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Bass Guitar

Rickenbacker 4001 (1973 - 1983)

Name: Rickenbacker 4001 (1973 - 1983)
Brand: Rickenbacker

Rickenbacker · 4001 (1973 - 1983)

Price: 2.275 EUR – 7.290 EUR

Price history

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Availability: 9/10 (Common)

A specific era of Rickenbacker's deluxe two-pickup bass: neck-through-body maple construction with dual truss rods, Ric-O-Sound stereo output, and several running spec changes across this decade of production.

Where available? Go to the best price – 2.471 EUR About this instrument

About the Rickenbacker 4001 (1973 - 1983)

This 1973-1983 window covers a Rickenbacker 4001 built through several running changes rather than one fixed specification. At the start of the period, basses carried Grover Imperial tuners, block-style body binding, large crushed-pearl triangle fingerboard inlays, a neck-through-body design with dual truss rods and "skunk stripe," and a Ric-O-Sound stereo output jack allowing the neck and bridge pickups to be sent to separate amplifiers. In 1973, Schaller BMC open-back tuners replaced the Grovers, single-color binding replaced the block binding, and the fingerboard inlays shrank to smaller pearloid dots.

Further changes followed in 1974: the neck pickup moved half an inch closer to the bridge pickup, the pickguard shortened correspondingly, and Rickenbacker began transitioning from neck-through-body to set-neck construction on some production. Throughout the era the body retained the model's signature "Cresting Wave" shape with 20 frets (a fretless option was also offered), CTS potentiometers, and a 3-way pickup toggle switch, until the 4001 was discontinued in 1983 in favor of its successor, the 4003.

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Source: https://reverb.com/item/87902409-rickenbacker-4001-1973-1983

Sound character of the Rickenbacker 4001 (1973 - 1983)

The original 4001's horseshoe neck pickup (its magnet surrounds the strings directly) combined with a bridge humbucker and through-body neck is the source of the bright, clanky, midrange-forward tone made famous by players like Chris Squire and Lemmy - a sound built on treble bite rather than low-end weight.

Bright Growly Midrange-forward

Technical data for the Rickenbacker 4001 (1973 - 1983)

Body	Maple, "Cresting Wave" shape, neck-thru (set-neck from 1974 on some units)
Frets	20 (fretless option available)
Truss rods	Dual
Pickups	2x single coil, 3-way toggle
Output	Ric-O-Sound stereo jack
Produced	1973-1983

Price history for the Rickenbacker 4001 (1973 - 1983)

Cheapest seen: 2.275 EUR · Most expensive seen: 7.290 EUR

Cheapest seen Most expensive seen

The history of the Rickenbacker 4001 (1973 - 1983)

The 4001 was introduced in 1961 as a deluxe, two-pickup version of Rickenbacker's original 4000 bass, and became closely associated with players including Paul McCartney and Chris Squire, whose use of the model helped define its bright, distinctively "clanky" tone in rock contexts. The specification changes across the 1970s reflect ongoing cost and manufacturing adjustments at Rickenbacker before the model's 1983 discontinuation and replacement by the 4003.