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What's up with this Ric?

Likewise, I've only ever seen it once (in person, but I've seen plenty of photos of the tail lifting, without shearing).

The one I saw had apparently been bending for a while, when it suddenly just ripped - I wouldn't say it took out a bunch of wood, but it did some damage.

I'd guess that the person responsible for the mod in the O.P. probably had more confidence in putting in a new block, and attaching the new bridge to that, than to carve something that fits into the existing cavity (which has clearly been extended), and then attach the new bridge to something with pre-existing drillings, and new wood joins, in all the wrong places... But all we can do is speculate.


The one I saw was a black tailpiece at the rickresource forum probably close to twenty years ago, there was also an 'exploding' R tailpiece which I still think is kind of funny. :laugh:
 
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They do NOW, but they probaby didn't in the Early 80's or whenever this mod was done.

The original Quan BadAss bridge was usually too tall to be a stock replacement, so it had to be countersunk into the body. (Hence the Badass II's design). But even that's no excuse for the overkill of this situation.

I bet $5 there was even a Kahler bass tremolo on this bass at one point.
I zoomed in to see if it was a Kahler trem.
 
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I'd hazard a guess that the original bridge suffered a catastrophic "tail lift" incident, and ripped up a bunch of wood. Then an amateur spliced in a new block of wood to attach the new bridge.

It's a functional repair, but it ain't pretty.
Let's not start another fallacy about Rickenbackers, shall we? Tail lift does not cause wood to get ripped out. Period.

I may be wrong but I think the Hipshot replacement bridge was first offered in 2019?.
I got the very first Hipshot bridge so I can confirm it was in May '05.

4003FLV 1280 13.jpg
 
Yeah, no wood ripping involved on tail lift. The screws under the saddles act as a fulcrum the back of the bridge bends up around, in the worst cases nearly 90 degrees, or just breaking at the thin metal either side of the saddles. There were a lot of questionable amateur bridge "experiments" in the 70's and 80's, mostly with Badass bridges, because thats what Geddy did, but that one is just a mess of inept woodworking. I wouldnt pay much for it as a restoration project. Meh. The newer 4003 are better built anyway, I dont get the 4001 lust, I owned one for a while. It had the scary thin neck, but wasnt too stable, and every one was a little different.
 
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I'd hazard a guess that the original bridge suffered a catastrophic "tail lift" incident, and ripped up a bunch of wood. Then an amateur spliced in a new block of wood to attach the new bridge.

It's a functional repair, but it ain't pretty.
The dreaded Rick “tail lift” never rips up wood. There are two different size and depth routes under the stock tailpiece and they guy simply routed it down and put in a filler to accommodate a different bridge.
 
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The 80's badass mod gone wrong, it actually requires no additional routing, no idea why they would do that.
It traditionally required a small ring of pickguard material.

As already stated, it's not tail lift problem. And it's not a copy, it's a real Ric. Copies are way easier to pick out if you know what you're looking at.

iu

This one is way more than what's actually required.

A patch/plug could certainly be created to fix it.
 
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Probably the most famous tail-lift photo on the inter-webz. Chances a replacement bridge was forthcoming from Ric Inc? 0.00% You can see, no tearout involved, because there are no screws where they failed, and the brief run of bridges with two extra screws didn't lift.
KKvDErs.png


Most (including my 78' 4001) looked more like this. Cosmetically worrisome, but not bad enough to affect the playability. This wasn't the primary reason most people swapped the bridge anyway, it was the PITA intonation adjustment and mute assembly that didn't really work well. I actually bought a Badass II intending to do the Geddy mod, but chickened out. The BA II is still on my old fretless Frankenjazz.
4Zkhs9Y.jpg
 
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Probably the most famous tail-lift photo on the inter-webz. Chances a replacement bridge was forthcoming from Ric Inc? 0.00% You can see, no tearout involved, because there are no screws where they failed, and the brief run of bridges with two extra screws didn't lift.
KKvDErs.png


Most (including my 78' 4001) looked more like this. Cosmetically worrisome, but not bad enough to affect the playability. This wasn't the primary reason most people swapped the bridge anyway, it was the PITA intonation adjustment and mute assembly that didn't really work well. I actually bought a Badass II intending to do the Geddy mod, but chickened out. The BA II is still on my old fretless Frankenjazz.
4Zkhs9Y.jpg
The 90º bent tailpiece looks like an Allparts one.

My old FG July '73 4001 had a moderate amount of lift but that had no effect on the tonality at all. I did comparisons between it and the MG March '73 4001 I had (with cast aluminum tailpiece). No differences that I could detect, tonally. I included my old April '98 4001V63 for further visual comparison.

BTW, the refection of the lift makes it look twice as bas as it really is, as in your second photo; not a lot of people consider that.

1973 MG 4001-Tailpiece-SV-1200_9109.jpg


1973 FG 4001 Tailpiece_1200_1837.jpg


1998 4001V63-Tailpiece-SV-1200_9118.jpg
 
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The older casting clearly wasn't up to the job, hence the entirely different construction and separate string anchor on the V2. Only took them 30 years to solve that one. I've had an Allparts on my Jetglo clone for 5 years, no sign of lift, 5 years and counting.... at 1/3 the price of OEM.
 
The older casting clearly wasn't up to the job, hence the entirely different construction and separate string anchor on the V2. Only took them 30 years to solve that one. I've had an Allparts on my Jetglo clone for 5 years, no sign of lift, 5 years and counting.... at 1/3 the price of OEM.

My 4003 came with an Allparts bridge (not that I knew it at the time), and it has a small-to-moderate amount of lift. It's been holding steady the entire time I've owned it (11 years), so presumably it's moved as much as it's going to
 
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The 90º bent tailpiece looks like an Allparts one.

My old FG July '73 4001 had a moderate amount of lift but that had no effect on the tonality at all. I did comparisons between it and the MG March '73 4001 I had (with cast aluminum tailpiece). No differences that I could detect, tonally. I included my old April '98 4001V63 for further visual comparison.

BTW, the refection of the lift makes it look twice as bas as it really is, as in your second photo; not a lot of people consider that.

View attachment 4695144

View attachment 4695142

View attachment 4695138
That first pic doesn’t even look,like a Ric. Weird treble pu, knobs and binding behind the bridge.