The Last Bass Outpost

Okay, I'm curious now!

Nigel, did you paint that MMT bass yourself?

By flipping I just mean half a turn inside the channel. Then the curve faces the opposite side (fretboard instead of back of the neck). The acorn nuts at the body end have serrated washers but sometimes that's not enough to hold them in place.

When the bent rod is inside the channel, it's straight. That's why it's easy for it to turn.

If you make a small mark at the end of the truss rod, you can see if it turns inside the channel when you tighten the nut. You don't have to remove the rods at all, just check if they turn. I remove the rods from the body just to see if they are bent at all.

Uwe: if the rods in your s8 are straight, maybe you can bend them like in the pic and insert them back inside the channels with the convex side under the fretboard. Do you still have the original rods? Why did you have to replace them?

I have yet to experience any advantage of the Ric twin truss rod system, be it old or new. It is in the best of cases as stable as a Gibson or Fender truss rod, but in most cases it is not. That you would need to adjust one truss rod different from the other I have never encountered. On five Rics I own neither the necks are warped enough or the fret job is uneven enough to necessitate individually different adjustment.

I think that neck stability is more a matter of neck woods and construction, than it is the truss rods.

In difficult cases, John Hall suggested tightening the rods like you would tighten old-style folded rods, i.e., pull the headstock backwards with your hand and then use the rods to "lock" the neck into position.

Did you check the body-end part of the rods? Perhaps the acorn nuts are sinking into the wood?

I have many times in the past adjusted the rods slightly different, most of the times it was when the bass side had a slight curve and the treble side was straight.

Another advantage of the Ric truss rods, old and "new" (post '85), is that you can easily pull them out, fix what needs to be fixed, then insert them back inside the neck. This can be done on your kitchen table, no need for special tools. You can't do that with a Fender or a Gibson.



Here's another idea. When you pull the rods out you can see that they are curved. This was done in the factory. Don't attempt to straighten them. In some cases the rods "flip over" inside the channel and the curve is in the wrong direction. I did this with my Shadow: removed the rods, then inserted them back inside making sure the curve was in a back-bow. Until I did that, I had to use TI's because of the low tension. Now I use medium gauge DR's, the neck is dead straight - zero relief - and very stable.

ASAT bass strap extender:

Still a great looking bass. You would have thought they would have stuck with the design and made it work better?

At RIC they used to call them "tuna boats". I don't think current management likes the design. Apparently when they were still made, not many people liked them, and years after production stopped, some NOS 4005's were gathering dust in music stores.

I wonder if the problem could be pickup placement. The treble pickup is very close to the bridge.

The first time I saw a Ric bass "in person" was in high school, in a jazz concert, in 1977. I think this was the first and only jazz player I've seen with a Ric bass. I was mesmerized, I thought it was the best looking bass I had ever seen. It was a pre-73 Azureglo, with checkerboard binding, toaster, full-width crushed pearl inlays...

Then I discovered Roger Glover and Chris Squire. The bass sound in Pictures of Home... I think I listened to Machine Head and Yes' Fragile hundreds of times, until I wore out the vinyls.

My first Ric was a 1973 Jetglo 4001. Foolishly I sold it, but later I got a chance to buy a Shadow for $750... and I was in love again. The sound, the looks, these basses play and sound like no other. Soon after I got the Shadow, I bought a white '73 4001. The shadow is my "clank" Ric, with fresh DR Lo Riders, and the white '73 is my "thump" Ric, either with TI Jazz Flats or dead TI Jazz Rounds.

Some famous modified Rics:

McCartney's 4001S, stripped and sanded down (against the grain) to bare wood, then the "cresting wave" in the horns rounded out, and a zero fret added.

Chris Squire's '64 1999RM - according to Squire the body was shaved thinner before it was refinished in cream white. Some pics, however, suggest that the bass is not thinner than a standard Ric bass. It was also wired in stereo.

Roger Glover's '72 Jetglo 4001, was all original for the Machine Head recording sessions, then the neck toaster was replaced with two slanted Fender J pickups.

Renaissance's Jon Camp's modified Ric 4001 "Great White".

Cliff Burton's 4001 with the Gibson mudbucker and Fender J pickups.

Mike Rutherford's double neck Ric... a bass and a 12-string cut and glued together.