Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

There is currently an extremely early 4001S on Reverb bearing the hefty claim of rewriting the history books. I'm not going to post a picture or link to the auction as it's easy enough to find. And I certainly don't want to affect some one's ability to sell their instrument.

But I am curious about one thing, and I'm wondering if anyone here has any insight.

The routing that is shown in the auction photos differs considerably from any other I have seen. It looks like 2 forstner bits were used to do the routing, A large one for the main control cavity and the neck pick up cavity, and a smaller one for the connecting channel between the two cavities.

However the smaller one used for the connecting channel appears to be larger than the bit used for this purpose on just about every other instrument I've seen.

Admittedly I have not personally witnessed the routing on every single bass from this era. I remain open-minded about this. But also I have never seen one like this.

I'm wondering if anyone here has seen similar routing in instruments from around that time? I think it's plausible that this could be a very early prototype and that different tooling was used. But I would be reluctant to make that claim without another existing example.

PS I'm not interested in purchasing this instrument, I'm good! Just curious.

That's just how my old "69 4001 was routed.
In that era it was all forstner's.

Dirk wrote: Thu Mar 13, 2025 9:09 am That's just how my old "69 4001 was routed.
In that era it was all forstner's.

Interesting!

Your '69 seems to indicate that routing technique through the 60s may have fluctuated.

Here is a picture of a fireglo 1968 4001 which shows the routing I am accustomed to seeing. The routing on my 1966 is almost identical to this.

I can see that the larger bit was indeed used in earlier examples of the 4000.. But the routing in the channel does not match other4001/S examples. Looks like they only made 4 cuts on the channel of the bass in question. Seems like a larger bit, but it might also be due to the slightly different shape of the control cavity.

Edit: I've attached a cropped photo of the channel for comparison.

Deleted comment after I looked closer.