More Ripper prototypes

[Highlander]

I'm sure that sort of restraint will really end up with shades of deep purple bruising, imho...

[uwe]

I feel typecast here.

[TBird1958]

I feel typecast here.

I would do that to you, yes 

[ilan]

It really is heavy. Not just Gibson Victory, Gibson RD or Peavey T-40 heavy, but heavy-heavy. And that prototype body was near solid and huge.

And that, in lbs. or Kg, would be what?

[uwe]

I have it in storage currently - no idea!

[ilan]

Just a ballpark figure then.

[uwe]

Kramer alu neck heavy! Brace-yourself-heavy when taking it out of its stand or putting it around your shoulder/neck. No country bass for old men (with degenerated discs!)-heavy!! One-and-a-half or more kilos heavier than a regular maple body Ripper.

[TBird1958]

Kramer alu neck heavy! Brace-yourself-heavy when taking it out of its stand or putting it around your shoulder/neck. No country bass for old men (with degenerated discs!)-heavy!! One-and-a-half or more kilos heavier than a regular maple body Ripper.

You're hanging onto it with one hand here.........I don't recall your shoulder separating that day 

[ilan]

So 14-15 lbs.?

Also - are those standard mudbuckers, or something else under the covers?

BTW with this finish the Wishbass reference is clearer.

[uwe]

De-mudded mudbuckers! Actually not that much different in sound (if not in look) to the Bicentennial Bird pups which are sidewinders too IIRC.

[Basvarken]

De-mudded mudbuckers!

How? Less windings?

[Granny Gremlin]

That's all a Ripper pup is - a mudbucker with smaller coils (less windings; lower DCR etc etc).

[amptech]

On my (now finally sold) '74 P I put a demudded mudbucker in neck pos. Had a broken pickup, just wound both bobbins with thicker wire. Lower output, less mud, matched the p pickup nicely. But awfully polite, not very gibbish at all.

[uwe]

Well, "awfully polite" sums the Ripper pups up, certainly the weakest component of the whole instrument. It wasn't for nothing that many players (who could have afforded a Ripper) preferred the cheaper Grabber's more raucous output or the G-3's snappy bite. The Ripper had substance, but it was put across in such a docile manner, you would have never described it as, say, 'assertive'. Of course, the set neck also had something to do with it.

Gene Simmons was given both Rippers and Grabbers by Gibson, yet ended up playing only the latter, because Kiss needed something snarly live. Peter Cetera, Greg Lake and Mel Schacher played Rippers only transitionally and had all established "their" respective trademark sound before with different basses. Of those three, I'd say that only Mel had a dominant sound (Chicago wasn't the type of band for anything to sound dominant, they had to leave room for each other; Lake's hi-fi'sh clank never approached Chris Squire's Ric-ferocity), but if you listen closely, by the time Mel was playing a Ripper***, his sound had become more subdued due to Grand Funk having left the Railroad in the station and departed the trio format, discovering songwriting along the tracks as opposed to the improvisational frenzy of their early years. (Not a knock, I prefer the later GF(R) to the earlier one and liked what Craig Frost brought to the band.)

*** VERY fleetingly, I couldn't find a single live vid on youtube from their heydays where he was not playing his mudbucked Jazz Bass which provided his formidable sound in a way a(n unmodded) Ripper never could have

[Pilgrim]

   

You're hanging onto it with one hand here.........I don't recall your shoulder separating that day 

The bottom of the bass is out of the shot. It's probably sitting on a stool that you can't see.