Buying a New Bass

If you're comfortable with five strings and not four, go with the StingRay. I'd choose one over a Ric any day of the week...and I'm not even a Music Man fan!
Other than that, some 4-string basses have tighter string spacing.

 

I'd go with the Stingray as well. I'm curious, though, why you would want to replace the Warwick given your Genre/Tuning. A Corvette would be perfect for that!

 

OP, Rickenbacker has a new 5-string bass, which has been getting many positive reviews.

 

Indeed.

G.A.S. works in mysterious ways

 

Get either one, I think since you'll be majoring in music, you'll probably end up having both at sometime down the road.
I started with a regular 4 string
then i got a 5
then i got a 6
then i got an 8 (lol), which i later defretted
the i defretted my 5 string
then I got another 6 string with smaller finger spacing (ibanez src6)
then I got an acoustic bass
then I got a short scale mikro 5 string bass

And i still have all of them lol

But personally, I would definitely get a 5 string, I feel like there is a lot of use for it.

 

....for stoner/doom/sludge?

 

You could get the Rick and string it B E A D...

 

+1 for the Stingray HH...I have one and I have a Ric 4003s, I play the 'Ray, the Ric just sits.
Rock on.

 

So you want a 4 string in addition to the Warwick? I'd go with any of those choices as long as you can afford to pay for them. A 5 string Stingray might be the best option. That way you can sell the Warwick to offset the cost.

 

This tone?

 

OP, have you ever actually PLAYED a Rickenbacker, or are you basing your love for these basses on what you've heard (ie., tone/the sounds other players get from 'em?)

The reason I ask is because when I was your age, the Ric was one of my dream basses too. I didn't actually get one until I was about 23/24, and it was one of the biggest bass-buying mistakes of my life: The neck profile was such that I couldn't play it for more than a couple of minutes without extreme pain in my left (fretting) hand (mainly my wrist.) - I'm not saying this would definitely happen to you, but...

A couple more things about Rics:

- The models that have painted bodies also generally have the necks painted and, in the case of the '87 Ric I owned, the "stickiness" of the paint was literally a drag...as in, it was hard to move around on the neck as fast/efficiently as I wanted to at times. In fairness, the paint can be sanded down to reduce/eliminate this "drag effect", but still...

- Rics are fairly notorious for having, let's say, "interesting" hardware - mainly the bridges and truss rod - or rods, plural...I think they have dual truss rods? - Anyways...there is a fair bit of info out there (including probably several threads here on TB) regarding these issues, you may want to read up on this and determine if its something you want to be dealing with right out of the gate (there is, I believe, a replacement bridge made by a highly-regarded company called Hipshot, if you do indeed go ahead and buy a Ric/end up hating the stock bridge, as many people do...)

 

Can’t really speak for the ric but stingrays actually work very well in bead tuning (like a 5 string without the skinniest string) if you want that low b. I say that because I know a lot of the bass players in the genres you mentioned don’t really use the g string at all.

 

You're in the right place.

 

They are used by a lot of stoner/doom/sludge bands.

Including the legend himself, Al Cisneros of Sleep and OM.



Here he is with his signature Rickenbacker.

 

Ric’s Have a reputation for being pretty polarizing, with some loving them and others hating them. So, make sure you try before buy. There is a guy here who shoehorns 5 strings onto standard Ric’s, so the string spacing is obviously going to be tighter. You could consider this idea.

 

Me, I'd keep the Wick(I play 2 5 string Wicks now). I played a guy's Pjazz the other day, the setup was great and the 4 string spacing was not bad at all, wouldn't be an issue after a little playing. But if it's the Ric tone you're after, Ric it probably must be.

 

Don’t overlook ibby