Maude

All the bits to finish mine have finally arrived. Nothing major, mainly replacement screws as the scratchplate ones are really rusty and hardly hold in the holes. A pair of the newer style strap locks, I wasn't happy with the security of the bottom original one, it was kind of tight but the threads were all but stripped so I've plugged and redrilled the holes. I've also got some mirror acrylic to make a pickup bezel, I like the Rickysounds chrome one but it replaces the whole original bezel and it would look too new, I prefer the style of their black one that just fills the cavity but would rather chrome so I'm going to make my own. It should all be finished by the end of the weekend.

I love my BEX4, simple but really versatile, punches through a band like a Precision but with a touch of hollow airiness. This is the only other Yamaha I have at the moment, a '99 BBG5s owned from new.

Are the pickups a lot lower in the new one?

Ooh this looks interesting, although John Hall has said that RIC will never put the 4005 back into production we can still dream.

Last week at rehearsal my doublebass fell over, a bit of a story as to how it fell but that's besides the point. It fell face down with the G string touching down first on the rounded edge of an old granite step making a mess of the string and putting about a inch long depression into the fingerboard, about the same depth as the string. It also knocked the bridge across about an inch an chipped the upper bout edge a little. The bridge is easily sorted and I'm not too worried about the chips, a touch of wax will sort them, but the big dent in the fingerboard right under the G string would certainly hamper playing, and we've got a wedding to play in two weeks, so I was a little anxious. I haven't got any pictures of the fingerboard but this is the string so you can imagine the damage to the fingerboard, it didn't scrape, just a direct impact. Anyway the point of this post is that I thought I'd try steaming it out, not knowing if it would work at all with such a sharp dent and it being in very hard ebony. I've never done it before but wetting the dent with warm water and then placing the edge of some wet folded kitchen towel on the dent and working a hot soldering iron slowly over it has worked wonders. It took about half an hour of repeatedly wetting, steaming and cooling but the dent has come out completely. A little rub afterwards with some 2000 grit paper wetted with lemon oil has made the repair completely invisible and to be perfectly honest I'm quite pleased with myself. If you've got any such dents in wood I'd thoroughly recommend giving it a go as it worked a lot better than I though it would and was very easy. 🙂

Black pickup mounting, and I had reservations about this, the tailpiece has the classic Rick tail lift, only slightly but it's only ever going to get worse, especially as me and light strings don't get on, my string of choice is D'Addario half rounds or flats. Even if I go with rounds they will be heavy gauage and as stiff as I can find, so I've drilled and countersunk two holes at the rear to pull it back down or at least stop it getting any worse. I know I've now ruined the genuity of what a virtually unmolested vintage bass, but if the tailpiece keeps lifting it's only fit for the bin anyway. I'll get a pair of decent stainless steel screws so it looks as good as possible. I want to be able to use this bass in anger so it has to be done really.

Fair play though, I've never seen a band do even part of it before. 👍

Please tell me you yodel 👃

The pickup is fixed now, cleaned the blue (white) tack off, hot glued the bobbin back in place and I've given it all a coat of satin black as without the PU cover it's all visible and looks messy, I'll black the inside of the cavity as well. I didn't take the magnet off the base plate and realign as it's not tooooo bad and I didn't want to risk cracking the magnet prising it off, a bit of didn't work.

This one will end up like that without so help, I thought I'd stabilise it with hot glue as then it can be removed fairly easily if needed. That's a shame if you sold a genuine pickup without realising. And I see your magnet is on the slant too.

I'm not sure if it's both as I only played it at the chaps house before stripping it. When I noticed it I tapped around the body and both pickups everywhere made the noise, but it could be one pickup picking it up. It's kind of how an acoustic guitar sounds, any body noise gets picked up.

Well it's all had the clean and polish of it's life and is going back together. I'm sorting a couple minor issues in the process including this pickup which is held together with what looks and feels like bluetack, albeit white. The bobbin in held to the magnet with the white gum and isn't very secure so I'll lift it off, clean the gum off and hot glue it in place a bit more securely, also while I'm at the hot glue I'm going to remove the magnet and align it properly as it's not horizontal and it's bugging me, I'll also graphite paint the cavities as all the wood in the bridge pickup abyss is on display without the cover, so the black paint will tidy it up and a bit of shielding can't hurt. Talking of shielding and unwanted noise, the whole bass is quite micriohonic (if that's the right term) not just tapping the pickups but it you tap the big bezel or even just the body the sound comes out of the amp quite loud, is this normal with these basses?

Have you twisted them putting on maybe, quite easy to do if the tuner end is already all coiled up. Sometimes a twist in the string will made it sound dead. The flat fret spots being on top would point to this being the case.

I used to have a 'You Love Us' long sleeve that I got when I saw The Manics in '92. It had a black and white image of a leather jacket hanging on a brick wall with 'you love us' on the jacket and 'molotov cocktails of fantastic destruction' in silver on the back. I managed to get Richie Edwards and James Dean Bradfield to sign it with a silver marker on the back, Nicky wire was a miserable prick and the drummer looked boring so I didn't get theirs. I loved that song and I loved that shirt, wore it until was holey. I lost it one day and about a year later found it in the boot of an old car I was restoring, it was ruined, it had got rusty water on it an had rotted out, so in the bin it went. How much would one with the missing Richie James autograph be worth now I wonder.

Are the little dot imprints by each control knob on the scratchplate as matsumoku?

I've got no markings on the bass to say it is Aria to be fair, just trusting others. I think the better ones were through neck and 'Stereosound', stamped on the twin jackplate as opposed to 'Rickosound'. As far as I know all the bolt on neck ones had a single jack output. @Bassassin and @prowla are the font of faker knowledge as far as I know, maybe they could help identify yours. To be honest I'm not fused about it being bolt on as it just gives more room for adjustment (neck shim) if I can't get the action down. Now it's stripped I can see I've got plenty of room for adjustment on bridge (and the screws turn by fingers) and the truss rod turns one way fairly easily and will go the other way but is quite tight. I'll squirt some graphite lube down there as the carrier evaporates just leaving a coating of graphite to lube it, no greasy residue. I'll never use the stereo feature anyway so mono is fine with me.

Yes I saw that on Friday night, well Saturday morning and really enjoyed it. Who knew Billy Idol would've became a wildlife enthusiast 😉

I'll send him a message, I think he got it from someone on the Facebook faker page. If he finds the original and it's in decent shape then this one might be up for grabs. It's mirrored but the scratchplate is white and I can't cope with that sort of craziness 🤪, or maybe I could fit a mirrored scratchplate, gold would be nice on this colour but then I'd need a gold TRC. Anyway I've broken it already 😉

I've been after an older Matsumoku Rickenbacker copy, or something very similar, and I've just picked up this '77 Aria complete with original case. It needs a good clean, both cosmetically and electrically, but it sounds awesome and plays really well, the actions a tad high for my taste at the mo but I'll give it set up once cleaned. The seller reckons he has the origins TRC and pickup cover but is in the middle of moving and can't find them, he said if he finds them he'll post them to me so fingers crossed.

No idea I'm afraid, I could message the seller and ask if you want. I don't know if you can see clearly in the picture but it says Rickenbastard not Rickenbacker. The best 'homemade' versions of the real ones I've seen are 3D printed ones, that way the lettering can be raised as it's meant to be. I'll do a NBD to discuss anything further to save derailing this thread too much. 🙂

Well I never said I was in, and I've lasted until double figures 🤣 I've just picked up an '77 Aria bass that looks surprisingly like something else, complete with original case. It needs a good clean but it sounds the business. Excuse the indoor lighting.

Whatever differences you think your are hearing is obviously the placebo effect of thinking they will sound different, when in actual fact all four sounded identical because they were played by the same person, with the same fingers, and as we all know........... it's all in the fingers.

Just looked that up as I'd never heard of it. My life has not been enriched. 🤨 🙂

Yeah, but apart from four octave vocal range, the Hammond skills and the flute playing, what have the pub bands ever done for us? 😄

Why don't cover bands ever do Hocus Pocus by Focus? I would love to see that, and the look on the average punters face. 😆