Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

The earliest zinc tailpiece I have seen was a 5 screw one on a very late Spring '73 4001. My old March '73 4001 still had a three screw aluminum tailpiece. Has anyone here, besides Paul, come across a three screw '60s/early '70s tailpiece that was not made of aluminum? I do recall reading from one person here, or perhaps on TalkBass, who had an aluminum tailpiece that did crack/breaking, however. So, maybe Paul (prowla) thinks his was zinc due the damage it incurred.

Prowla took the part to someone who SAID it was not aluminum, but I'd know the difference on sight, so I look forward to pics.

This seems like a simple engineering problem with the bridge castings that should have been solved a long time ago, kinda ridiculous that's it's still cropping up. I had the "honor" (?) of being personally flamed by John Hall, on this forum, for bringing up this apparently sore point. I wasn't surprised at his reaction, given his reputation for being a bit "prickly", but I was surprised at how much stank I got from other RRF forum members at the time, chastising me for annoying His Lordship. There's been a lot of denial and obfuscation on this issue over the years. The Allparts replacement Ric bridges look virtually identical to OEM, does anybody know if they are more or less likely to bend? There have been some newer basses that simply weren't sanded flat around the bridge area, creating the appearance of "lift", but that might account for a 1/16" gap maximum.

The AllParts tailpiece is similar to the original very hollow casting introduced in '73, and made up until RIC revised them at least 20 years ago. So it's very likely to bend. Also, the chrome plating isn't as good as what RIC offers.

I had to replace my '74 4001 tailpiece last month. Bend became past the point of having an effect on the intonation, etc.

Went down the Hipshot route. Had one of these a few years back, went through the saddle wobble thing....but this one seems okay. Maybe the issues have been addressed?

Still, no comfort on a newer bass, though.....

Dane has built a few custom made replacement bridges over the years, maybe he'll post a few photos if we ask nicely (hint, hint)! I've wondered if the hollow casting could be reinforced by infilling between the ribs with epoxy? Somebody must have tried this?

aceonbass wrote:Prowla took the part to someone who SAID it was not aluminum, but I'd know the difference on sight, so I look forward to pics.

I'll get those pics up when I take them.
The chap who said it is someone who works with aluminium...

"Chap" eh? Perhaps he only works with "aluminium"....

OK, I've got some pics.

Just to clarify - I don't remember if the original bridge had tail-lift; I cut it in half for a mod (sorry, folks - it seemed like a good idea at the time; the guitar was only 10 years old then!), the plan being to put the front half of the tailpiece in front of a Badass.

I kept the parts and decided to see if they could be reunited.

I met a chap at a guitar fair who makes aluminium guitars http://longfellowguitars.com/ and asked him if he could weld it; he seemed very sceptical that it was aluminium, but agreed to give it a try (aluminium is a pernickerty thing to weld, apparently) with no commitment. He returned it, with a couple of blobs where he'd tried.








Here's links to the full-res pics, rather than scaling them down to 800px for here...

http://i68.tinypic.com/sdzbdf.jpg

http://i65.tinypic.com/2ic6sdk.jpg

http://i66.tinypic.com/2qc1l5j.jpg

http://i66.tinypic.com/1z55dzq.jpg

http://i63.tinypic.com/14xce40.jpg

That tailpiece is aluminum. Your friend was wrong, or just didn't want to admit he couldn't weld it. Didn't you previously say it "pooped"?

aceonbass wrote:That tailpiece is aluminum. Your friend was wrong, or just didn't want to admit he couldn't weld it. Didn't you previously say it "pooped"?

OK - aluminium it is.

The problem with the bridge (which made it poopy!) was that I couldn't set the intonation.

Then I employed the surgery, which totally pooped it!

The bass now has a Hipshot and it sounds fine.

Thanks for posting those photos, Paul. We all did silly things back in the day, so no worries, there. Aluminium® it is, sad to see this happen to one of these tailpieces. I am sure there would have been other, less invasive, ways to correct the intonations issues you were having.

tcsmit29 wrote:

RobW wrote:Paul McCartney stopped playing his Rick around '85, and I'm wondering if it's because the tailpiece is bent way up and not playable anymore?

The last time I saw Paul's 4001 is on the cover of "All the Best" released in 87. I can't remember my source for this but I do recall that Paul had stated that Elvis Costello convinced him to pull the Hofner out of storage during the recording of "Flowers in the Dirt".

There are some snippets of Paul playing the 4001S in this vid of a demo of My Brave Face:

jps wrote:Thanks for posting those photos, Paul. We all did silly things back in the day, so no worries, there. Aluminium® it is, sad to see this happen to one of these tailpieces. I am sure there would have been other, less invasive, ways to correct the intonations issues you were having.

Aye - it wasn't a vintage instrument at the time and a Badass & shim were the way to sort it; 30+ years on things are different.
It's also got a SD treble pickup which went on in the 80s.
And more recently the Badass has been replaced with a Hipshot.

Of the 16-18 Rick basses I've had over the years, I've never had a problem tail lift. Its strange how some basses have such an extreme issue.