prowla

Ok - I just think of them as a headless.

Erm, Status Graphite and Steinberger... I'm not sure what date mine is.

I like the look of them; a headless 5-string could be a goer for me. I'm not sure about locking jacks - I thought they'd been and had their day in the 80s.

Slowly and difficult! You have top play the stick through an amp; it doesn't really work not plugged in. (But plugged in it sounds really impressive.) I'm finding the fattest bass string gets in the way of the next one, which is a hindrance. I have done various bits of tapping on the bass, so I'm either really impressive doing those things I have muscle memory for or really useless searching around for notes. I play guitar, but fretting notes with my right hand and playing scales seems to go against the direction my fingers want to go. All-in-all, it's interesting...

...and you could do your back in bending down? 🙂

Note: if you do a stacked tone pot and connect the caps to the blend pickup-side connections you could have independent tone controls.

So, Gibson & Rickenbacker basses have "non-standard" scale lengths. And most other basses are derived from Fenders. 🙂

Those ones have the V2 bridge, which has been stock for 3 years now.

You missed my comment about "spots" earlier!

I don't think I'll be playing one.

As per my comment: you can use the neck, but need a new fretboard (& frets). They missed a trick: they could've done it as a fretless!

I think the 4001/4003 are the best basses ever made; best looking, best playing, best sound. But this short scale is an eyesore. I prefer my Kay (still needs a pickguard) short scale!

The "standard" wasn't a standard when Rickenbacker made the 4001 series in the 1950's and they've had no reason to change. I think the 1960's long-scale Gibson EB0 was 34.5" (as was the Ampeg bass). The answer to people complaining that Rics aren't Fenders is to just say stop moaning and go and buy a Fender or one of the multifarious Fender-a-likes on the market. Next people are going to complain that Rics have a 2+2 tuner layout instead of the "standard" 4 in a line.

Well spotted... ...or not!

Probably, and a different fretboard.