The Last Bass Outpost

Gear Discussion Forums => Rickenbacker Basses => Topic started by: uwe on August 23, 2017, 03:16:03 PM

Title: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: uwe on August 23, 2017, 03:16:03 PM
I hope the humor of you Ricsters is still intact ... Coarse language and stream of consciousness warning. For the avoidance of doubt: I don't agree with him on a lot of things!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQgAv2jcmcI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR--0QSLQPg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4ODN1c_6ik
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: Granny Gremlin on August 23, 2017, 03:29:52 PM
That was making the rounds on a local board (think the dude might be Canadian).  He ain't wrong (though I never even got to hate the bridge cuz I never got past the neck profile and the laquered rosewood fretboards).  It started a thread hating on Rics and talking about the Hipsot replacement bridge.

Anyway, That video was entertaining, but the one where he rants about his wife put me off from watching any more of them.

Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: 66Atlas on August 23, 2017, 06:13:42 PM
Picking on Ric's for their archaic bridge is akin to knocking over old people and stealing wheelchairs.  It's just mean and an easy target.  That said I'd never change mine out, it fits the bass better than anything else.  Personally I love their truss rod design, my hairpin rods have held the 4001 in a rock steady position for over a decade at this point.

One of these days I'll start making videos or rants about fenders and sell advertising. I bet I'd make a mint. 😁
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: Dave W on August 23, 2017, 07:03:45 PM
I won't watch these. No need to. He's an obnoxious turdhead who goes out of his way to tear down guitars and basses he doesn't like, even if it means grossly exaggerating small problems.
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: westen44 on August 23, 2017, 09:13:07 PM
I won't watch these. No need to. He's an obnoxious turdhead who goes out of his way to tear down guitars and basses he doesn't like, even if it means grossly exaggerating small problems.

Plus, whatever he says is overshadowed by the fact that he is made to look like a pygmy by people such as Chris Squire and Paul McCartney who have played iconic bass lines on Rics through the years.  They did a lot with what he calls junk. 
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: amptech on August 23, 2017, 10:50:40 PM
Ok, he does not like the rick, but I can't understand why he (like thousands of other people) needs to film himself and post on youtube. He's not interesting, he's not funny, just a regular dude who really just need a friend who says to him : 'hey, this is too stupid to put on the internet for other to see. Your appearance, language and everything you say - not funny just stupid'.

The bridge, I agree it's not a brilliant solution (although I intonated mine to the strings I use on it and haven't needed to do anything to it since 2002, so it does not bother me) but put something else there or don't buy a rick! How hard is it?

Wish I hadn't started the day seeing this, even though I only saw the first 5-6 minutes. I'd rather listen to blondie for 15 minutes than seeing the whole thing.
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: Alanko on August 24, 2017, 02:14:55 AM
I find Dave's 'fun stuff' videos amusing at times, but they are sort of long winded. Occasionally he's trying a bit hard to show how much of a good guy he is by setting up either hopeless instruments or by helping out people by not charging them for the work. In all honesty his views seem a bit out of date. Specifically he rants about Rickenbackers because he tried a single example in the '70s and didn't get on with it. Rickenbackers require more skill and specialist knowledge to set up, beyond the fairly universal techniques for Fender-family instruments. Whether that is a negative point against Rickenbacker, or not, is a debate that will never be resolved. Roger Sadowsky won't touch them, or didn't back in the day.
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: FrankieTbird on August 24, 2017, 06:06:10 AM

Funny how he never mentions the "quality" routing for the wiring.

Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: gearHed289 on August 24, 2017, 07:24:33 AM
 :bored: :bored: :bored:

I've owned and worked on many Rics since 1979. No problems to report. I hate the bridge/tailpiece, but other than that, if you know what you're doing, they're no more wonky than any other brand. 70s Fenders on the other hand....
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: Dave W on August 24, 2017, 07:48:44 PM

Wish I hadn't started the day seeing this, even though I only saw the first 5-6 minutes. I'd rather listen to blondie for 15 minutes than seeing the whole thing.

Whoa! Let's not go to extremes!  :mrgreen:
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: uwe on August 25, 2017, 07:58:41 AM
Through all his overt (and partially tongue-in-cheek) Ric-bashing, you can read between the lines that he has a soft spot for them, probably going back to his first one and the Roger Glover inspiration.

(And, incidentally, Roger never went back to his Fender P after he had bought his 4001, he would eventually discard it for other brands, but not Fender. The Ric is all over Machine Head,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mLryrT1ZMc

Made in Japan and Who Do We Think We Are, the three vintage Purple albums with the best and most prominent bass sounds. Glenn Hughes sounded quite different (and quite a bit sloppier!  :mrgreen: ) with a Ric

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmOc9ML942E&list=PLc2kCYP6U_gNsv_g6Lyabixmt8WGzSjr1

which he initially used with Purple before settling for a P.)


But I agree, he tends to be longwinded, those clips would benefit from a sharp cutting room.

For all its weaknesses and idiosyncracies, the Ric 4001/4003 has "iconic" written all over it, visually, soundwise and historically. Probably more so than any other bass. Fenders are just too ubiquitous for that, the Höfner is essentially a novelty toy that got lucky via one famous player and Gibsons were too rare and visually varied to leave a similar pop cultural imprint. People can detect a Ric sound (though there is more than one) immediately, you don't have that with, say, a Thunderbird.
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: uwe on August 25, 2017, 08:17:09 AM
Whoa! Let's not go to extremes!  :mrgreen:

Indeed, that would be atomic.
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: eb2 on August 26, 2017, 01:54:56 PM
This guy is wonderful. I miss Ontario and when I watch this guy I feel like I'm there. Fire up a Craven and pop open a Blue. He calls out crap. Fun.
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: Alanko on August 26, 2017, 02:13:28 PM
Through all his overt (and partially tongue-in-cheek) Ric-bashing, you can read between the lines that he has a soft spot for them, probably going back to his first one and the Roger Glover inspiration.

He has his facts backwards there. Glover had a P bass in 1969/70 that was sunburst but with a maple neck, which is presumably quite rare?

He then moved over to the Rick, in 1970 (?), and later had it modified:

(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f4/ed/21/f4ed21f473a7798abbc57139f59a61a9--roger-glover-black-sabbath.jpg)

He claimed he didn't get enough low end out of them, but that is entirely his own fault for using Marshall amps and cabinets.  :mrgreen:
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: Dave W on August 26, 2017, 09:06:10 PM
This guy is wonderful. I miss Ontario and when I watch this guy I feel like I'm there. Fire up a Craven and pop open a Blue. He calls out crap. Fun.

I don't care where he's from, but based on a few videos I've seen, I wouldn't let him near any bass of mine.
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: ilan on August 29, 2017, 04:52:39 PM
He claimed he didn't get enough low end out of them, but that is entirely his own fault for using Marshall amps and cabinets.  :mrgreen:
He had no clue about the cap issue. Actually I think I was the first one to tell him about that. When I asked him why did he modify the Ric, his answer was "because I didn't want to sound like f***ing Chris Squire".
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: wellREDman on August 30, 2017, 03:26:38 AM
when I saw Rick vs Fender vid  this was what i was expecting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gkETBPx49I
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: uwe on August 31, 2017, 10:32:15 AM
He had no clue about the cap issue. Actually I think I was the first one to tell him about that. When I asked him why did he modify the Ric, his answer was "because I didn't want to sound like f***ing Chris Squire".

He didn't know about the cap issue, true, but a lot of people didn't do that in the 70ies. I only learned it here myself. Bass ooomph wasn't so much the issue, as he was using Martin cabs from a certain point onwards. What Roger didn't like was that the Ric didn't give him a clean sound, he wanted an undistorted, non-overdriven bass sound like he believed to hear on American recordings at the time. That Machine Head and Made in Japan overdriven sound that people find to die for today, that wasn't tidy enough for him.

Fender experiments had not satisfied him either. The P Bass on In Rock was too inaudible to him (he was right) as it lacked detectable mids, the Fender Mustang used on Fireball lacked ooomph in a live setting. You only heard Roger well on DP records once he used the Ric, but that sound was too overt for him too. When he returned to active playing with Rainbow in 1979 he used a TBird (which was a lot more inconspicious in the Rainbow sound than the Ric in DP had ever been, but that is what Roger wanted) until he broke its headstock off on stage. He's on record for saying that had he known how a TBird sounds while playing with Purple, it would have been his choice over the Ric.

That said, I will forever identify him with a Ric, look- and soundwise. Whenever he drags out the Ric today for Smoke On The Water in favor of the Vigier, it draws a tear to my eye. That Ric sounds nasty and dirty, but just right. A commanding sound.
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: ilan on September 01, 2017, 11:57:16 PM
He's on record for saying that had he known how a TBird sounds while playing with Purple, it would have been his choice over the Ric.
I can believe that. It's really strange to think that in those days a player of his stature has never tried a T-Bird, when today almost any bass player has had the chance to play almost anything, let alone own tons of different basses.
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: uwe on September 11, 2017, 05:29:30 PM
There weren't a lot of 60ies TBirds built in the first place, fewer survived regular gigging and even fewer ever made it to English shores. And Overend Watts of Mott the Hoople had something like eight of them (and held on to them), so that must have been half the Brit TB Rev population alone!  :mrgreen:

Even later pronounced TBird players such as Martin Turner (the TBird came only post-Argus which still features his Ric, his first "proper bass") and Pete Way (when Schenker joined UFO in 1973, Pete Way was still busy playing a Fender P) only stumbled across their TBirds relatively late. In my felt recollection, you saw more of them in the mid-seventies than you did in the early seventies. The Bicentennials released in late 76/77 gave the sixties models a push in popularity too.

The Merseybeats with John Gustafson flaunted Fire- and Thunderbirds as part of their image in the 60ies but that didn't start a TBird (or Firebird) invasion in the UK ...

(http://nostalgiacentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/merseybeats_434.jpg)
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: amptech on September 11, 2017, 10:16:23 PM
Wow, the Gibson power-plus series of tube amps.. don't see those every day! Quite fresh looking in 1963, or what?
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: Jeff Scott on September 12, 2017, 10:55:38 AM
There weren't a lot of 60ies TBirds built in the first place,

Wow, the Gibson power-plus series of tube amps.. don't see those every day! Quite fresh looking in 1963, or what?
I had a friend back in the early '70s who had a two pickup Thunderbird and the same Gibson amp as in that photo.
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: amptech on September 12, 2017, 10:45:32 PM
I had a friend back in the early '70s who had a two pickup Thunderbird and the same Gibson amp as in that photo.
The power-plus amps, all named after rockets from the NASA space program, was meant to replace the 'tuck away' crestline amps in 1963. They even used the same catalogue, and just cut out the amp on the cover - and put the trapezodial styled amp in..

The unit meant for bass I think was called the Titan V, with 4x6L6GC powered head putting out 90 Watts feeding a 2x15" JBL speakers. Typical 'not quite ordinary' gibson preamp, but at least the few Gibson tube bass amp designs I've built makes some sense in trying to sound nice, full and un-aggressive.
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: uwe on September 13, 2017, 07:09:31 AM
"90 Watts feeding a 2x15" JBL"

That was mammoth for the time!  :o
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: Jeff Scott on September 13, 2017, 08:17:03 AM
"90 Watts feeding a 2x15" JBL"

That was mammoth for the time!  :o
Yeah, it Trumped the Dual Showman by 5 watts!  :mrgreen:
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: 4stringer77 on September 13, 2017, 11:39:03 AM
It's a shame so many people equate louder and more watts with better. Maybe it's because I'm getting older I find music more enjoyable when it doesn't result in hearing loss after being at a performance.
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: amptech on September 13, 2017, 10:29:50 PM
It's a shame so many people equate louder and more watts with better. Maybe it's because I'm getting older I find music more enjoyable when it doesn't result in hearing loss after being at a performance.

When looking at Gibson's amazing amp output between 1935 and 1968, I always think 'If they only made one guitar and one bass amp that could rock/scream' they'd survive as an amp maker. Although making their top of the line amps too HI-FI might have been a huge mistake, I guess the last amp marketing efforts made musicians of the day uninterested; trying to convince rockers that 'the freaked out sound of yesterday' was going out of style really was the final nail in the coffin. Even Jazz musicians used freaked out sounds by that time.

Sorry, off topic 8)
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: slinkp on September 14, 2017, 08:41:17 AM
They had some really really nice amps if you liked bluesy overdrive rather than full-on screaming though.  A guitarist friend played for years through a mid-60s 112 combo, not sure of the model, but that thing sounded great.
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: uwe on September 14, 2017, 12:39:23 PM
It's a shame so many people equate louder and more watts with better. Maybe it's because I'm getting older I find music more enjoyable when it doesn't result in hearing loss after being at a performance.

Lots of watts are important for not using them. A mighty bass rig at low volume will give you a much more pleasant and natural sound than some pumped up little thing at the end of its range. In fact you don't even need to play a large rig as loud as a small one and still be comfortably heard.
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: 4stringer77 on September 14, 2017, 07:16:28 PM
I can appreciate that having more headroom is an added benefit. There are other factors to consider, such as the room size and how much PA support there is. While recording is a different circumstance than the stage, it seems like a B-15 is a more popular choice than an SVT for those purposes. Frank Zappa, while not a bassist, also pulled off some great performances with just a little old Pignose. Big rigs are nice but after playing often at high volume, more subtle approaches start to gain in appeal, no pun intended.
Title: Re: Not a fan entirely ...
Post by: uwe on September 21, 2017, 02:14:51 PM
"gain in appeal"

 :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: