Another Ripper! And some more advice needed, please.

[uwe]

If it's rockhard it ain't alder. It should also be quite light if it was alder.

[jumbodbassman]

That's coming along nicely! I'm with Lightyear and thing it's alder. Pretty slack of the previous owner to paint over the pg. Must have been painted by Earl Scheib: "Any car, any color, no ups, no extras!"

little grainty for alder.  and hard  too??  did gibson ever use northern ash on bodies???  is it really heavy??

[PhilT]

My first impression was that it is light compared to my 78. No hardware on it now, but I weighed it with all the parts hanging off the scale in a bag and it's 9lb, whereas the 78 is more like 11lb.

The body is a darker than the maple neck, the neck looks yellowish by comparison.  Hard to photo accurately, but this shows it pretty well.



What should the pickup routing be like? This has a kind of platform under the pickups



There's also some rough wood round the neck pocket that was hidden by the paint. Starting to wonder if it is actually a Gibson body ??

[uwe]

That body looks perfectly Gibsonish to me, routings and all. I'm not aware that anybody ever copied the old big body shape of the Ripper. That wasn't around for very long and by the time the copycats got going they emulated the more elegant, sleeker horns-shape.

[PhilT]

Thanks Uwe, that's reassuring. So jury's out on the wood. Hard enough for maple, light enough for Alder. As it appears to be a very early one, could they have used anything else?

[uwe]

Gibson never officially used ash, but would they have cared if they had it stocked at the time? Of course not. It was a preferred Fender wood and construction-wise Gibson was emulating Fender with the Ripper more than ever. If seventies Jazz Basses used ash what should have kept Gibson from doing the same? No one gave a damn at the time what a Ripper was made out of just as long as it wasn't mahogany (to set it apart from its "too dark-sounding" predecessors).

That wood looks exactly like the wood on my SB-350/450 - basses that came out around the same time as the Ripper. I always assumed that to be alder, but I suck in telling alder and ash apart except via the weight test (and of course, too confuse matters further, there is light ash too).

[Denis]

Both my '73 and '80 Rippers are maple. The '80 weighs 10.1 lbs. The '73 neck (with tuners) and body weighs 5.5. I seriously doubt that adding pups, pg, bridge and electronics add another 4.6 pounds.

Like all woods maple varies quite a bit in weight.

[SKATE RAT]

That body looks perfectly Gibsonish to me, routings and all. I'm not aware that anybody ever copied the old big body shape of the Ripper. That wasn't around for very long and by the time the copycats got going they emulated the more elegant, sleeker horns-shape.

i had a copy of the earlier "big booty" style Ripper. it was made by Ventura. set neck and twice mud (fake mud)

[godofthunder]

i had a copy of the earlier "big booty" style Ripper. it was made by Ventura. set neck and twice mud (fake mud)

I remember when some of the import companies started making Ripper copies and they came into the store.............................I thought they were off their rocker for doing so. They do exist.

[PhilT]

i had a copy of the earlier "big booty" style Ripper. it was made by Ventura. set neck and twice mud (fake mud)

I preferred Uwe's answer 

Pictures I've seen of stripped Ripper copy bodies have flat pickup routs, rather than the step up in mine - problem is you can never prove something doesn't exist.

This is where set necks are a PITA. If this was a Fender I could whip the neck off and have a look at what's written in the pocket.

[uwe]

I stand corrected!!!

[uwe]

Well, I tried!

Why on earth woud someone glue a Gibson neck to a Ventura body? Set neck instruments are not exactly fake-prone. Too much trouble.

[PhilT]

I just found an old thread on Jules' site which pretty much convinces me the body is Alder. It sure as hell isn't ash.

http://forums.vintageguitars.org.uk/showthread.php?t=613

The link to the tonewoods description on the Warmouth site has disappeared and I can't find it, but the Alder body blank sample picture looks like what I've got.

[clankenstein]

crikey

[uwe]

Alder 'tis.