Overview: The 4003S/5
If at first you don’t succeed…
Extended-range bass guitars have existed almost as long as the bass guitar itself, but the modern “low B” 5-string you can actually walk into a music store and buy is newer than you probably think. Perhaps even more surprising, Rickenbacker was one of the first major American manufacturers to embrace the format—beating Fender to market by more than three years. Which means that while the history of the 5-string bass itself is shorter than you might expect, Rickenbacker’s 5-string history is probably longer than you think. Let’s jump into it.
The first widely available extended-range bass guitar was the 6-string Danelectro UB-2, introduced in 1956. Unlike modern instruments, the 30” scale UB-2 was tuned E-A-D-G-B-E, an octave below a guitar and an octave above a conventional bass. It was designed primarily for studio musicians, allowing guitarists to double on bass without learning an entirely new fingerboard.
Fender took the idea—same scale, same tuning—upmarket with the Bass VI in 1961. Rickenbacker even got into the 6-string game in 1966 with the 4005/6 (click to learn more), although theirs featured a standard 33 1/4” scale and was tuned an octave lower than the Danelectro and Fender.
But another Fender model, 1965’s Bass V, was the first proper extended-range 5-string bass, with its 34” scale and standard bass tuning. The fifth string, however, was tuned to a high C rather than the low B we associate with 5-string basses today.
By the mid 1970s, all of these models had disappeared from production. The extended range bass had, by and large, proven to be a commercial dead end.
The market may have spoken, but a handful of innovative musicians and boutique builders kept the idea alive. What is often cited as the first low-B 5-string bass guitar was commissioned by “father of the (modern) six-string bass,” jazz/funk great Anthony Jackson, in 1974. Ironically, Jackson had actually asked for a 6-string. Unhappy with the string spacing on the instrument built by luthier Carl Thompson—best known today for making Les Claypool’s favored instruments—he had it converted to a 5-string. In the end, however, Jackson declared the instrument unplayable, and went back to Thompson in pursuit of the 6-string he had envisioned all along.
The next low-B 5-string was also a custom commission—this time built by Alembic for studio ace Jimmy Johnson. Funnily enough, this bass also didn’t start off as a low-B instrument—Alembic had already built a high-C 5-string bass like the Bass V, and Johnson asked them to take that design and convert it to low-B. And so in 1976 Alembic delivered Johnson what is very likely the first purpose-built low-B 5-string bass.
Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, 5-string basses remained firmly in the realm of high-end boutique builders. That began to change in the mid-1980s, as major manufacturers finally started bringing the format to the mass-market.
Most sources agree that the 1984 Yamaha BB5000 was the first mass-market low-B 5-string bass. Some argue that Steinberger’s 1982 L2-5 deserves that honor, but at that point Steinbergers were still handbuilt in Ned Steinberger’s Brooklyn workshop—making him not exactly a mass-market manufacturer yet.
A number of Japanese makers followed in late 1984 and 1985, including models like the Aria Pro II RSB 2 Deluxe 5, Washburn B-5, and Ibanez RB885. The first major American manufacturer to jump on the bandwagon, in 1986, was—of all companies—Rickenbacker.
The first 4003S/5—because there would be a second one—was little more than a lightly modified 4003S. For starters, the headstock was subtly modified to accommodate an extra tuner—although smaller Schaller M4 units were still used in place of the larger standard Kluson-style tuners found on the 4-string version.
Believe it or not, the two headstocks above are exactly the same overall length. The extra room for the fifth tuner was created by pulling the bass-side shoulder closer to the nut, while leaving the treble side unchanged.
The standard Rickenbacker bass bridge and tailpiece were also modified to handle five strings. A new 5-saddle bridge dropped into a tailpiece redesigned to anchor five strings. The spacers between the strings in the mute section were also removed.
On the electronics side, the 4003S/5 featured a standard toaster pickup at the neck, and a custom-built 5-polepiece Higain pickup at the bridge.
An extra string requires extra neck width, right? Kind of. In what would prove to be the 4003S/5’s Achilles heel, the neck width was widened…by just one millimeter.
The resulting cramped string spacing would prove to be the 4003S/5’s defining weakness. It remains, by far, the most common complaint owners have about the model. While Rickenbacker had been among the first to the market, the cramped string spacing meant the bass never really found a market beyond a handful of the Rickenbacker faithful.
And so, while the overall market for 5-string basses continued to grow—with the 500-pound gorilla known as Fender finally joining the fray with its first 5-string Jazz Bass model in late 1989—Rickenbacker’s annual sales of the 4003S/5 never did. Not only did Rickenbacker fail to gain market share, they actually lost it despite maintaining relatively steady production throughout the product’s life. What had begun as a niche product became an increasingly niche product. Rickenbacker finally pulled the plug on the 4003S/5 in 2002. Or at least the first version.
That isn’t to say the seventeen-year run wasn’t without its highlights. There were fretless 4003S/5s:
Color of the Year (click to learn more) 4003S/5s:
Several BH/BT (click to learn more) 4003S/5s:
And even a handful of painted-fingerboard Blackstar (click to learn more) 4003S/5s:
Enough to make them interesting collector’s pieces today, but not enough to drive sales. So when Rickenbacker decided to try again in 2018, they knew they needed a different approach.
While the silhouette may have been familiar, the second 4003S/5 was a ground-up redesign. A new bridge. New pickups. And, perhaps most importantly, a neck width designed to meet the expectations of modern 5-string bassists.
Three millimeters wider than the first version—and four millimeters wider than the standard 4003—the new neck’s string spacing was immediately praised for being “just right” by those who played it. At last, the original 4003S/5’s biggest weakness had been solved.
The bridge was an off-the-shelf—yet top-of-the-line—Schaller BD-5 with roller saddles. Rather than reinvent the wheel, Rickenbacker went the proven-technology route. The pickups, however, are where the new 4003S/5 got really interesting.
Dubbed the “TriPower” by Rickenbacker—and quickly nicknamed the “Dorito” by the Rickenbacker community—it was Rickenbacker’s first all-new pickup design since the HB1 in 1989. And it was unlike anything Rickenbacker—or, really, anyone else—had produced before.
At the TriPower’s heart are two bar magnets that angle outward toward the low B string, giving the pickup its distinctive triangular shape. Despite the two magnets, however, it isn’t a humbucker. Instead of two separate coils, a single coil surrounds both magnets. The idea was that widening the magnetic field beneath the B string would produce a stronger, fuller low-end response.
Buyers could choose between two versions of the new 4003S/5: the traditional maple-bodied, rosewood-fingerboard 4003S/5, or the oil-rubbed walnut, maple-fingerboard 4003S/5W. The overwhelmingly successful launch of the W Series (click to learn more) in 2014 had already proven there was a sustained market for basses with both finished and unfinished fingerboards.
There was one very minor change to the 4003S/5 early in its production run. For the first three months of production—April to June 2018—the neck pickup was mounted beneath the pickguard, just like a standard 4003.
Starting with the next production batch in August—and for the remainder of the model’s run—the neck pickup would be mounted to the top of the pickguard.
Why? No official explanation was ever offered, but people who have compared both versions have suggested that due to its lower location, the neck pickup on the under-pickguard-mounted models sits too low in the mix. For a model designed to emphasize lower frequencies, that seems less than ideal. It therefore seems likely that Rickenbacker raised the pickup closer to the strings to make it more prominent. But we’ll probably never know for sure.
The initial reaction to the 4003S/5 was overwhelmingly positive, as were sales. Ironically, while the redesigned neck earned widespread praise, the biggest complaint centered on the instrument’s sound. Not that it sounded bad—its low B response in particular was widely praised—but it didn’t sound like a Rickenbacker.
Rickenbacker pulled the plug on the second 4003S/5 at the end of 2022, and it’s not entirely clear why. Sales remained very strong—if anything, they appear to have been growing slowly—and Register data suggests that only the 330, 360, and 4003 consistently outsold it over its lifespan. So why discontinue it?
I wish I had a good answer. I don’t. But I do have an observation that makes the discontinuation ever more puzzling.
Go look for information on the second 4003S/5 in the usual Rickenbacker forums. You won’t find much. Rickenbacker fans love to nitpick and obsess over every little detail, but when it comes to the 4003S/5…they mostly don’t.
There are really only two conclusions you can draw from that. Either the 4003S/5 was so quietly good at doing what it was supposed to do that nobody felt compelled to pick it apart, or it wasn’t the usual Rickenbacker crowd who were buying it.
If the first 4003S/5 succeeded at being a Rickenbacker but failed at being a 5-string bass, maybe the second version succeeded at being a 5-string bass but failed at being a Rickenbacker.
That still doesn’t explain why you would discontinue a bass that was selling well—especially if it was broadening your customer base. Still…that answer just kind of feels right, doesn’t it?
We’ll probably never get the real answer—which is likely something as prosaic as “the pickups were too hard to make”. What we do know is that, across its two generations, the 4003S/5 tells a fascinating story: first of a company that entered the 5-string market ahead of almost everyone else, but with the wrong product, and then of a company willing to completely reinvent its own design in pursuit of getting it right. And if you take a step back, it’s clear that few Rickenbacker models illustrate the tension between tradition and innovation as cleanly as the 4003S/5.
Want to learn more about basses with too many strings? You might enjoy this article on 8-string Rickenbackers.
Overview: 8-String Basses
While Rickenbacker may be famous for making guitars with twice as many strings as one might expect, the same is not true of their basses. But they do exist! Rickenbacker played around with 8-string basses a couple times in the 60s and 70s before getting kinda serious in the 80s. Let’s run through them all, shall we?
A crazy selection of fine axes