New 4030's

[ilan]

Instant short scale bass conversion: detune to DGCF and capo the 2nd fret.

[Rob]

Instant short scale bass conversion: detune to DGCF and capo the 2nd fret.

Shhhh you'll spoil the die-hards.

[Alanko]

My nearest Rickenbacker dealer had three of these in stock when I visited last week. One was in a pleasant British Racing Green finish. At £3,499.00 they might be in stock for a while yet.

Maybe a UK thing, but Rickenbackers tend to end up back-ordered and out of stock for a while. Then there's a single release of them and suddenly everywhere has them in stock again; though usually it is the hip new models. For a while you saw those Walnut, barely lacquered Rickies everywhere.

[morrow]

Those racing green Rics are lovely.

[morrow]

Same size as the 330 , 25 3/4 scale. And rumour is the price will be reasonable.

[morrow]

If they were going to stick a bass neck on one of these 350 models , I'd fall pretty fast.

[ilan]

Guitar scale... I don't know. And the bridge pickup at this location is unusable. Looks like Ric are repurposing 330 guitar husks with surplus R bass tailpieces and bridges from the discontinued 4005V. Hard pass.

[morrow]

I'd like to try one before passing. It's guitar size. Pickup position is similar to the 4005.

[gearHed289]

I like the look of these. I did not know about the extra short scale length. That's kinda weird.

[ilan]

I'd like to try one before passing. It's guitar size. Pickup position is similar to the 4005.

I've tried a guitar-scale bass and it's a bit ridiculous. The E string has no definition. And the pickups on the 4005 were a big mistake. The bridge pickup, so close to the bridge, is thin, tiny, useless, and the neck pickup is very neck-y. Miles of barren land between them that could have been used for useful bass tones.

It seems that no testing was done prior to production. They just used guitar pickup locations. Hofner did the same mistake. Paul has never used anything other than the neck pickup - the switches on his bass are fixed in place with rolled gaffer tape.

If RIC wants to make a short scale bass, they should do more than just repurpuse guitar husks (or 4003 husks with the bridge relocated). This 3001 prototype could work.

[patman]

Agreed...