ace Of Spades! Been wanting to do that for awhile.

and did you succeed in annoying the neighbours?

Well their dog barks enough that they've got no room to gripe. I think I did scare the dog when I ran the 4003 through my vintage RAT, which is good for him IMO!

LEL

wim wrote:There's a video where John Hall has Lemmy's original bass (a RM 1999?) and talks about restoring it to original conditions. Is there any news on that one?

The bass in that video has an extra dot inlay at the 19th fret which RM' 1999s don't have. That bass looks like a very early 70's 4000/1S with the walnut wings and the extra inlay.

I believe I read somewhere the bass was around a '69/'70 and was originally a 4000. It has the shorter headstock so was definitely not an RM (when did the shorter headstock come in, was it before or after '69?).