Rickenbacker Electric Bass Guitar article
A Guide to Rickenbacker Electric Bass Guitar
A Rickenbacker bass looks and sounds like nothing else. Here's what actually makes one different, where the design came from, and who made it famous.
Right, let's cut through the mythology for a minute. A Rickenbacker bass looks distinctive, sounds distinctive, and has a genuine claim to changing how the instrument gets played. Here's what actually makes one different, where the design came from, and why players from Paul McCartney to Cliff Burton have reached for one.
What Actually Makes It a Rickenbacker Bass
Most classic Rickenbacker basses use neck-through-body construction — the neck wood runs the full length of the instrument rather than bolting or gluing onto a separate body, which is a big part of the sustain and rigid feel players talk about. Add maple body wings, a maple-and-walnut neck, bound edges, triangular fingerboard inlays and that unmistakable sculpted headstock, and you've got an instrument that's genuinely hard to mistake for anything else.
The 4000 Series: A Short History
| Model | Notable for |
|---|---|
| 4000 (1957) | The original design that started it all |
| 4001 (1961) | The classic model of the 1960s and 70s |
| 4003 | Modern successor; revised truss rods and bridge pickup |
| 4005 / 4005V | Semi-hollow design, revived from the 1965 original |
The 4003 kept the 4001's basic formula but addressed a couple of real-world issues — an updated dual-truss-rod system, and removal of the bridge-pickup capacitor that gave many original 4001s a thinner, more filtered bridge tone. The result is a fuller-sounding bridge pickup on the 4003 while the character stays recognisably a Rickenbacker bass.
The Players Who Made It Famous
Paul McCartney's left-handed 4001S helped put the instrument in front of a worldwide pop audience during the Beatles' later years. Chris Squire took it somewhere entirely different with Yes, using pick attack, distortion and melodic upper-register lines on records like The Yes Album, Fragile and Close to the Edge to turn the bass into something closer to a lead instrument. Geddy Lee leaned on one through Rush's early and progressive periods, Lemmy Kilmister drove his through heavy overdrive to make it function almost like a rhythm guitar in Motörhead, and Cliff Burton's early Metallica tone helped tie the instrument to heavy metal. Roger Glover and Bruce Foxton, in Deep Purple and The Jam respectively, showed it working just as well in hard rock and punk.
Two Pickups, One Distinctive Sound
The classic layout pairs a fuller, rounder neck pickup with a brighter, sharper bridge pickup, controlled through two volumes, two tones and a three-way selector. Many models also include Rick-O-Sound, a stereo output that routes each pickup to its own amp path — a clean signal from the neck pickup and an overdriven one from the bridge, say, blended together in the room rather than in the amp.
Read More in This Series
Thinking of buying one? Our complete buyer's guide covers what to check, and the best options for the money breaks the range down by budget. New to the instrument entirely? Our beginner's guide is the place to start, and it's worth reading common mistakes to avoid before you commit to buying.
The Bottom Line
A Rickenbacker bass earns its reputation honestly — neck-through construction, a genuinely distinctive pickup pairing, and a list of players who each found something different in it. Whether you want McCartney's pop warmth or Lemmy's abrasive roar is really down to how you set it up and play it.
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