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Rickenbacker twins

Grant Cherry

Grant Cherry

Guest
Jun 19, 2017
20
14
68
Queensland, Australia
#1
I was told a story today that I find hard to believe. Has anyone ever heard of a story that Rickenbacker actually made two identical lefty basses with the same serial number and in turn gave one to Paul McCartney. There is more to this which I'll add later
 
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#2
Where'd you hear this "story"? IIRC, Paul was initially given a bass in 1964 but it was a righty bass, the fine folks at Rickenbacker not knowing/realizing at the time that Paul was a lefty. The following year (again, IIRC) he was once again given a bass, this time it was the lefty 4001S he is well known for. Perhaps, the person who told you about the "twins" had his facts out of order?
 
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#3
Grant Cherry said:
I was told a story today that I find hard to believe. Has anyone ever heard of a story that Rickenbacker actually made two identical lefty basses with the same serial number and in turn gave one to Paul McCartney. There is more to this which I'll add later
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I’ll bite. What’s the point of 2 basses with the same serial number?
 
#6
NMTB said:
To give one to the Paul McCartney look-alike who replaced the original when he died in November 1966?
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LOL

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#7
Ok here is why I'm asking..Earlier this year I had my 77 4001 left restored at a local luthiers the timber joint was parting so they had to strip it down heat the joint to remove it and then repair it. I had it repainted turquoise and fully restored back like new. A friend who is an Uber driver and guitarist picked up a guy and they got talking. The guy got all excited and was telling my friend that his son is right into guitars and was having his Les Paul repaired at the same place. He siad his son saw a turquoise lefty Rick and fell in love with it so he took photos of it as well as the serial number. The guy said that his son found out that this was the other twin of one given to Paul and has the same serial number. The Rick he was talking about is mine although i find the story hard to believe and i don't know how he researched it.
 
#9
Grant Cherry said:
Ok here is why I'm asking..Earlier this year I had my 77 4001 left restored at a local luthiers the timber joint was parting so they had to strip it down heat the joint to remove it and then repair it. I had it repainted turquoise and fully restored back like new. A friend who is an Uber driver and guitarist picked up a guy and they got talking. The guy got all excited and was telling my friend that his son is right into guitars and was having his Les Paul repaired at the same place. He siad his son saw a turquoise lefty Rick and fell in love with it so he took photos of it as well as the serial number. The guy said that his son found out that this was the other twin of one given to Paul and has the same serial number. The Rick he was talking about is mine although i find the story hard to believe and i don't know how he researched it.
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The son of a passenger in a friend's Uber said it so it must be true.
 
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#11
Grant Cherry said:
Ok here is why I'm asking..Earlier this year I had my 77 4001 left restored at a local luthiers the timber joint was parting so they had to strip it down heat the joint to remove it and then repair it. I had it repainted turquoise and fully restored back like new. A friend who is an Uber driver and guitarist picked up a guy and they got talking. The guy got all excited and was telling my friend that his son is right into guitars and was having his Les Paul repaired at the same place. He siad his son saw a turquoise lefty Rick and fell in love with it so he took photos of it as well as the serial number. The guy said that his son found out that this was the other twin of one given to Paul and has the same serial number. The Rick he was talking about is mine although i find the story hard to believe and i don't know how he researched it.
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So, the implication is that Macca has a '77 4001 in his collection?

And this guy who got 'excited': what made him excited in the first place, do you know?
 
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#13
Accounts differ on whether or not the bass first shown to Paul in Feb. 1964 was left-handed or not. It is known however, that he did not take whatever it was Rickenbacker presented him with. He finally accepted a LH bass from them in the summer of '65. The serial number is DA23 which suggests a manufacturing date of January, 1964.

So I guess the question is, what's the serial # of this '77 turquoise one?
 
#14
I once had someone tell me that I was related to some Egyptian royalty. It sorta checked out- both parents of one of my grandmothers were straight from Greece, which itself is but a short canoe ride from Africa... Well anyways, my Egyptian royal cousin needed money, and as money-needing people tend to do, when I told him that I had none, he stopped emailing me, so I never did get the full scoop. I'm a prince! Or a duke? I'm something royal, I tell ya!
 
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#18
A friend of a cousin of mine (or was it a cousin of a friend of mine?) went to Las Vegas for a get-a-way weekend and woke up in the hotel bathroom in a tub filled with ice with a note taped to his chest (or was it hers?) that read ‘get to an emergency room right way, we took one of your kidneys’.
 
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#20
Grant Cherry said:
View attachment 3240592
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Well, the story doesn't check out, but man, that is a beautiful Ric!

There are some great myths around instruments, like the legend of the Evil Red Rickenbacker that comes up around here once in a while. Something you can't verify, but which, just might possibly be true when you filter out the supernatural stuff. The myth about your bass being a twin of Paul's doesn't seem to be possible, based on the year, model, binding, etc.
 

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