new Rickenbacker bass model!

[4stringer77]

I'm a sucker for walnut, but if I had the money to buy that bass, I'd do the Cliff Mod and put a mudbucker in the neck pickup position, not exactly a wise thing to do on something so expensive and rare. ...annnd that's why I don't have a Ric.

Cool! I didn't know that about Cliff's Ric. Did he record anything with that bass? Did it sound good? I guess the bridge pup was a Fender Jazz single coil too according to the thread here.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Cool! I didn't know that about Cliff's Ric. Did he record anything with that bass? Did it sound good?

I don't know but I'll speculate that Garage Days Revisited probably had that bass with the new pickups. That's their covers of "Am I Evil?" and "Blitzkrieg."I have the Cliff 'Em All DVD (and laserdisc) and can attest to the Ric NOT having different pickups in it, which was shot right around when Kill 'Em All was released, so it was probably the bass on the record (which certainly sounds like a Ric) with its stock pickups. It looks like it was also the bass used on Ride the Lightning, at least according the album photos and gear stories I remember. If he used the Aria for Master of Puppets, that would go a long way towards explaining how much less prominent his bass was compared to the other two and and it Lightning were otherwise mixed identically by Fleming Rasmussen. I still contend the only decently mixed Metallica album was Kill 'Em All, but their best sound, bass especially, was on the Garage Days Revisited EP, which would make it the Ric with the changed pickups. Short answer: Garage Days Revisited and Ride the Lightning had the Ric with the Mudbucker and Jazz pickups.

[4stringer77]

Neat. Thanks for the info. I would have never thought Mel Schacher, Tom Scholz and Cliff Burton had such similar set ups.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Neat. Thanks for the info. I would have never thought Mel Schacher, Tom Scholz and Cliff Burton had such similar set ups.

I don't think that Tom Scholz's bass would have lasted five seconds in Cliff's hands. He's featured in this month's Premier Guitar and he talked about how he disconnected the mudbucker and that the bass itself is barely structurally intact.

[hieronymous]

Wait a second - isn't Garage Days Revisited Jason Newstead? Actually, the Newstead one is The $5.98 EP Garage Days Re-Revisited - was there an earlier release just called "Revisited" with Cliff? I've never heard of that and can't find any reference to it (but of course that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist).

[drbassman]

Would love to see a true new RIC model, but it will ever happen.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Wait a second - isn't Garage Days Revisited Jason Newstead? Actually, the Newstead one is The $5.98 EP Garage Days Re-Revisited - was there an earlier release just called "Revisited" with Cliff? I've never heard of that and can't find any reference to it (but of course that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist).

Garage Days Revisited was originally in extremely limited release through Megaforce Records as a solid yellow-jacketed cassette and supposedly a 7" vinyl. Radio stations around the country got most of those, BTW. I've seen one of the cassettes, along with the "Jump in the Fire" single. Never any of the 7"s old though; they'd be worth a fortune now. When Metallica first began to have a rise in popularity with ...And Justice For All, Kill 'Em All was re-released on CD with the addition of the two tracks from Garage Days Revisited. That CD has since gone out of print and is now a collector's item, as it was produced in the smallest numbers of any release of that album. I have it. It was the first Metallica CD I ever bought. Those two tracks remained out of reach for most of Metallica's post-black-album fans until they were remastered and reissued on Garage Inc. While Bob Rock's heavy hand as executive producer can be heard on all the Newstead-era remasters, he didn't really mess with the old stuff much and it sounded like it was just brightened up a bit to compensate for the old/worn analog masters.

[hieronymous]

Thanks for schooling me - was not up on that tidbit of Metallica-lore. Will have to look for my copy of Kill 'Em All and see if I have the one with bonus tracks - part of me feels like I might but haven't listened to that album in years.

[Chris P.]

That Ric looks very cool in real life!

[ilan]

Chris, can you upload a good pic of it from NAMM?

[Chris P.]

Just a moment.

[Chris P.]

[Chris P.]

The brochure they had was bad;) One page with bad pics;) But they had one!

I have some more bad pics of the booth and me and mr. Hall.

[Dave W]

Nice grain on that one!

[Psycho Bass Guy]

What exactly are the tonal properties of walnut? I know that it's a straight grain hardwood but I've heard it to compared to everything from mahogany for warmth to maple for snap to koa's neutrality. Since I've only ever encountered in on coffee-table basses with ultra-low setups and active electronics, I've never actually heard its tonal thumbprint unobscured. Carvin uses it a bunch, but the only way I'd buy a Carvin is used, and the folks who have the money to get a Carvin with walnut don't sell them.