Some Ric Porn for you: 4003S/5 and 4003S/8

[uwe]

Bass Professor, a German muso mag, is doing a Ric feature over several issues and wanted pics of 5- and 8-stringers (my problem child: since I ill-advisedly bought it, it has devoured two sets of original Ric trussrods who are now replaced by Ibanez trussrods which are thicker and stronger, the fretboard had to be taken off and the neck honed down, the bridge was countersunk into the body to enable sensible upper register action without having to make the neck too flat and I had the sequence of the octave strings changed, which makes fretting easier and less "buzzy" - now it finally plays like it should have from the start  ). Bass Professor got a hold of me and this is what resulted:

Ze Double-Whammy:



Body close-ups:



Note: String sequence changed from original regular string/octave string to ocatve string/regular string for better playability.



Full size:





Headstocks:





Bridges (4003S/8 sunk into body via extra-routing to achieve playable action):

[Chris P.]

Cool! Nice to have such pics from your own basses!

[Bert]

Cool! Nice to have such pics from your own basses!

+1 So true!

[chromium]

Nice basses!

I'd love to get one of the Ric 8s (I really think that Ric sound mates nicely with the 8 string), but your experience with that thing really scares me from buying one that I can't lay my hands on first.  Is there any place you know with some background info on these neck issues?  Just curious if they might have been centric to the 4008, 4003s/8, some specific "runs" of these basses, or all of them (a lot of tension there, afterall).  Are they all ticking time bombs?  or is it just the luck of the draw?

The Ibbys that I'm also watching for look to be really overbuilt in typical fashion for that era, with dual rods and all.  That'd probably be the smarter move, but those Rics are just so...

[Chris P.]

Of course there's the very good Rickresource Rickenbacker forum. If you can find answers, you'll find them there. Berth knows all about it.

[gearHed289]

Uwe, what year is your 4003S/8? Mine's a '93 and couldn't be more stable. Yours might just have a severely wacky piece of maple for the neck. Having said that, I've also seen some where the body wings are de-laminating form the neck.

[uwe]

My luthier said it was a wacky piece of maple alright, just not grown right. And the Ric truss rods are puny for that kind of pull, they kept extruding underneath the TRC from day one, pushing against it. My Gibson Les Paul Standard with just one trussrod has no issues whatsoever with the pull from 8 strings. I'm not saying that all Ric 8 strings are like mine, but I would certainly recommend that anybody buying one should check the specimen out before in person (like how far can the bridge still go down and how far can the trussrod nuts still be turned).

Mine was a 1999, possibly 98. They were deleted shortly after and I already had to wait for mine for more than six months. Right out of the case, the action was impermissibly high (and I prefer medium, not low action, I avoid fret buzz like the plague).

[hieronymous]

Great pictures! That's really too bad about your S/8, mine (a '93) hasn't had any problems.

Never saw the S/5 tailpiece before - you've got the bridge piece cranked way down - my 4008 is like that too. The string openings are different on the 4008 - it's just wide open:

[Dave W]

Uwe, didn't John Hall try to help you with the problem? Sent you new truss rods or something like that?

[ilan]

Good looking Rics, Uwe!

Did you try turning the rods inside the channels to a backward bow? We discussed this here about a year ago. 

This is not the first time I hear about S8's with maxed out truss rods and neck issues. It seems that some of them can't handle the pull of 8 strings.

[uwe]

John Hall had replacement truss rods sent to me directly via the Italian distributor so I wouldn't lose time repairing it, that was a nice move, I had contacted him via email out of the blue.

[uwe]

And yes, Ilan, we tried your helpful recipe of "turning the truss rods around", I even made printouts of your instructive pics and the good instructions and gave them to my luthier. But the neck had such a natural curve (or perhaps an acquired one by then) that the Ric truss rods where at their limit pulling it straight once the bass was strung.

Anyway, it's all good now. It's still not really a versatile instrument and frankly I do not think that the history of rock needed to be rewritten had 8-string basses never been invented (last time I innocently stated that at the Dudepit several years ago, the King's X fans were all over me!  ), but I like that the Ric 4003S/8 is passive whereas more modern 8-strings all tend to be active. It never fails to impress at rehearsals or gigs, but I generally grow tired of its sounds (and how it inhibits my playing) after two or three songs. You can be this huge baritone rhythm guitar with it and chord a little, but its almost impossible to play rhythmically intricate patterns with it that groove and are fluid-sounding. Whenever I play it, I either sound like Tom Petty (the rhythm guitar effect) or Gene Simmons with it (that slightly heavy-handed, stalking feel it then gives my playing). Frankly, I never heard the Cheap Trick guy play anything impressive on his 8- and 12-strings either, all his good runs (and he has a few) are executed on 4-stringers.

[Highlander]

They fascinate me, like almost all technology, but I just don't get the point... sorry... ish...

[chromium]

They fascinate me, like almost all technology, but I just don't get the point... sorry... ish...

I don't think I could/would fit an 8 into my band context (for the same reasons that Uwe described), but I do also like to play by my lonesome and make strange recordings to terrorize my family and anyone who happens across my webpage.  One of these would fit that objective!  I do have a nifty octave divider (dual dividers, with mixable 1-4 octaves down - mwhaha) that can give an impression of an 8string, but its not quite the same.

[Highlander]

I guess I can be "guilty" of liking the sound, for "fills"... during my "hair-metal" (I remember hair... ) days I used to mostly play in 3 piece, or 3 + vox, and tended to "chord" a lot of stuff during the guitarist's solo work... listen to Andy Fraser on "Mr Big" and he's doing just that, even with "mud"... so they have there uses... maybe there could be a useage for a "hybrid" six (eight) string, with 2 paired strings (E/A) and the rest as regulars, or maybe BEAD... that might be interesting...