

Rickenbacker 4004LK on ebay.....

Discussion in 'Basses [BG]' started by incubus2432, Apr 11, 2006.

  1. incubus2432


    Mar 21, 2002
    Grafton, Ohio
  2. incubus2432


    Mar 21, 2002
    Grafton, Ohio
    The potential lovely couple.....


    and the Ebay LK.....
  3. incubus2432


    Mar 21, 2002
    Grafton, Ohio
    hmmmm....total silence! I thought there'd at least be a few "you could buy two *****skys for that" comments....

  4. beadgc


    Oct 10, 2003
    Brooklyn, NY
    Wow. You could buy two Sadowskys for that!

    Seriously, I'm one of the people who've been intrigued by the 4004 design, and I'd love to own one some day. That is indeed a gorgeous instrument. But at that price, I think the guy is correct, as he implies, that he's betting on it's value as a collectible. It will be interesting to see if it sells. The market for ultra-high-end collectible Ricks has to be pretty thin.

    If it were not a hand-carved, 1-in-60 bass, and thus was in a price range I might actually consider, I'd still want to A/B the three-pickup sound possibilities with a normal, two pickup 4004. Anyone done that? Someone on the forum, I believe, owns one of each.
  5. jwl


    Jan 25, 2005
    why are the pickups spaced differently? jeff
  6. Why would anyone want to buy two sadowskys?

    You coul dbuy a decent car.
  7. incubus2432


    Mar 21, 2002
    Grafton, Ohio
    The 4004LK sounds essentially like my other 4004's but just a tad "thicker". There is a nice rich tone from the extra overtones/harmonics picked up by the 3rd p/u. The tone from the LK is nice but the difference over a standard 4004 isn't huge. Unfortunately the neck p/u is wired solo and the bridge and middle are wired together. I'm still debating on the best way to wire it for more tone variations without any permanent modifications.


    Ric switched from having the bass p/u against the neck to moving it closer to the bridge. The change was thought to have been made to assist slap players. The problem was that it made removing the truss rods for maintenance much more invasive so they were moved back to the original spacing.....like on my 3 standard 4004's shown above. The Ebay LK must have been made during the timeframe of the interim p/u spacing.

    BTW......I already have a decent car!
  8. jake_tim


    Jun 28, 2005
    North Carolina
    nice rick collection BTW.

  9. beadgc


    Oct 10, 2003
    Brooklyn, NY
    Thanks for the info, Incubus. i'm still waiting to get to play a regular 4004, so the chances I'll ever get my hands on one of the 3-pickup models is pretty remote.

    As for the switching, is the switch a three-way? If so, here's a thought: Back in the days before there were five-position switches for Stratocasters, one mod people did to get more combinations was to wire the neck and bridge pickups to a standard tele two-way switch (so it gave you neck solo, neck + bridge, and bridge solo). Then you wired the middle pickup to the third knob, so you could blend it in or out with any of those three positions. So it gave you the option of neck + middle, middle solo, and middle + bridge. Back in the day (circa 1969) people called that "Hendrix wiring" though I'm not sure if the man himself used it. IMO, it works great, and gives your more tonal possibilities than the new standard strat set-up.

    You might be able to accomplish the same thing on the Rick with a stacked volume/tone knob and use the other one to blend in the middle pickup.
  10. bassjus


    Mar 30, 2004
    Up until a couple months ago I wasn't aware that these were rare. A local store always had the same one in stock (last time I was there was about 6 months ago) and I never even played it.
  11. paul n

    paul n

    May 6, 2005
    Arden, NC
    What shop?

    ~Paul :)
  12. incubus2432


    Mar 21, 2002
    Grafton, Ohio
    Actually that would accomplish my goal but the one dual concentric pot and one regular pot would drive me crazy. I am leaning towards two dual concentrics wired neck vol/bridge vol and middle vol/tone. The only thing holding me up is locating a 4 way mini toggle....they may be readily available but not at the few places where I looked.

    ....and thanks Jake!
  13. steve21

    steve21 Banned

    That's awesome.

    Good luck with it, man.
  14. Anyone want to buy an orange head mesa cabs, a 4003 and a stingray and the rest of all my gear. Haha

    o my god i wish i had the $8000 to spend on it. its kinda scary though, cus i know if i had it i would spend it in less than a second one that bass.
  15. 12bass


    Jan 2, 2003
    Victoria, Canada
    I don't quite understand what's going on with the auction, as I see four increasing bids by the same bidder (incubus2432), and no one bidding against him....?
  16. Skit1

    Skit1 Guest

    Jul 2, 2004
    He's set a max he'd pay and if anyone trys to outbid him eBay automatically makes his bid higher thatn the person trying to outbid him.

    I've personally never liked the look of the LK model, I'll stick to a 4001 thankyou :bassist:
  17. incubus2432


    Mar 21, 2002
    Grafton, Ohio
    I was fishing for the reserve but didn't want to go too far over......it took me four tries to find it. I wanted to at least bid the reserve to let the seller know that I'm interested so when the offers to end the auction early came rolling in at least he or she would know there is a serious bidder.

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