Something very special is making its way through the factory
Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2014 5:42 pm
Hi Everyone,
My name is Brendan and I'm customer service over here at RIC. I don't really post on here but i do frequently read whats going on in the forums. Being a RIC fan myself it always is nice to look through whats being discussed and take in the wealth of knowledge that everyone here has. Its always nice to read up on what you guys are thinking of what is going on and take that into account to hopefully be a better service to all of you if you ever need my assistance also. If there is ever anything that any of you need help with please contact me at RIC and I'll do whatever i can to help. My sincere apologies to anyone who has had a negative experience with customer service and all i can say is that I'm here at RIC to genuinely help in any way that i can. Lets get to the point of this post though, about 2 years ago I had to sell my White 4001 (my prized possession) in order to buy a car so i could continue to get back and forth to work at Rickenbacker. Ever since then I've wanted to replace it with another RIC and it seems that im getting very close to getting my hands on what will surely be my holy grail hahaha. I asked John a couple months ago if there was anyway that we could build a 4002 with some minor alterations ( don't crucify me for the changes! hahaha, these are just things that i wanted differently since it was going to be a one of a kind instrument built to my specifications) and he was kind enough to give me the green light. Richard has been a huge help and i couldn't have done this without him and the talented work crew we have at the factory. I didn't start taking pictures until the fingerboard was already glued onto the neck so i do apologize for that. I started by ordering a nice piece of Gaboon Ebony for the fingerboard. Almost no brown markings and it almost appeared to be polished when i got it in the mail so i was very pleased. Me and Richard picked a neck from one of the 4001S models that we did for Guitar Center as a neck for the instrument. It felt slimmer than a 4003 neck and we have sanded it down much more than a normal neck to get it to my liking, I like 'em thin on the back of the neck and this thing feels great so far. I chose to go with the smaller vintage style fretwire and (some of you will hate me for this) i chose to add the triangular inlays instead of the dot inlays that the 4002's originally got. We put the black binding on the neck and put side markers in and once it was sanded down to my liking we were ready to look for body wings. Im sorry about some of the pictures being blurry but my phone camera isn't exactly the best
http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b60 ... aaefdd.jpg
http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b60 ... bd5fae.jpg
My name is Brendan and I'm customer service over here at RIC. I don't really post on here but i do frequently read whats going on in the forums. Being a RIC fan myself it always is nice to look through whats being discussed and take in the wealth of knowledge that everyone here has. Its always nice to read up on what you guys are thinking of what is going on and take that into account to hopefully be a better service to all of you if you ever need my assistance also. If there is ever anything that any of you need help with please contact me at RIC and I'll do whatever i can to help. My sincere apologies to anyone who has had a negative experience with customer service and all i can say is that I'm here at RIC to genuinely help in any way that i can. Lets get to the point of this post though, about 2 years ago I had to sell my White 4001 (my prized possession) in order to buy a car so i could continue to get back and forth to work at Rickenbacker. Ever since then I've wanted to replace it with another RIC and it seems that im getting very close to getting my hands on what will surely be my holy grail hahaha. I asked John a couple months ago if there was anyway that we could build a 4002 with some minor alterations ( don't crucify me for the changes! hahaha, these are just things that i wanted differently since it was going to be a one of a kind instrument built to my specifications) and he was kind enough to give me the green light. Richard has been a huge help and i couldn't have done this without him and the talented work crew we have at the factory. I didn't start taking pictures until the fingerboard was already glued onto the neck so i do apologize for that. I started by ordering a nice piece of Gaboon Ebony for the fingerboard. Almost no brown markings and it almost appeared to be polished when i got it in the mail so i was very pleased. Me and Richard picked a neck from one of the 4001S models that we did for Guitar Center as a neck for the instrument. It felt slimmer than a 4003 neck and we have sanded it down much more than a normal neck to get it to my liking, I like 'em thin on the back of the neck and this thing feels great so far. I chose to go with the smaller vintage style fretwire and (some of you will hate me for this) i chose to add the triangular inlays instead of the dot inlays that the 4002's originally got. We put the black binding on the neck and put side markers in and once it was sanded down to my liking we were ready to look for body wings. Im sorry about some of the pictures being blurry but my phone camera isn't exactly the best
http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b60 ... aaefdd.jpg
http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b60 ... bd5fae.jpg
Next step was planning out the routes and i needed to contact pick guardian for a pickguard and me and Richard started talking pickups and electronics at this point too.
but luckily everything came out perfectly. We were able to map everything out at this point and get an idea of what we needed to route out by hand and how to go about doing it.
