Two more short scale 4030's

[gearHed289]

I've got an '89 4003S and a '93 4003S/8, both with the big fat horns. I like em. Both these basses have very stable necks. I often wonder if the slight extra support provided by the extra wood has anything to do with that? My other Ric is a '92 4001CS with skinny horns. That neck is more prone to movement, but it's also much thinner (front to back) than any Ric I've ever played, particularly in the upper registers.

Besides the new horns being pretty skinny, they also shifted the wings back slightly, so there's hardly anything between the pickguard and the edge of the body where the neck meets wings on the treble side. Sorry for the run-on sentence, and I hope that makes sense!

[ilan]

Also prefer where the fretboard joined the body on the late 60s/early 70s ones.

Exactly! Now the pickguard at the neck "joint" is flush with the edge of the body.

[D.M.N.]

Exactly! Now the pickguard at the neck "joint" is flush with the edge of the body.

Yeah, it looks a bit odd these days, some of them with checkerboard even seem to have pickguards that cover some of the binding. I'm sure there's some reasoning behind it, but at least in my mind it seems like setting the neck further out like that would only add to stability issues at the neck/body transition (though I suppose that's not so much an issue with the 1" spacing. I know with that swimming pool of a route my 4001v63 had some problems). Given the current state of Rick basses with these details (nothing wrong with build quality, they're very good and I like the recent switch to single truss rod), I chose to go with a Greco PMB-800 to get back into the Rick zone instead of picking up a new 4003s. Closer in details to a 1970s one, plus the 1/2" spacing (with far less wood removed for routing, much more stable neck than my old 4001v63).