Hello, fellow bass enthusiasts. I am in a bit of a pickle and could really use some advice. About a year ago I accidentally snapped the top of one of the truss rods in my Rickenbacker 4003. It took me a while but I finally found a company that sells replacement rods and am doing a DYI fix. I am generally pretty handy when it comes to repairing and setting up my instruments and have never really run into any serious issues in the past. After doing due diligence, I found a bunch of tutorials on line that all seemed simple enough. As it turns out however, they are all for 4001 and things are apparently very different for the 4003. The original rod did not just "slide right out" like they do in the older models. I had a hell of a time and it took me hours of slowly twisting and pulling to get the bastard out. Now I can not get the new one to slide from either direction past a certain point on the neck before it hits some kind of obstacle. There appears to be some sort of rubber lining closer to the top of the neck, near the headstock which seems to be the culprit. I think it may have bunched up during the removal of the original rod and is now gumming up the works. Does anybody here know what this is and could you please explain to me how to alleviate this situation? Thanks.
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Rickenbacker 4003 truss rod replacement issue
- Thread starter bygoneguy
- Start date
The modern compression rods are slid into heat-shrink tubing (not shrunken, though). Please explain what your procedure was for removing the rod, this will help in the diagnostics of your situation.
Hey, thanks for the reply. I tapped it from the bottom to push it out from the top of the neck at the headstock. Once I had it out far enough I tried pulling it out with pliers but it would not budge. So I attached a pair of vice grips to it and slowly twisted and pulled inch by inch for hours, taking intermittent breaks. I did this until it finally came free. When I try to put the new one in it gets jammed up about two frets down from the nut. If I push it up from the bottom of the neck I can get it easily about 2/3 to 3/4 up before I have the same issue. So I figure the blockage runs the span of roughly two and a half frets.
Actually, thanks to your invaluable information the blockage situation has been resolved. This leaves me with a new question, however. Will the new truss rod work without the shrink wrap and if not, do you know where I could get some and could you offer any advice on how to install it without all the hassle I had removing the last one? I imagine there has to be an easier way.
Thanks.
You don't need the shrink wrap (it is used to stop any rattling).
You could wrap it with a bit of masking tape, as RIC did previously to the shrink wrap.
Hope that helps!!
I hope you removed the acorn nut at the heel end first?
If not, I can certainly understand why you had so much trouble with this. 
Hopefully, you didn't screw up the truss rod channel in the neck.As geddeeee said, the heat shrink is not imperative to the operation of the truss rods. If you want to use the heat shrink you should be able to it find it at places like Digikey, for one example.
Not for the first time am I wishing there was a good mechanism to bet money over the internet. Because I'd put a hundred on "no".
Is this a joke or are you legitimately asking me if I tried to squeeze a 1/4 inch locking nut through an 1/8 inch cavity?
Well, there is no mention of you having removed it before pulling the rod through the neck, so....... Ya' never know.
I have never read about folks removing these modern rods having any problems doing so. There are photos floating around of the procedure, somewhere here, or on some other forums, perhaps.
As I have read it:
Remove truss rod adjusting nut, tap rod into body (after removing pickguard/pickup on the body, depending on which model) enough to unscrew the acorn nut, then either pull the rod out from the body end of the channel (in which case, the acorn nut does not necessarily have to be unscrewed first), or push the rod back into the neck and pull the rod out from the headstock.
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