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This may be wrong sections...

But is there anyway to get the raw 4003 Rick sound without buying a 2000 dollar bass?

I have a Jazz and it gets close-ish... but no where near as cool.

Any suggestions?

my mia p (with nickelwound bronze strings, i think this added mids and warmth) came close with a my old solid state ampeg blue rocket with 15", i never got that sound after i got another amp so i really wanted to be able to have that shitty blue rocket with more wattage and more speakers. just middy and a bit dirty, eventho it was a solid state it never sounded clean, but also not really dirty just a bit overdriven...i loved that amp.
maybe a middy sounding overdrive pedal could help ? or eq pedal with overdrive boosting the mids ? when i think ric sound i think middy, ballsy with lots of punch and definition, less glassy than a p bass, i think it might be more easy to obtain it through a p than a jazz but maybe i'm wrong. you'll never get that 'exact' sound i think...it's just so distinctive. but you could try and get some of the characteristics with other gear.

The closest I got to a Ric was rolling off most of the bridge pickup of my Moollon J-Classic and turning down the tone about 25%, played hard with a pick into a cranked Ashdown ABM 500 EVO III. Boosting the mids on the amp helped a lot, along with moving the "Valve Drive" knob to about 2:00.

I felt fairly invincible for about 20 minutes, but later got a quite a heap from the engineer.

I have a LTD ES bass as well, the Les Paul looking one... I think its got some passive EMG pickups, when I pump the tone and put it on neck pickup I kinda get 25% there.

Maybe my yorkville amp just won't cut it... more vintage style would help.

Interesting question. I have a 4003 and bought it because I couldn't get the sound from anything else. Be interested in hearing if you manage it.

I moved this to the right place.

I'd start with SD's Rick Humbucker upgrade set. They are a bit hotter than stock Ric pups, but less noisy. This will help compensate with the loss of brightness you get from all maple Ric's neck-thru design.

You also have less mass in the neck, since the Ric has two truss rods. One of those clip one headstock weights is an OK suggestion to help that.

Lastly, while the Ric 4000 series bridges are antiquated, a suitable replacement would be a good wrap up point. I think the Hipshot Ric Replacement is a bit overkill, and may not work on your J Bass. Their A Style Bass Bridge would be great, but I can't remember if the string spread is compatable.

This isn't a cheap route to go, but I think it would be your best bet, AND is way less than what you'd spend on a 4003.

i don't know about a $2000 bass. i couldn't even get $1000 for the one i sold.

Justin J wrote:i don't know about a $2000 bass. i couldn't even get $1000 for the one i sold.

One of the reasons I won't sell mine, and being left handed there are going to be fewer takers. It's going with me to the grave! But that aint no bad thing, I loves my Ricky!!

you own a lefty 4003..., if i was still more of a bass player (which i'm not anymore these days) i would sell my soul for a lefty 4003.

Yeah, sometimes think I sold my soul to get it . I got second hand in from Vintage and Rare Guitars in Tin Pan Alley in London. Cost me less than I was expecting, think they had had it ina while as it was a leftie so were up for doing a deal. I still had to go and get drunk before I could hand over the cash.... but have never regretted it.

I've always dug the Ricky sounds I've heard, but MAN- that bridge pickup cover. I can't think of anything more debilitating, other than a picking hand made of blancmange.

Depends how you play I suppose. After having my jazz bass with the 60s style covers on it for ages I prefer them to be there now, I either rest my hand on the bridge cover to pick or hook my thumb on the pickup cover to play with fingers. I've never put my hands in quite the same place on any two different models of bass anyway. On a P-Bass I just sneeze rhythmically towards the strings and it all works out.

paul_ wrote:Depends how you play I suppose. After having my jazz bass with the 60s style covers on it for ages I prefer them to be there now, I either rest my hand on the bridge cover to pick or hook my thumb on the pickup cover to play with fingers.

Likewise with the Rick. When I got it I was going to take it off, but then just kind of got used to it being there so never bothered.

Rayjaysonic wrote:

Yeah, sometimes think I sold my soul to get it . I got second hand in from Vintage and Rare Guitars in Tin Pan Alley in London. Cost me less than I was expecting, think they had had it ina while as it was a leftie so were up for doing a deal. I still had to go and get drunk before I could hand over the cash.... but have never regretted it.

That is lovely. I think I'd prefer it in the dark blue but not even sure if you can get them leftie? I know you can't get them in that colour for the guitar.

I'd have to be steaming drunk to try and justify spending nearly £2,000 on a guitar mind - Unless I was selling both of my guitars to fund something that I thought was better than both of them put together(which I haven't come across yet!)

Fair play to you though. I always think you worry about it at first but then once you have it in your possesion, the amount of money you spent on it becomes irrelevant and is replaced by joy! ....that's what I tell myself anyway!

Found this on talkbass.com, not that I've tried it:


iiipopes
05-05-2009, 09:22 PM
To make your jazz sound more Ric like try putting in a .0047 capacitor between the pickup and the + on the the volume pot for the bridge pickup. It will give you the Geddy Lee jazz sound.

Not only that, but have you noticed that when you run a J with both volume knobs full up that there is actually a little bit of volume drop from either impedance dropping or low end phasing issues? Adding the cap gets rid of that, and you can run both pickups full on without the impedance volume drop. And depending on where you want your rolloff, you can use either the Rick .0047, which will start rolling off below @300 to 350 Hz, or the .0068, the Jaguar cap, which will start roll off below @200 to 220 Hz, or even a .01 cap, which is what a Rick 4002 uses, and start the roll off at @ 150 to 160 Hz.

Caveat: since the cap is a high-pass filter, the overall volume of the pickup will be a tad less. So run a pickup in the bridge that has good strong signal, like any "vintage" spec single coil, a bright Bart, or a DiMarzion J or Ultra Jazz, or SD quarter-pounder. But don't use a pickup that has too much wire on it, or you'll overdo the mids, have a drop in highs, and you'll lose character from not having enough top end coming out of the pickup.

This is how I have my custom P-J wired, and it has solved every tonal problem I have ever had getting a bass to have even but progressively variable tone. I also use 500k pots and a .033 tone cap instead of .047 in order to get a little more presence and cut in the mix.

Yes, I've tried a lot of the mods above. But everywhere I play my job is to keep the bottom locked in so everyone else sounds good, so simpler the better: otherwise it's standard J V-V-T.[hr][hr]