Rickenbacker 4003s/5 bridge and pickguard

[flaviusm]

Hello you, it’s me again!

This time with a little repair/upgrade on a Ricky 4003s/5. This is a great bass, but I wanted to make it an amazing bass for me.

I play with a low/very low action. Because of that, to setup the intonation the bridge saddles must be closer to the neck. But the “calculation” of the Rickenbacker factory was not very good this time, the screws for the intonation becoming too short. For a medium and high intonation I’m sure the screws are long enough. So, I moved the bridge 10 mm to the neck because I didn’t found longer screws on stores, even Schaller factory has only 24 and 28 mm M 3,5 screws. Yep, unfortunately I made 3 new holes, but the bass will remain forever mine, so it must be not very “marketable”.

The second modification that I made was to put a new pickguard with a new shape, to have a pseudo-thumbrest. Even the design was made in such a way to have a parallelism with that oblique pickup edge 🤓. I need to play there (and to rest my thumb for the B string) to have the tone that I want. So, this problem was solved too. In the case the bass looks better with a white pickguard, but on stage it’s too much contrast for me. Yeah, I know, I’m too fastidious (it’s the proper word?  ).

Now pictures...

[Happy Jack]

Well that's certainly distinctive, and yes - 'fastidious' is exactly the right word. 

[6feet7]

I've just put a black pickguard and truss rod cover on my 4003SW-5 to match the black pickups and controls. The white was too much of a contrast.

Edited March 17, 2020 by 6feet7