Premier Rock Forum

I like mine and so does/did lemmy, chris squire, geddy lee, and cliff burton.

i dig 'em. they made my list of "if you could own ten basses."

if it's good enough for lemmy it's good enough for me.

I have a 74 azure blue 4001. i think the only thing crap is having to remove the bridge/saddle unit while intonating the damn thing. And good luck getting the amount of travel to get the thing intune. Also the capacitor inline with the bridge pickup that cut's the lows is crap. other than that they are not crap

the newer ric's are better. plus you can mod out that cap that cuts lows.

I've always lusted after Ric basses, but could never afford one, didn't know anybody with one, so i'd never played one until last week, when I was recording a friend's band and his new bass player brought in his. He let me play it.

The neck felt really nice and it had pretty good action, so my left hand was happy. However, I play without a pick, and darned if my fingers weren't getting caught on the bridge pickup's surround (he plays with the cover removed). My right hand was not happy. I told the owner this and he replied, "Yeah, that happens to me too. I've even sliced open my fingers a couple of times." Wow! I didn't spend enough time looking at the thing to see how easily this problem could be solved, but I don't think I'd wanna spend that much money on a bass just to go tearing into it anyway. Plus, it didn't sound any better than my modded aluminum-neck Kramer. In fact, the Ric owner used my bass on a couple of the songs.

Overall, Rics are super pretty, well-built basses with nice necks, but I don't think I'd ever own one just because of the finger damage issue. I'll give 'em a "not crap" because they're clearly great basses, but I'm gonna go with a waffle factor of Eggo blueberry because I'll never have any use for one. Of course, I've only ever played one, so my opinion is highly suspect...

joshsolberg wrote:Of course, I've only ever played one, so my opinion is highly suspect...

exactly. i've only ever played a couple of rics, at music stores, and i was never impressed. with the varitone control it has, i think my gibson ripper gets the "ric tone" just fine on one of the settings. which i never use. but still, my point was that you mightn't want to form an opinion fully on experience with a single instrument. i owned a metal-necked kramer bass for a while, and it was a total dog. the weight balance was terrible, the overall tone was murky, and the relative output levels of the strings were very unbalanced. that continued even after trying to fix the problem by replacing the pickup. so if opinions were to be formed based on single-instrument experiences, i'd say the aluminum-neck kramer bass is a total dog but a cool novelty. based on your testimony here, i have to assume at least some of them are decent. but yeah, rics basses = meh.

THE BASS.

I've had my '89 model since it's birth.

The fucking best most versatile, yet simple bass I can think of.

I've owned a P-bass and I now have a Bass VI. The Rick is the best bass suited to rock music IMHO.

If you play chords on bass and like distortion run right out and get one.

NOT CRAP.

I will throw in a small caveat, it is ergonomically different than most basses and will take some time getting used too... may even require you to change up you style or method a little to compensate.

Take Luck,

i have a friend who calls them 'rickenposers', but i think they are pretty cool.. as long as they don't have those stupid bridge plate/dampener things on them of course.

not quite as cool as gibson grabbers or thunderbirds, but better than any other non-aluminum bass. not crap.

(bump) just wondering what the opinions are in 2007.

jim primate wrote:if it's good enough for lemmy it's good enough for me.

EDIT: my own EGC was partly modeled after the ric basses. i wanted a neck like their necks. ric necks rule.

also, for those that own one and have a pain with the action, intonation, etc. hipshot makes drop in bridge replacements. a little costly, but worth it.