[quote name='Kiwi' timestamp='1350548858' post='1840257']
This is the kind of photo that risks pushing Mr Hall's boundaries and would be most easily managed by banning all photos of anything Rickenbacker shaped. Just sayin'.
[/quote] There are 4 genuine Rics in the picture. I'm certainly not offering anything for sale. If John Hall wants to have a dicky fit about the existence of the John Birch bass here that was made in 1976 and the Retrovibe in the last two years, then that's his own affair. He did issue Retovibe / Probass with a cease and desist order on the RV4 and RV5 and Probass complied.
If Ric still made a 5-string I'd have one (price-sensibility permitting).
The Birch I bought because I couldn't say no to it. It doesn't get out much, as the Rics seem to get all the walkies.
I don't think that any forum is, or can reasonably be, or even should be, controlled by John Hall's desires. Even the RRF has an area to discuss copies (though they generally meet with hoots of derision from nearly all concerned).
Neither of them is a faker in the true sense, either. A faker is [i]something that can be passed off as the real thing - an exact counterfeit[/i]. The basses are definitely Ric-styled basses, but the designs themselves, while featuring features very similar to copyrighted Ric shapes etc aren't really exact. But no-one with working eyes would think they were Rics!
Banning a photo of anything Ric shaped would be discriminatory against all the other makers, so you'd have to ban pics of Rics too. And if Fender got snotty about all the makers who shamelessly nicked their ideas - Fodera, Sandberg, etc etc etc, then we'd have nothing at all to look at. Just sayin'.