Rickenbacker 4001 FL

1975 Rickenbacker 4001 FL (fretless) Model. Maple body, maple neck, rosewood (?) fretboard. No inlays, no dots. Passive electronics. Black finish, nearly black fretboard (looks as though it may have been dyed/stained at some point). Rick-O-Sound stereo output jacks. One toggle switch, 2 volume knobs, 2 tone knobs. Double truss rods. Reverse tuners.

I love the way this bass sounds. Rickenbackers can be a little inconsistent and some people buy one thinking they're going to automatically get that Geddy Lee/Chris Squire type of sound- and wind up sorely disappointed when they get a bonky, clucky sound with little bottom end. Fortunately, my '75 does have that interesting, growly sound and definitely has more low end than the Thunderbird I had previos to it. Some folks call this bass a one trick pony, but I have to disagree. Depending on the strings you use, which pickup you use, how your amp tone controls are set, etc., you can get anything from a bright, ringy sustain to a thudding reggae bass. I play it through a Seymour Duncan Bass 4000 head and a rear ported Ampeg 4x10 cab.

I play it in a hard rock band but know how to get entirely convincing country pop, of jazz sounds out of it. Being a fretless, the jazz sound comes a little easier than it might with a fretted neck.

The balance is great, the bass is not top heavy. The only thing I'm not too crazy about is that mine has reverse tuners. You turn them couter-clockwise to increase string tension. A little annoying at first, but I'm used to it now. If "1" means it constantly goes out of tune and "10" means you can beat the daylights out of the strings without it ever going out of tune, I'd give it an 8. On stage, I tend to retune a slight bit after 3 or 4 songs.

This bad boy could use a pro set-up now. the action is low near the headstock, but gets higher in the upper frets. I have adjusted the truss rods and tweaked the bridge, but it sems that it likes to return to a certain comfort zone on it's own. Not hard to play, though. Given that Ricks are not known to have the strongest necks, I would absolutley discourage an E string thicker than .100- keeping light guage strings on it helps the action stay lower, too.

My Rick has been rode hard. It obviously had over 30 years of life before I got it (4 or 5 months ago). It has it's fair share of gouges, scratches, chips, and some genious actually painted black over the white binding on the body- and, as I mentioned before, someone stained the fretboard a very dark brown (looks black). Fortunately, I see this as character. It doesn't look like anyone else's fretless Rick, for sure. For all the beatings this thing has taken throughout the years, it feels and plays very solid.

I'm giving Rickenbacker a lowly 2 rating here for their ultra-paranoid and ridiculous policy concerning truss rod covers (the plastic part on the headstock that actually says "Rickenbacker". The company is so worried about people putting their nameplates on copy basses (as if anyone had made Rick copies in the last couple decades) that they won't sell you one. You have to have one to trade in to them to get another! What this means is that if you want to get one by any other means, like Ebay, be prepared to spend around $100 for that silly little piece of plastic. Thanks Rickenbacker!

It's my favorite!

1976 Rickenbacker 4001 FL made in The USA
4 string with fretless fingerboard
Neck through body construction
2 Volume 2 Tone and a 3 way pickup selector
2 Rickenbacker passive single coil pickups with mono and stereo outputs
Laminated maple neck
White finish with black trim
33 1/4" scale neck
Hardshell case

This bass was made for progressive rock in mind for the fretless player. Tons of bark with very tight bottem. The CLEARIST sounding fretless I've EVER heard. I've been expermenting with the rick-o-sound option to incerase my tonal platter. Using a guitar amp for the treble pickup and a bass amp for the bass pickup kind of like Chris Squire. This bass just sings you can get soooooo many different sound cominations. The treble pickup is alittle nosie but not too bad. The only thing thats bad about the sound is the E string is alittle too quite but I'm going to adjust the pickups to fix this.

I've been playing for about 5 years and the last three I've been play a fretless bass. I took my frets out of my old bass its sonds good but the sound was just too warm. So i thought of the brightest sounding bass I could think of so I bought a Rickenbacker. I was not disapointed at all probably the best fretless ive every played and the sound damn. Rickenbacker nailed the fretless bass hands down I highly recomend this bass to any fretless player who wants there sound to stand out of mawh town.