Chris Capp

March 31, 2020

On 26/12/2018 at 08:17, Maude said:

I did something silly a couple of weeks ago which resulted in me owning this gorgeous bass. I've always said the only Rickenbacker I'd ever own is a 4005 due to me not really gelling with any 'normal' Rick basses I've tried, but the 4005 being one of the best looking basses ever made, IMO. The price of 4005's being what they are meant I'd never be owning one anyway so it was kind of a running joke with our guitarist who owns eight Ricks.

This bass popped up on my fb feed on one of the selling pages, one of those random posts that pop up from pages you don't really follow, I thought 'ooh that's nice', but it was in Chester and I was in Cornwall. Gigging commitments meant I couldn't go and look at it and I couldn't expect someone to post it really, could I? Anyway who knew what it would be like being a custom build and it was more than I wanted to spend, plus I was didn't need any new gear being happy with my own.

Roll on 24hrs and I'd agreed to buy it 🤣

It's a faithful tribute to the 4005 (ok ok a copy) built by the luthier ***** *****(the names have been changed to protect the innocent😗), whom I've never heard of, body I assume is maple but would like any thoughts from the experts on here, it's got some nice grain and quilting, block binding, maple and walnut laminated neck, partial genuine hardware, not sure about tailpiece but it looks the part and the pickups are custom wound House of Tone toasters to give a Macca neck, Geddy bridge mix.

The previous owner (don't know if they're on here) sent it by Parcelforce to arrive before midday next day, after a tense three days it arrived at work (Christmas backlog) and I'll admit I was a little nervous unpacking it, firstly was it in one piece, secondly what was the build quality like? It was in a Gigblade semi hard case which is actually a very nice case and when opened I had a wave of relief wash over me, it was beautiful. The quality of ***** *****'s work is awesome, the woodwork is great and the fit of everything is excellent, my only slight bug is the lacquer finish but it's not as bad as I thought from the sellers pictures. Most people wouldn't see anything wrong but I'm a fussy tw@t when it comes to paint. Too be honest it's not really bad enough too bother refinishing but time will tell if it bugs me enough.

Anyway pictures, you must be bored of my ramblings.

A couple close ups to try and show the quilting, as always it looks better in the flesh but you can see a bit of it. In real life some of it almost looks like velvet, it has a real depth to it.

The neck is really well made, maple and walnut, bound and crushed pearl inlays.

Lovely signature Rickenbacker carving around the bout.

As you can probably tell I'm over the moon with the looks, but, and it's a big but, I don't like how it plays. Given that I don't gel with Ricks it's no surprise but my thought when I bought it was with it being a copy I won't feel guilty fiddling with it. Some of you may have noticed the thumbrest, it's a very crudely chunk of wood I've doublesided taped on to just try out. Because of the style of bridge the strings are very long way from the body, nice low action on the neck but string to body is huge and using pickups as thumbrests isn't working for me. Using the bridge PU as an anchor is just too close the bridge and using the neck PU just feels too sloppy for my style of playing. It has to be right or I won't end up using it. I'll make a nice wooden rest and tape it on so that it can be removed if sold. I'm making a new nut as the string spacing is wider than I like and the strings are very close to the edge of the neck, a few times I've slipped the G string off the neck while playing.

Now for the sound, it's very nice but the PU's are quite low output, it doesn't seem to have a lot of punch but that's probably down to the placement, reading up a bit this seems to be the way the real ones sound. Either PU on its own sounds good but together I get that Jazz phase problem only worse and the volume drops. I might wire a series switch in and call on the electrical guru's of the forum for help.

All in all I love it and once I iron out a couple of niggles, which are my fault not the basses, I'll be over the moon.

It's certainly imposing, it's massive, and although I'd never claim to be the real thing with the mojo of the real thing, it's quite possibly better quality than the real thing and certainly doesn't look like your average Rickenbacker copy.