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My Dirt Bender - Another Jounal
- Thread starter el murdoque
- Start date
I still have the Lil Fella and the Dark Driving on my list. But somehow never got around to them.
But(!)
That thing I was talking about.
That thing has arrived.
Ladies, Gentlemen, Cyborgs, Apache Helicopters and all you lovely folk under the sun,
The year is roughly 1977 and the Matsumoku plant in Japan is in the middle of what will later be called the Lawsuit Era. Some folk will have it that the main reason for the lawsuit(s) was that the Japanese did not only copy iconic American designs, but mainly because the quality of said copies often surpassed the originals.
Enough blabbering.
This here is a Ric copy.
It is in an incredible shade of green, and the rosewood fretboard is so light, it looks like roasted maple.
It was made by Aria Pro II.
I found it in the hands of someone who specializes in tracking down old basses like this one, then giving them some TLC and selling them on.
This one needed a refret. It weighs in at just below 8,5 lbs (3,85kg).
I figured that someone has bought this bass in the seventies and then played it until the frets were done, so my conclusion was this must be a good one.
First and foremost I was smitten because it looks like a Ric, which is the coolest looking bass out there, because I really dug the green color it has and because of that incredible fretboard.
The differences to a 4001 I can already tell:
1. No Ric-o-sound. This thing has but a single output.
2. No dual truss rods (thank the gods). This one seems to have a single, dual action rod.
3. No lacquered fretboard. Can't tell if the luthier who has done the re-fret sanded off the lacquer and did not reapply any or if it was made like this.
Since I'm VERY pressed for time these days, I only had a bit of a session, but I can tell you that the neck shape is called "Two by four with rounded corners" and works well for me. The bass balances perfectly on the strap and feels quite nice. Where the P bass has mids that are well rounded and sit well, the mids that pickup with all the bling produces is a lot more in your face. A bit like pulling the pin on a hand grenade with your teeth and then forgetting to throw the thing. No wonder they put it in a trench.
That thing I was talking about.
That thing has arrived.
Ladies, Gentlemen, Cyborgs, Apache Helicopters and all you lovely folk under the sun,
The year is roughly 1977 and the Matsumoku plant in Japan is in the middle of what will later be called the Lawsuit Era. Some folk will have it that the main reason for the lawsuit(s) was that the Japanese did not only copy iconic American designs, but mainly because the quality of said copies often surpassed the originals.
Enough blabbering.
This here is a Ric copy.
It is in an incredible shade of green, and the rosewood fretboard is so light, it looks like roasted maple.
It was made by Aria Pro II.
I found it in the hands of someone who specializes in tracking down old basses like this one, then giving them some TLC and selling them on.
This one needed a refret. It weighs in at just below 8,5 lbs (3,85kg).
I figured that someone has bought this bass in the seventies and then played it until the frets were done, so my conclusion was this must be a good one.
First and foremost I was smitten because it looks like a Ric, which is the coolest looking bass out there, because I really dug the green color it has and because of that incredible fretboard.
The differences to a 4001 I can already tell:
1. No Ric-o-sound. This thing has but a single output.
2. No dual truss rods (thank the gods). This one seems to have a single, dual action rod.
3. No lacquered fretboard. Can't tell if the luthier who has done the re-fret sanded off the lacquer and did not reapply any or if it was made like this.
Since I'm VERY pressed for time these days, I only had a bit of a session, but I can tell you that the neck shape is called "Two by four with rounded corners" and works well for me. The bass balances perfectly on the strap and feels quite nice. Where the P bass has mids that are well rounded and sit well, the mids that pickup with all the bling produces is a lot more in your face. A bit like pulling the pin on a hand grenade with your teeth and then forgetting to throw the thing. No wonder they put it in a trench.
Beautiful color! Is it one of the few neck-through copies or a bolt-on or set neck?
I went through several years of playing Ricks almost all the time and went through a small handful of vintage and modern ones, oddly enough settling on a 4004 model (modified with single coil pickups from a company called Classic Amplification that makes really nice vintage-style Rick pickups with some better materials than the originals).
There is a killer vintage shop in LA that got in a 70s or early-80s lawsuit-type Japanese Rick (can’t remember the branding, but may well have been Aria Pro II) that was a right-handed copy of the famous Paul McCartney bass and pretty vintage-accurate apart from the single truss rod (this was a set-neck, which I believe is accurate to McCartney’s as well), and I can say with some confidence that it was simply a better bass than most of the actual vintage 4001s I had laid hands on (which was alot as they were pretty plentiful in Los Angeles!). It was nice and light with a beautifully fast slim neck and set up perfectly. And sounded right on too. I was at that point kinda moving on from the Rick thing mentally and my modded 4004 still fits me like a glove so I hesitated on buying it, of course it was gone when I was in there next…I really should have grabbed it (he did overprice stuff in that shop pretty habitually, but that particular example was not terribly so and honestly probably well worth it). It will likely sound killer in your band! My main band back then was very proto-metal (Deep Purple, Sabbath, etc) inspired with some more modern edge and my Ricks became pretty much required (nothing else I tried fit right sonically).
I’ve just brought my 4004 out of a long retirement and I think it is probably going to be a main squeeze again in one of my current bands.
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It's a set neck.
I'll have to get my hands on a real Ric at some point, to be able to judge it better, but this bass feels nice and it sounds ... completely different.
Plugged into my setup, I got a lot more dirt, but this bass has less output than my P bass. With the three way switch I could go from mostly clean (neck PU) to Stoner Rock (both) to Lemmy (toaster only) without touching a pedal.
I'll bring it to the metal band and try it out, but the guys are already hyped. In their eyes, it's a much better fit than a surf green P bass.
It has a single truss rod with allen key, I have not tried it yet, but I do suspect it has to be double action.
Yeah vintage Ricks had pretty low-output pickups, and the modern ones are wound hotter but still less output than a typical P-bass in my experience (I’m really not a fan of the sound of the modern wound Rick pickups- too honky and middy, which is why all the modern Ricks I kept around got replacement Classic Amplification Rick pickups). The older pickups had a clarity to them that for my tastes really define what I want to hear from a Rick, and my first Rick helped me figure out the great trick with aggressive tone for me was not hot and mid-heavy pickups but actually relatively clean and clear pickups that could be molded with gain later at the amp and/or via pedals without sounding honky or muddy. I also appreciate the lower output as I can use pretty much any pedal with my Ricks and have adequate headroom (before the Ricks I was playing with a lot of G&Ls and struggled to find pedals that could handle them gracefully- even a lot of my favorite Rickenbacker low-gain dirt pedals would be medium gain at best when pushed by a P-bass).
Ricks until the early 80s had the bridge pickup hard-wired through a high-pass filter/capacitor, I know I’ve opened up a few Japanese clones that didn’t have this (though I’m fairly certain the one that got away from me in Los Angeles did have the capacitor just based on the tones available). Might be worth opening it up and seeing if yours does- for me it is a key part of the unique tone of Ricks and helps balance the pickup outputs better too (without the capacitor the bridge pickup generally strongly overpowers the neck pickup due to a much larger magnet). A lot of people don’t like the capacitor though, so many have been bypassed or removed from vintage examples at some point. Modern Ricks have the capacitor on a push-pull pot so you have access to both options.
There's always the Nordenbrocker replacement neck PU by Nordstrand to balance this .... just in case
Today, I finally figured out what the "Toaster" pickup on a Ric is. It's not the bridge pickup as I'd always assumed.
It's because it looks like an old fashioned bread toaster, in miniature, literally.
My guess it Tokai, another Japanese guitar company, that is famous for their great lawsuit clones.
Actually I think it was one of these Greco “PMB” Paul McCartney basses (except I’m almost certain the one I played was a set-neck without the skunk stripe through the body and I believe older as well- I could be misremembering though as this was probably 8 years ago or thereabouts!): 1989 Greco PMB-1000 (Japan) Electric Bass Guitar
The owner of the shop in LA had a bunch of famous clients in Southern California who he would be the middle man for transactions for vintage instruments they were looking for (I'm pretty sure that was his main source of income as the shop was too overpriced in the internet auction age) , and he said a Japanese source of his sold him an entire collection of Japanese instruments as a lot including this bass.
I actually really dig the specific interaction of the vintage Rick pickups, including that louder bridge pickup tamed by cutting its lows. It was a quirky design choice, but I feel like they hit upon something special.
That said, I have a few instruments with Nordstrand Big Split and Big Single pickups and they are some of my favorite modern pickups (the Nordenbocker is essentially a Big Single in a custom Rick-sized shell). If Classic Amplification wasn’t around making nice vintage-compatible Rickenbacker pickups I might have ended up with a couple Nordenbockers in my 4004
Wow, lovely Ric ‘hommage’!
I happen to have one by Ibanez:
Mine doesn't sound as great as it looks. I think the electronics are in desperate need of a fix, but haven't gotten to that, yet.
Beauty! I know a guy who plays one and is super happy with it.Wow, lovely Ric ‘hommage’!
I happen to have one by Ibanez:
Mine doesn't sound as great as it looks. I think the electronics are in desperate need of a fix, but haven't gotten to that, yet.
I have worked on a couple old Ibanez Rick-alikes for friends and owned quite a few 70s Ibanez instruments myself, and the electronics are always the weak point in those instruments. You have some large pickup cavities that could fit just about any aftermarket pickup you could imagine if you decide to experiment with other options, and definitely replace the pots and jack as well while you’re at it!Wow, lovely Ric ‘hommage’!
I happen to have one by Ibanez:
Mine doesn't sound as great as it looks. I think the electronics are in desperate need of a fix, but haven't gotten to that, yet.
Shameless (or ful?) plug... Selling my germanium dark driving here, they only made 40
For sale Pedal Purge - darkglass, JohnK mini xo, damnation, fuzzrocious germ dirty driving, sushi, and more!
Looking to sell vs trade - need $ because we're replacing the windows at our house :)
- Snake101st (+29 /0 /-0)
- Updated
- Expired
- Views: 3K
- Reaction score: 2
- Comments: 1
- Category: For Sale: Effects and Pedals
- alpha omega damnation dark driving digitech drop duality johnk keeley caverns model fet science mother underground accelerator
$70.00 to $360.00
6 watching
No one opposed to shameless plugs here.
...but I omit Germanium wherever I can, so I'd be a lot more interested in a regular one.
With the purchase of a new old bass, my dirt bending has been severely derailed, for obvious reasons.
I tried around a bit and think, I'll mostly stick to the Fender P and the Le Fay with the J setup for testing purposes.
That bridge pickup on the Fakenbacker sounds like a very refreshing kick in the teeth.
However, I played around a bit with what's in the house.
The Tube Drive .... it's a high dollar pedal and I had it listed in the local classifieds. An offer came trough and I realized I do not want to sell it at the moment. There is that point with the gain at the absolute minimum - when you have it at zero it won't pass signal. On the first few increments, you get signal but it sounds severely band passed, like through a telephone. Then there is the point where you get full range signal and exactly there, you already get drive - but when I turn up the tone knob to around 2 o'clock the sound is .... special. I want to say something of a very soft and touch sensitive distortion.
I somehow cannot shake the feeling that this is done right.
The goal that other pedals try to achieve, but fall short.
The Prunes and Custard remains in the same position: It completely evades any attempt to properly analyze what the knobs and switches do exactly and how they interact. And it remains to be a lot of fun. I really don't know what to think of it.
I tried around a bit and think, I'll mostly stick to the Fender P and the Le Fay with the J setup for testing purposes.
That bridge pickup on the Fakenbacker sounds like a very refreshing kick in the teeth.
However, I played around a bit with what's in the house.
The Tube Drive .... it's a high dollar pedal and I had it listed in the local classifieds. An offer came trough and I realized I do not want to sell it at the moment. There is that point with the gain at the absolute minimum - when you have it at zero it won't pass signal. On the first few increments, you get signal but it sounds severely band passed, like through a telephone. Then there is the point where you get full range signal and exactly there, you already get drive - but when I turn up the tone knob to around 2 o'clock the sound is .... special. I want to say something of a very soft and touch sensitive distortion.
I somehow cannot shake the feeling that this is done right.
The goal that other pedals try to achieve, but fall short.
The Prunes and Custard remains in the same position: It completely evades any attempt to properly analyze what the knobs and switches do exactly and how they interact. And it remains to be a lot of fun. I really don't know what to think of it.
