BassHappy
Supporting Member
Walfretless 5, thanks for the kind words!
In 1975 I owned a Jazz Bass but the band asked me to sell it - it had really bad dead spots on frets 4-7 on both the G string and the D string. It really started affecting my parts and the music in a negative way. Yes we play a lot of notes, some of them whole, which crave sustain. The full scale Fender Jazz couldn't cut it, frankly. In the meantime, our singer at the time had a fireglo Rick 4001 which he loaned me. By the way, since my name is Rick I always spell it Rick. Sorry if that bothers anyone.
I had no idea the scale was 33.25" instead of 34" but what I DID know is that I could get around on it much easier than the Jazz Bass. I called my friends at Washington Music Center, who were huge friends of my band and asked them if they had any mapleglo 4001's in stock. Turned out that they had almost a dozen. I made an appointment to go in a couple of days later and they agreed to pull them all out of the warehouse and check them over for me. I spent the better part of a day playing them through various amps and getting to know them. I was amazed at how non-cookie cutter they were. Each one felt a little different, especially the necks. I settled on one that had the widest but thinnest neck of the batch. It also seemed to have a little more grunt than the others, which could have just been a simple pickup adjustment.
My first act was to make a nice mahogany pick guard for it. i used it exclusively on the first Happy the Man record. I got the PRS after my parts were done but our producer Ken Scott let me go back and re-do one song, but basically the first Happy the Man record is that Rick. When the PRS arrived in medium scale, there was no turning back for me. I finally had a bass that fit me. Paul eventually rescued the bridge pickup out of the Rick and installed it into #7. Eventually, he swapped that same pickup into PRS #11, where it still lives today. So the "Rick" sound was always a big part of my sound even though it came via a PRS since 1977.
here is the Rick:
Paul came to a show and said he thought he could improve on the sound. He asked if he could rewind the Rick pickup for me, which he did.
Here is what the pickup looks like after Paul worked his magic:
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