prowla

Ultrapox

Stink

The Ho Ho's

Podgy

Rainbog (Bitchie Blankmore's)

The Ham

Fig Country

Jethro Dull

Rash

Rambow (OK - it was two letters, but if you squint the "m" is similar to "in"...)

Wang dang!

That's a take on Geddy's comment from when he bought his first Ric.

My Geddy tribute - the Rickenberger.

Easy - another Rickenbacker.

Old thread but I was just listening to Spirit Of Radio and thought “that’s not a Ric, must be a Jazz” (or they’ve killed the eq.).

I wonder if they've got a Taurus on the way as well, as Getty was bigging them up too.

Great musician is Gerry...

And that's a fact!

That was quite prescient of you.

It's quite remarkable that they're still a favourite, given that essentially the same instrument has been in production since 1959; they have, however, have had gradual upgrades over the years. Me, I don't have a particular issue with the bridge/tailpiece unit (set it up once and forget it) and I quite like the dual rods. To your points: I've just reverted a V2 bridge I put onto one of my 2010 basses: a. yes, it's too far from the end of the body and b. the action wouldn't go low enough. ((RIC did produce the 4004 with a Schaller 3D bridge.)) The mute is presumably intnded to be always on or always off, rather than switchable. I think that they may have thought about options but not come up with something they want to go with. I've got a synth pickup that fits in there for when/if I get another project one. I agree regarding the noise; they are single-coil pickups. ((RIC did produce the 4004 with humbuckers.)) I guess the hardcase is for protection; standard gigbags work. I don't like the thumbrests which sit on the pickguard. However, if you take off the Treble pickup cover you can get bezels to fit there with thumbrests/indentations. RIC do (or did) sell the Rick-O-Sound splitter box, but it's stupidly expensive. You can split for a pedalboard using a GigRig CincoCinco (or make a Hack-O-Sound) and plug in an EBS Flat splitter cable. Regarding enhancements, I like to put a Hipshot drop-D eXtender on mine, but a. they don't fit all Rics and b. the RIc model is discontinued.

I have to say in that test, I didn't identify my own vintage Rickenbacker (though actually I rarely played it through an amp and I think the horseshoe magnet may need re-magnetising), but I thought the other Ric might be it; I could say that there are some considerations which the test didn't cover and so I'd be wary of taking the results standalone: The riff @cetera was playing was restricted to the first 7 frets; a characteristic of a Ric is how its sound changes as you go up the neck (because of the Bass/neck pickup). The amp settings were the same, so a more powerful or active bass might have a more impressive sound. I don't know if the tone settings were flat, but that might not be what the various owners/afficionados might choose and so migh mask the "tells" of the various instruments. I do agree and often say the instrument is the bass + the amp(s) + the speakers + the rest of the signal chain (+ the venue). But the thing is though that you can optimise the signal chain to accentuate the features of the instrument; the most obvious example of that is splitting the pickups to different channels (Rick-O-Sound, Billy Sheehan, etc.), so that you can tune each idependently. So, I don't agree that any bass will do. Some other considerations: You can't ignore who is playing the instrument: Geddy Lee said that he bought a Ric thinking he'd sound like Chris Squire and found out he didn't. You can tune in to a particular instrument, for example Chris Squire said the Ric folks made a copy of his RM1999, but it sounded nothing like it. Geddy Lee used a Ric and a Jazz on Moving Pictures; the distorted sound on the lower 7 frets is remarkably similar, but if I play songs on a Ric and a Jazz I can catch the nuances. I have two 2010 Ric 4003 basses and they sound different. I was in a music store and heard a glorious double bass sound from the next room; I went there to check it out and was totally surprised to see it was someone playing a Ric through a Markbass amp (which is what i have). I once put a Seymour Duncan pickup on a Ric and could not get the Ric sound; I've had different pickups on Precisions and they do not sound the same. I went to a guitar show on the weekend and played one bass there which had been custom built with a MM pickup (with series/parallel/single-coil) and a Precision one, plus active/passive; I would say that each option sounded distinctly different and certainly not just more or less the same. As to Pink Floyd, I'd say the bass has a pretty nondescript sound.

My Status collection (the Frankenstein is now complete). I would like a headless 5-string at some point...

Is Mr Grumpy in the house today? 🙂

So, how can I sound like Geddy then? 🙂