Thanks, yep, I guess I painted my 4001S at least 10 years ago. My paintjob's a little different from his, the swirly bit up by the horn is different, and I used teal instead of silver/grey just 'cause I like it better. Doing it slightly different fits into our band's "format" of playing Beatles tunes but not pretending to be them, not mentioning The Beatles at shows, not calling each other "Paul" or "Ringo", and no wigs!
Our rythym guitarist's Ric 320 is Fireglo instead of Jetglo for instance, "right" but not "exact". Just our way of doing things.
I first had to get up the nerve to paint a Rickenbacker, I was a Ric bass fan before I even knew how to play, so I had great love and respect for this bass. It was originally Mapleglo, so the first thing I had to do was paint it Fireglo, then do the "MMT" paintjob on top of that. This was before the DVD era(at least for me) so I paused the "Hello Goodbye" video on the Beatles Anthology VHS, and also checked out the "MMT" LP which has a couple decent shots of the bass.
And just did it. The finish has held up pretty well over the years, it has worn thru in the lower cutaway and where my left arm contacts the body.
My "rig"? Not much to speak of really, just a simple set-up that nails the needed tones. Bass goes into an Electronix Submarine bass preamp, which is a very simple device to deal with. We have a pretty tight show with little down-time between songs(except for guitar changes or announcements, etc.) so there's not a lot of time to make tweaks on an amplifier. The Submarine is just a volume and a tone knob. For our first set(Beatles '62-'66) I play a Hofner and the tone is pretty much set, without any changes. For the second set('67-'70) I play the Ric and a Fender Jazz, and this is where the Submarine comes in handy. There's several varied bass tones on the tunes from this era and just a slight turn on the Submarine's tone knob and pickup settings on the bass do the trick.
The Submarine goes into an Ampeg RocketBass 100 bass combo. 100 watts into a single 15". The 4-band EQ is set flat for the 1st set, treble is turned up for the 2nd set. For "bass-heavy" tunes like "Come Together", "Paperback Writer", and "Rain" I turn on the bass boost switch.
Line out from the Ampeg goes into a DI box into the board.
Here's a shot of the Ampeg.
