JapCrap Rickenbacker Copy Restoration

[Bassassin]

[b]*End-Of-Year Update*[/b]

Which is that having salvaged some parts from a tragically butchered 'Faker, I have put this back together, and it looks laaarvly!

But.

There's always a downside.

Unfortunately, this one suffers from the scourge of earlyish neck-through JapCrap, which is Unadjustably High Action Syndrome. Gah. It is playable as it is, and there are a couple of things I can do to make it a little better, but I do like a low string-height & I doubt that this will ever be as playable as I would like.

What I can do is to first lower the nut slots - these are really very high and serve to nearly double the effect of an overly high bridge. Secondly I can take the base of the bridge unit down by about 1.5mm, and lastly attack the saddles with a file. The problem will be that I'm then limited in how low I can have the string height by the rest of the hardware - the strings will be hitting the pickup ring and the bottoms of the channels the mute sits in.

The other thing that occurs to me is that I'm using a genuine Rick tailpiece here - it may be that the casting's deeper/differently proportioned and that a proper JapCrap one will work better.

Anyway I'll try & take a few pics soon, before I start hacking stuff up. I'm sure you'll agree it'll look great on the wall...

J.

[Al Heeley]

Great work on the restoration, you got it back to really nice condition. After all that work it must be worth a go getting the string height lowered. The body and neck as well as the bridge and pup surround came up really nice.

[Bassassin]

I'll do the best my unskilled bodging permits! Very pleased with how well the original hardware (apart from the tailpiece - I just [i]couldn't[/i] use that!) came back, the tuners look nearly new.

Just checked out your 4003 build. Bloody hell!

J.