New old bass(Rickodyne Reloaded)

[Wademeister63]

Sort of a revival of an old crippled friend, hehe.

Been a while since I posted this one... I messed around with it a lot after building it and never found a tone I liked in this bass. Tried the T-40 pickups you see here as well as a few different Jazz pups, EMG's, a couple different preamps and whatever I had hanging around. Here it was right after I built it...

After all that messing around with the electronics I decided I wasn't happy with how the silver paint turned out and stripped the finish. Got tired of the project and stashed it away in the closet.


After about two years I finally dug it back out for a second round of experiments and came up with something pretty good I think! I started out by filling in the oversized body rout with a block of maple and then routing only what I needed to get these pickups in there. I think I may have killed the tone early on by taking out too much wood but adding it back in seems to have helped. The block was a good fit and it's installed with some super hard aircraft structural adhesive.

Since I had that black pg and binding I also decided to change to black Hipshot hardware to complete the black-n-maple look and to shave some weight from the headstock. Man those Grover Titans are heavy! Totally passive setup, wired VVT. Using a Dimarzio Split P and Stan Hinsley Hot J. Strung with GHS Boomers .070-.115" which seems to work well with the 33.25" (Ric) scale. She cooks now! I still need to make a trussrod cover to cover up that last bit of leftover silver paint but it's at least worth a look...

The Rickodyne

 

[QuelOround]

Looks awesome.

 

[southernrocker]

That is great. That is the coolest handmade bass I have ever seen on this site.

 

[EagleMoon]

Very cool! So how did the T-40 pickups sound? I've always wondered how they would sound in a different bass.

 

[Thorsoundcore]

That is great. That is the coolest handmade bass I have ever seen on this site.

+1,that thing is SHWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAT.

 

[Captain Howdy]

Damn I like it...that is incredibly nice....geez the more i look at it the more i like it...the body is like a ric/mosrite hybrid...that is a sexy bass for sure. I mean damn...make me one!

 

[Wademeister63]

Very cool! So how did the T-40 pickups sound? I've always wondered how they would sound in a different bass.

Sounded terrible! No top end and I had warbling problems. Being a neckthrough with a thin body, I could never adjust the pickups far enough away from the strings to sound good. That's one of the things that got me thinking about this bass again recently. I bought a Split P pickup for my Aerodyne Jazz and loved it. I also noticed that it wasn't nearly as tall as the T-40 pickups.

 

[EagleMoon]

Sounded terrible! No top end and I had warbling problems. Being a neckthrough with a thin body, I could never adjust the pickups far enough away from the strings to sound good. That's one of the things that got me thinking about this bass again recently. I bought a Split P pickup for my Aerodyne Jazz and loved it. I also noticed that it wasn't nearly as tall as the T-40 pickups.

That's too bad about the pickups. Maybe they had to make them thicker to compensate for the huge amount of lumber in that T-40 body.

 

[Wademeister63]

That's too bad about the pickups. Maybe they had to make them thicker to compensate for the huge amount of lumber in that T-40 body.

No telling, but maybe if they used a thinner pickup the body would also have been thinner and we'd have lightweight T-40s today!

 

[EagleMoon]

No telling, but maybe if they used a thinner pickup the body would also have been thinner and we'd have lightweight T-40s today!

We could only dream...

 

[Korladis]

I actually have a T-40 pickup in an SG bass by the bridge. It's very close to the strings, but actually lower output than the mudbucker at the neck position.

 

[Darkstrike]

Wow, I really liked the silver, but natural is perfect!

How do the P/J pickups match up?

 

[Wademeister63]

How do the P/J pickups match up?

These two match up really well! I never really liked the nasal tone of a bridge pickup when it's too close to the bridge, so bringing it out there next to the neck pup works well for my ears. I have the P pup screwed down into the body a bit and the J a little closer to sort of balance the volume between the two. Turns out I have quite a wide range of blended tones from the woolier/woody sounding P to more of what hits me as the MTD signature sound. If I solo one pup and then start adding some of the other I can hear it come in gradually, then with both full on I can dial the other one out and it goes out gradual too. It's the longest/smoothest blend of any bass I've had. Overall it's very dark sounding but I can crank up the treble on my Bmax and it all comes out great so I'll probably leave it as is for a while

 

[Darkstrike]

Nice!

When I add bridge pickups myself, I tend to keep more towards the neck too.

 

[zacharyk88]

thats awesome the ones that arent painted are pretty cool

 

[ProfGumby]

That bass is dead sexy!
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[Drewbacca]

That is one smexy bass!

What do you think of the dimarzio split P?

 

[Wademeister63]

What do you think of the dimarzio split P?

It's beastly.

Very full and thick sounding with super high output. Even more than most active basses. The Split P and Hot J compliment each other perfectly IMO.

 

[Fab4ever]

Beautiful, beautiful bass. Nice work!!!!

 

[JIO]

The block was a good fit and it's installed with some super hard aircraft structural adhesive.

Saw this (old) thread (nice bass design!) and was curious about this technical point - what brand is the adhesive you mentioned? Is it a two part epoxy? I'm looking for something to bond plastic and bone (for a custom bridge) and wonder if the adhesive you used would work better than super-glue or standard epoxy from the hardware store.