Ric in a P Bass body?

[kcole4001]

Ric5 has built several using RIC pups and Fenderbird and SG bodies to name a couple, and the pickup positions and type determine much of the characteristic sound.
Do a search for some of his franken-basses and you'll see and hear how close you can get relatively cheaply using your preferred body shape.

The 4004 series is the RIC solution and addresses all of the common issues: contoured body, HB pickups, modern bridge, yet people still complain about them not being progressive.

 

[locanda]

 

[sunbeast]

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I've been wanting to do something like this for a while! You might look into the Classic Amplification 4004 Hi-Gain pickups to get better polepiece alignment at the neck pickup without losing that particular sound (or find a way to mount a 4003 bridge pickup in there). My 4004 had the 6 pole guitar pickups in it when I got it, and those cover a wider string spacing as well...

 

[xaxxat]

How Dave Meros does it:

 

[boristhespider7]

Watching the thread with interest. I've toyed with the idea of buying a cheep P body (like the all maple Squier VM) routing a big swimming pool route in the body and sticking 2 J PU's in the 4001 Ric positions. Then would just cover it all in custom made pickguard.

BTW, i've also thought that the Lakland Decade looks in theory like it might cop a Ric'ish tone. Would be interested to see how close that bridge PU is to the Ric sweetspot and to hear from anyone whose played one

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Mind you with the skyline model at about 2/3 the price of a 4003 not much point in that, would be interested to know how it sounds though

 

[boristhespider7]

How Dave Meros does it:

Great Ric tone on that Spock's beard clip

 

[Winterglo]

Do you own that? It looks cool, love it.

 

[mapleglo]

Do you own that? It looks cool, love it.

Thanks, yes, I built it. Carvin neck, maple body wings, babicz bridge, classic amplification pickups. Build thread is here. It was my first build.

 

[reddesert]

Watching the thread with interest. I've toyed with the idea of buying a cheep P body (like the all maple Squier VM) routing a big swimming pool route in the body and sticking 2 J PU's in the 4001 Ric positions. Then would just cover it all in custom made pickguard.

I'm at the beginning of doing something like this with a Squier P body. I was planning to put a J pickup close to the neck, and enlarge the P route a little to fit a J pickup diagonally, with not much wood removed. (And if I can do this without making a mess - I don't own a router - to add a third pickup in the J bridge position.) Assuming the Ric pickups are at the 24th and 36th frets, the P route is fairly close to one of them. I don't know if this would actually sound like a Rickenbacker, but I hope the resulting strato-ricko-jazz-P sounds interesting.

 

[adivin]

Yea

Peavey t 40 can cop a ric sound

yea if you can deal with 12lbs.

 

[locanda]

I've been wanting to do something like this for a while! You might look into the Classic Amplification 4004 Hi-Gain pickups to get better polepiece alignment at the neck pickup without losing that particular sound (or find a way to mount a 4003 bridge pickup in there). My 4004 had the 6 pole guitar pickups in it when I got it, and those cover a wider string spacing as well...

Actually, that's a Classic Amplification "Late 70's style Classic Button Top Neck pickup". The original Rick pickup from the 70's had failed (probably a break) and I'll probably have them rewind it for sale or use elsewhere.

 

[Ric5]

 

[Ric5]

try to find a 2000 series bass ...

 

[xaxxat]

Absolutely gorgeous.

 

[Relsom]

Jeff Scott, what is the model you are playing in the 1st pic earlier in this thread. I haven't seen one laid out like that before.

 

[Jeff Scott]

Jeff Scott, what is the model you are playing in the 1st pic earlier in this thread. I haven't seen one laid out like that before.

That is a 2003 4004Cii that I bought new in October that year. I did some minor mods to it:

Scatterwound toasters
VVT control harness with RIC vintage knobs
Hipshot A Style bridge
Hipshot Ultralite tuning keys
RIC plexi TRC

Here are a couple of photos of the bass, itself, along with some others I had. Note how thin the neck on the '67 4005WB is compared to the '03 4004Cii and '98 4001V63!

Photograph Copyright © Jeffrey P. Scott 2005 All rights reserved.

Photograph Copyright © Jeffrey P. Scott 2005 All rights reserved.

 

[Relsom]

Jeff, I'm not that familiar with the evolution of the 4004. All the ones I've seen have the neck pup right up to the neck. Yours has it pulled back to where it would be on a 4001/4003. And what about that sandwich of woods on the body? That bass has me very intrigued. I thought I might persue a 4001s or 4003s but I really like your 4004 there. Beautiful.

 

[Basshappi]

That 4005 is da bomb!

 

[Jeff Scott]

The 4004 Cheyenne bass made some evolutionary changes over time from its introduction in 1992 up until the latest spec version in 2011. It started out like the current 4003W is, with a maple neck/fingerboard and walnut body wings, then the body wings became front half maple-back half walnut with a maple neck and bubinga fingerboard, then, finally, the current maple-walnut-maple sandwich with maple neck and bubinga fingerboard which changed to a Caribbean rosewood fingerboard in 2011. The headstock started out with walnut wings, then lost them to all maple for a while and the walnut wings returned, IIRC, around 2006.

The pickups were originally in where the the current locations are, then they were moved back to where you see them in the above 4004Cii, and sometime in 2005 they were put back in their original locations. Sorry, I do not know/recall the exact timeline dates for these changes.

Here are some photos of earlier versions:

 

[Jeff Scott]

One other note on the 4004Cii I had, I swapped all the gold hardware that is standard on the Cii for chrome hardware. Chrome comes standard on the 4004 Laredo model, which has a solid, all maple body; the maple-walnut-maple body is only on the Cii, although, IIRC, there have been a few exceptions to that.