Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I noticed that there are two different truss rod covers,one says "MADE IN USA" and the other says "MODEL 4001 MADE IN USA".When did RIC make this change,I've noticed some 1971's have both,the one on Grinning Elk has the "4001" type which I included a link. http://www.grinningelk.com/product/822/ ... acker-4001

There's lots of different types of TRC's. Moulded plastic with raised-letters, back painted plexi TRC's, some have 'made in USA' parallel to the Rickenbacker script, some have it directly below. Some have the model designation, some don't. Then there's however many 'special' types.

I'm not sure if theres a definitive timeframe for when the switch was made for each model.

Some are longer, go almost to the trough of the cresting wave.

Plus, all of those variables in left-handed and right-handed flavors.

My bass is a '74, so the neck/headstock were the same on RH or LH models back then (right? mostly right?). But, and you can always tell when marketing was at the meeting, you can read "Rickenbacker" on either. This one (thick plexiglass) just has "Made in the U.S.A." and I thought it may have been bogus. The majority of the 4001 TRCs I knew had "Model 4001" on them. I know that if you wanted to switch out covers, you need to cough up one first. I'm guessing you'd get back the correct orientation. Maybe THAT is what limits lefty production. Gotta switch up the printer.

I like the aesthetics of the earlier lefties with the headstock/body lines and the "Rick" section on the cover not obscured so much by the strings. Kinda subjective, though.

Up until the mid '70s or so, the plastic TRC's were clear acrylic, with the lettering back painted by either screen printing or tampo printing. These varied a lot as early ones were fairly long, later ones shorter (to fit the stockier headstocks that came in early 1972). Once in a while you find the early one with white lettering and black background. Then the company produced the "molded" style with the raised lettering. These were injection-molded plastic usually molded in white plastic, but the handy thing about the molded one is that it was designed to fit most of the guitars and basses in the line. They all come out of the mold the same shape, but some receive additional contouring to fit shorter heads or to avoid string interference as on the 12-string guitars. At this point, some of them received the model designation by what appears to be an engraving machine after the actual molding. Molded TRCs are fitted to right-handed models only; all lefties have the old style clear acrylic because the mold was made only for right-handed instruments. All of the vintage model basses (except for the abbreviated "B" series) have clear-acrylic TRCs as another "vintage" feature.