prowla

it's a very similar colour to my '72.

The bolt-on neck ones are inferior in the sense of being an accurate copy of a Ric thru-neck. Some of them can be (even) weaker than a Ric at the join, because the wood there is pretty thin and the overlap isn't that much; OTOH, there are real Ric set-neck (ie. glued on) 4001 & 4000 basses too. The bolt-on neck ones are also all (I think!) 34" scale, as opposed to a real Ric's 33.25".

@stewblack If you do decide to give up on doing it yourself (but I hope you do sort it on your own), there are a couple of fine folk in the FB fakers group who may be able to work wonders on it. It's a £500+ instrument (when in working order). I'm not sure if you already know this, but the Ric 4001 basses' truss-rods will collapse if you just tighten them as you would a Fender or most other guitars, as the stop block at the end under the nut folds in on itself; the result is the fingerboard separates from the neck. Yours looks like it might've possibly been the result of over-tightening, though it is a different design. Incidentally, the 4001's truss-rod system isn't necessarily a bad design, provided you follow the instructions and flex the neck to position and then turn the adjuster to hold it in place; the issue is assuming it works like other guitars, when there weren't may brands around in the 1950s...

Nice stick, but musically challenged...

I put in my max. bid on ebay and somebody beat me at the end.

Needs more precision, especially in the spacing on the front row there!

No - get it done ASAP, godammit!

Ouch! (But funny!)

I think the first single truss-rod bass was the original AC.

Ah yes - the Ibby with the re-purposed EB3 pickups!

I've got a Teisco guitar and its pickup is duff. Pending repair, I've put in a Strat one; I had to make a conversion surround to fit it. Despite being awful plywood toot, the guitar sounds rather good!

More for the next Bass Bash? (Assuming there is one...)

Hmm - a real Ric is 33.25" scale, as were some of the copies (I have one), but Fenders and a lot of Ric copies were 34", so it looks like this truss-rod may be that. Apologies if I didn't pick up on that before! I'd check the distance from the centre of the 3 screw holes under where the bridge saddles sit to the very end of the fingerboard at the headstock.

Nope - don't like the fake Fender logo - why not get something made with your own logo?

FYI, my mandotar with its 8 strings. I do need to get 4 extra string holes drilled into the end of the baseplate, as having two through the same hole tends to pull the saddles off-line. I think that would be needed for a bass, as it won't fit the extra strings through the same hole. Back to the project here, a Precision neck to make it a Fenderbird - that'd be fun. I also don't think it'll need a wider neck for an 8-string. (On another wander slightly off-topic, but relevant re. neck width; I've got a 4-5 string conversion kit to convert a Precision to a 5-string; I wouldn't be getting a wider neck for that.)

I think they're a set up in Japan who sell on Chickenbackers.

Faeries at the bottom of the garden did it!

I've twice played one of those 8-string Alembics: once at the UMIST Students Union and once in a bass shop in Romford.

I've some of that work before. As for faux relic - I think it looks stupid!

OK - I'll bear that in mind; thanks. The Akai is just a little hand-held unit with a USB connector; I had it plugged in to the USB port next to my Yamaha USB MIDI interface. So I had 2 MIDI units plugged in to Windows USB ports, each with their own driver, but only the FI app up. (I have got DIN MIDI keyboards, but just had the Akai one in my laptop bag, so I plugged it in!)

A quick google search and they look like a Chickenbacker to me.

Might be that, but I think I've had items daisy-chained before; I may go back and try some more diagnosis out at some point. 🙂

Looks like it was a Yammy or Ibby maybe, based on the headstock.

How to connect the editor to it and get sounds out. I wasn't looking at building a sound - just how to get something at all from the editor, without twiddling knobs/sliders; maybe one of the existing sounds. Well, I had both In and Out connected (ie. computer MIDI Out connected to FI MIDI In port and computer MIDI In plugged into the FI's MIDI Out port). I tried saving one sound from the FI to file, but the editor crashed, so I didn't know if it was connecting or not (it did this every time I tried; I only specified program #1 to pull) but then I chose the option to save all programs from FI to files and that worked! Having done that, I was then able to use the +/- buttons in the editor (also left/right arrow keys) to go through the programs and control/tweak the FI settings in real-time. Yep using the Akai as a keyboard, instead of the little one at the bottom of the editor. I could play a note on the virtual keyboard and it was OK, but swapping the keyboard setting to the Akai only worked once for me. (Yes, I selected it as the Keyboard, with the FI as both Input and Output in the Preferences dialog.)