Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Looks nice.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3773765442&fromMakeTrack=true

very clean ...

This one is also a very nice Mapleglo and been for sale for a very long time...check out the price!!!
http://www.stringsandbeyond.com/ric195strinb.html

I saw that today. $2099 is a little high to me. Mike Parks has a Jetglo one for $2,000.

I sometimes think we Ric owners may be our own worst enemy. It seems like the minute a bass goes out of production, the value takes off.

A few years ago (2-3) I bought a MapleGlo 4003s5 with black trim on Ebay for about $800 and sold it a few months later for $875. The condition was mint. I only sold it due to the tight string spacing and my lack of patience to deal with it. I wish I held onto it with todays prices being what they are. The only way to get things more reasonable is to stop paying when they sell for so much.....but we all know that won't happen

I gave up trying to play my 4003S/5 fingerstyle. So I re-installed the bridge pickup cover and play it with a pick almost exclusively. I've played more with a pick on a bass more in the past year than I had all of the previous 29 years. It sounds great with a pick anyway.

"The only way to get things more reasonable is to stop paying when they sell for so much.....but we all know that won't happen"

You got that right.

How tight was the spacing? I have a Lakland 55-02 and I'm not really versed in 5-strings to determine what is tight and what isn't.

I found that when I use a pick I can't really "get into" my playing....it just seems wrong to/for me. Playing fingerstyle with the s5 proved to cumbersome for me so I gave up and just strung one of my 4003's BEAD which works out quite well for me.
I'm not sure what the measurements are but basically Ric crammed 5 strings into the same space as a 4 stringer.

Brian, I had the same initial problem getting into playing with a pick, which is something I used to do very little of. I finally just tried to look at it as an adjustment like I had to make when I got my first 5 string after several years of playing 4 string basses. Now I'm finding it fun to play with a pick and I'm more versatile now. I should have done it years ago. I still play better fingerstyle, it's gonna take a lot more pick style practicing for me to feel as comfortable as I do playing fingerstyle.

Versatility is overrated

the 4003s5 can be modified to 2 1/4" from 2 1/16" ... it helps a lot ... I can play my bass just about any way ... I use a pick about 50% ... but if you get good with a pick then you can control attack ... listen to Chris Squire ... or Who live at Leeds ... and yes the 4003s5 is basically a 4003 with a low b squeezed in ... the major differences are the headstock shape and the treble pickup is wound to like 16k ohms .... can you say Thunder???

I actually like my jetglo and fireglo 4003 425 basses better than my 4003s5 basses ... I have owned 4 of those .. and I still have 2 4003s5 basses ...

When I play with a pick if I have to do anything beyond fast downstrokes on the same string I feel like I'm playing with winter gloves on. I like the sound but I'm slow to learn new techniques. (new for me although I started out with a pick when I was a kid). I can't control the strings at all with a pick.

It is a matter of practicing if you practice with a pick you will get better ... I practice many styles of playing because I play in a cover band ... but I really enjoy playing with a pick ... and fingers ... all in the same song ...

I find my main obstacle with a pick is a "natural" sort of muting. Just to give a quick example, the main line in Roundabout is no problem fingerstyle, but with a pick, especially playing behind the horseshoe towards the bridge, as soon as I jump to the A, the E keeps ringing (slightly, but it's still there). But as Jeff says, it's down to practicing, and that's something I haven't devoted a lot of time to (even though the CS practically crys out for pick playing).

The headstock on the 4003s5 looks so cool, a large but baby headstock!