Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I have been trying out 4003 basses and 4 out of five were great.

But one was really bad. No clarity, punch, or growl. Really muddy and hard to hear the notes. Like your mind became confused because you knew you were playing a given note with your finger, but you weren't sure what note you were hearing.

I am new to Ric basses. So I have a couple questions:

1. Are they usually all really good with that punchy growl and clear tone, or are there a lot of those muddy sounding ones?

2. How do you cure a muddy sounding Ric bass?
3. Can a wavy neck be fixed easily? I only ask this because I saw another one with a wavy board. As you slid from the B on the 2nd fret of the A string up to the E at the 7th fret, it choked out the E note and you could feel the rise of the board up by the E.

Fixable, or stay away from these? I hear the necks are tempermental.

Thanks for any info.

'muddy' could be flatwound/old strings, or the mute in the tailpiece might engaged.

QC has been spotty for several years, I think related to the backlog pressure to get basses out the door. I haven't seen more than three Rics available in one store for a while, but out of three brand new 4003 I played at GC a while back, one was a perfect, gleaming masterpiece, and two had finish bubbling around the bridge. All were completely untouched as far as setup, with very high nut action, typical for GC, they don't do.any setup before hanging them on the wall. Personally, I would not buy a Ric mailorder, there is enough variation in neck thickness and finish quality that you really need to play one in person. If playing one locally is not an option, Wildwood and Pick of the Ricks have a good reputation for filtering out ones with problems, and will at least try to go to bat for you on warranty issues. Sounds like you might have hit a lemon, keep looking, its worth the search!

OP: new or vintage? If it's just a backbow, that may be the result of simply overtightening the truss rods, or even the biannual weather shift. If it's an "S" bow, that's really bad and usually can't be fixed. What model and year?