Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hi,
A few months ago I thought it would be clever to disassemble my 4001 completely in order to clean it up, I needed to take out the bridge in order to replace the saddles anyway so I thought it would be a good idea to give it a good clean up...
Luckily our own Ilan was there to stop me right before I unwelded the bridge pickup and yelled at me that "I should never unweld original weldings only to clean my bass", I listened and didn't do that.
A week or so ago I decided to assemble it back, I didn't like the fact that the parts were all stored and was afraid I'll lose them (I am still waiting for a friend at work to find the time to work on the saddles for me).
When I assembled the tailpiece I noticed that one of the screws won't go straight, only at a small angle, no matter what I did. 2 screws fitted perfectly, one was a bit off (I have the original 3 screws tailpiece)
What threw me off was that I felt that the tailpiece is no longer perfectly aligned with the body. It could be my imagination and it could be that it was like that before I took it off, I am not really sure. It seems that the tailpiece completely covers the layout of the old placement but again - I could be mistaken as this is mapleglo and it's hard to notice the difference in the coloring, especially when looking at supposedly half a mm of misplacement...

IIRC (the bass is stored, I will check again tomorrow) the tailpiece is NOT at the same distance from the binding at both edges, one edge is < 1mm closer.

Does it matter?
Is it common for a tailpiece not to "sit straight" for instrument made at these years and to have different distances from the bindings at both edges?
Is it common for a hole to be a bit off?

Thanks.

did you start all three screws before you tightened any of them down? If you tighten the screws in one at a time (before you start the other two) it can throw the screw hole alignments off by shifting the bridge slightly one way or the other.

Nopes, all together, searched for the "only" position in which all 3 fit best, the best position I found was with the 1st (most left one when looking at the bass from the bottom - up) going at a small angle.

Try putting the screws into the body, say halfway, without the tailpiece in place and see how they line up or if they are angled relative to each other. This may give you some clue.

Thanks, good idea! I'll try it today and let you know

OK, I checked, I couldn't tell if the screw is straight or not by just putting it by itself, so what I did was to try and put only the supposedly off screw with the bridge and then see of the other fit and they, perfectly, but the screw still doesn't look that straight so it could be that I am wrong in thinking that it is at an angle.
However:

1. One edge of the tailpiece (upper) is going halfway through the checkerboard while the other edge (lower) is going all across the checkerboard until the white binding.
2. The tailpiece is DEFINITELY not at the same place, I see a <1mm "dirt signs" of the old location, the tailpiece is now almost 1mm back. But there seems to be no other way of putting it, the screws really fit well.

Could it be that it was wrong all this time?
Could it be affected from the fact that there is no tension of any strings right now?

This is actually pretty good for me as I had a hard time tuning my bass before, the saddle was all the way back and the E string was still sharp at the 12th fret... putting the cutting point 1mm further will actually help me...

My experience with replacing screws is that as long as you ease them in, they tend to go back to their original orientation. It is possible to slightly "re-thread" the hole if you don't take care to find the thread grooves, but introducing a new angle seems like it would take a fair bit of torque. I'm thinking that most likely, this is how the tailpiece has been all along, although that's confounded in that you now seem to be able to intonate the E string properly.

Not yet, the bridge is not at my house so I can't tune the strings.
I made sure not to use too much power and re-thread the holes.
Perhaps I wasn't clear in my previous post - the bridge is definitely closer to the binding now than it has been before, I can see the old marks from the previous position.

Do you have before and after pics?

I wish.
I can have "after" pics, but not before.
As I said - It is clear that the bridge is now ~1mm lower as I can see the dirt marks of the old position.

gibsonlp wrote:Perhaps I wasn't clear in my previous post - the bridge is definitely closer to the binding now than it has been before, I can see the old marks from the previous position.

Hey Gil: You were certainly clear enough; I just read things too quickly.

My thoughts are that a tailpiece that's off something like a millimeter or so from its angle to the fingerboard is not likely to cause any problems with playability, but if you ever sell the bass, it might be a turn-off to a buyer. But it sounds more like an aesthetic issue now. If it does indeed help you to intonate the E string better (still not sure on that, as you posted "This is actually pretty good for me as I had a hard time tuning my bass before, the saddle was all the way back and the E string was still sharp at the 12th fret... putting the cutting point 1mm further will actually help me...").

Is it possible that the "problem" screw was a problem to a previous owner of the bass, and that he put a wood splinter in the hole to "straighten out" the seating of the screw, and that when you removed the screw the splinter came out? If so, then perhaps even though the screw is now seated "crooked" the effect is that the tailpiece/bridge is better positioned for intonation, like maybe it was before the splinter?

Or have I been watching too much of the X-Files?

I am not a bass expert, but I recently had an experience with a "skewed" 4001 3-screw tailpiece, meaning that the low E end was closer to the checker binding than the G end and also not lined up evenly compared to the neck-thru (see photo), but after talking to some folks and comparing notes, we concluded that many of the late '60s/early '70s tailpieces are like that.
Someone should write a book. . . .

Here are a couple more skewed tailpieces for reference:
Notice the tilt is going the same direction relative to stringing.

Wow,
Mine feels like a straight arrow in comparison with these...
I'll take a picture during the weekend and upload it.

Could "skewing" the tailpiece in the manner pictured above be attempts to get the intonation right on those basses?