Overview: The 4004
Rickenbacker bass but not Rickenbacker bass
What’s your favorite Rickenbacker model?
No matter what your answer is, I can guarantee you this: you probably don’t love your favorite model nearly as much as the people who answered “the 4004” love theirs. There are dedicated fan bases, and then there are 4004 people. Those guys scare me a little bit.
And if you’re not one of them, you’ve probably never given the 4004 a second thought. “That’s because you’ve never even played one!” the 4004 crowd is screaming at their screens right now.
Alright guys, relax. Today we’re going to let the rest of the world know what they’re missing—and why they should consider joining you in the “definitely not a cult” 4004 fan club.
So first, some context. Almost from the day John Hall purchased the company from his father in 1984, he tried to build a Rickenbacker that would appeal to the “modern player”. And honestly, that makes sense, right? “Innovate or die” has been a business mantra for decades—and the 1970s and early 1980s had not been particularly kind to Rickenbacker.
Hall’s first attempt, in 1984, was the 200 Series (click to learn more) of guitars and basses. And honestly, for what they were—American-made guitars with some innovative-yet-cost-saving features—they were pretty cool and priced fairly well. I remember seeing ads for them back in the day and thinking that the 250 El Dorado, especially in Jetglo, looked absolutely killer.
Honestly? I still think that.
But here was the problem the 200 Series encountered: as much as Hall wanted to redefine what a Rickenbacker could look or sound like, the market had already more or less decided what a Rickenbacker “was”—and this wasn’t it.
I’m not sure what the sales ambitions for the 200 Series guitars were, but I suspect they were not fully realized. In the years following the 200 Series launch, demand for Rickenbacker’s legacy products surged—driven both by their growing popularity among the college radio crowd and by the introduction of vintage reissue models. Whether because of disappointing sales, factory capacity limitations, or some combination of the two, the 200 Series line was discontinued in 1993.
Or maybe it was just pushed out of the way by the new “modern” Rickenbacker that launched in 1992—the 650.
Hall had clearly learned a key lesson from the 200 Series experience: if you were going to make a modern Rickenbacker, you still needed some recognizable Rickenbacker DNA in the mix.
There was a lot for the modern player to like about the 650 guitars: 24 frets with a scooped neck heel (although first-year production models had a traditional heel), a wider and flatter neck, crunchy HB-1 humbuckers (click to learn more), and an optional Hi-Tek vibrato. And although the cresting wave body (click to learn more) was softened somewhat for player comfort, the guitar was still unmistakably a Rickenbacker.
The same basic philosophy was applied to the 4004 when it appeared the following year in 1993: give modern players what they wanted without building something that no longer felt like a Rickenbacker.
And for a certain type of player, that hit hard.
The 1993 4004 came in two variants. The deluxe (click to learn more) Cheyenne featured gold hardware, walnut body and headstock wings, and an oil-rubbed finish. The standard Laredo featured chrome hardware, maple body and headstock wings, and came in Jetglo only.
Both instruments featured neck-through construction (click to learn more) with a slightly tapered maple fingerboard that was about 2-3mm wider than a 4003’s, Schaller M4 tuners, and a weighty, custom-designed ABM bridge with roller saddles.
Pickups were two HB-1 humbuckers, with the bridge pickup in roughly the same location as on the 4003, and the neck pickup about an inch higher, butted up against the end of the neck. Controls were simplified to a top-mounted master volume, master tone, and three-way mini-toggle selector switch. Both instruments were mono only.
Because there was no pickguard to mount the pickups below as on the 4003, the 4004 borrowed a design element from the 650: shallow, form-fit pickup cavities that allowed the HB-1s to sit slightly recessed into the body.
Even the truss rod cover reflected the new direction: black injection-molded plastic with the raised lettering painted gold on the Cheyenne and silver on the Laredo.
After launch, sales settled into what I’d call the “respectable, but not spectacular” category—typically one to two production batches per year throughout the model’s run. Which actually puts the 4004 in roughly the same category as almost all models except the 330, 360, and 4003. So it performed well enough.
But who was buying them?
That’s an interesting question. From the start, there were two pools of players the 4004 was probably never going to win over. The first was the Rickenbacker diehards—the ones who loved the look and the clank of the 4003 and didn’t want that formula messed with. That’s a relatively small—but still important—piece of the overall bass market, and honestly, it’s fine that they didn’t buy 4004s. Otherwise you’d just be cannibalizing your own product line.
Then there are the players who would never consider a Rickenbacker bass under any circumstances. Maybe they just don’t like the look. Maybe they played one once and hated the neck. Maybe they heard horror stories about the hairpin truss rods (click to learn more) that Rickenbacker hadn’t even used in almost ten years. You’re never going to change their minds.
Luckily, the majority of the market falls somewhere between those two extremes. So who actually ended up liking—and buying—the 4004?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have won over many players who likely otherwise wouldn’t have considered a Rickenbacker. The biggest fans—the scary ones we’ve talked about—were the players who were already predisposed to like Rickenbacker basses, but wanted one that did more.
The good news is that many of those players probably would have gone elsewhere to get that “more”. So it was additive volume—but only in the one to two production batches a year range. Not a failure—remember, respectable but not spectacular—but not exactly a breakout hit either.
So what exactly was the “more” the 4004 provided? Why do 4004 fans love them so much?
Well, the wider fretboard is certainly a plus for some. The modern-yet-traditional looks help too. But more than anything else, what people seem to love is the range of sounds you can get out of a 4004.
The key ingredient that sets the 4004 apart from the 4003 is the HB-1 pickups. Thanks to their dual-blade humbucking design, they’re hotter, fatter, and warmer than traditional Rickenbacker single-coils. And quieter to boot.
The result is a bass capable of sounds a 4003 simply can’t produce. Ironically, the one thing the 4004 struggles to deliver is the classic Rickenbacker clank—although many players report you can get close with an external treble booster.
So a Rickenbacker bass that does non-Rickenbacker things sounds like a pretty good idea. But the first iterations of the 4004 came in a fairly plain wrapper, and sales were relatively modest when compared to what would later come.
What ultimately pushed the model from “useful modern bass” to full-on cult favorite was the fact that the 4004 got really pretty over the course of its run.
The first change to the 4004 was relatively minor. In 1995, all “standard” Rickenbacker finishes became available on the Laredo. The days of “any color you want, as long as it’s black” were finally over.
And that was a step in the right direction. But 1999 is when the truly major changes started. They were substantial enough that the Cheyenne was renamed the Cheyenne II to reflect the redesign. In collector-speak, you’ll usually see the original walnut Cheyenne referred to as the Ci, and the revised version as the Cii.
First, the fingerboard changed from maple to Bubinga. Second, the pickups were both moved about an inch closer to the bridge. That change—which slightly altered the 4004’s warm tone—proved less popular with players, but any complaints were more than outweighed by the final revision: gorgeous flamed maple caps for the Cheyenne’s walnut wings.
Now that’s what I call a glow-up.
In 2000 the Cheyenne II’s “maple cap on walnut wings” construction changed to a maple-walnut-maple sandwich. It also gained new Cheyenne II-exclusive finishes specifically chosen to show off all that flamed maple: Trans Red, Trans Green, and Trans Blue.
2004 saw the introduction of a 5-string Cheyenne II. The 4004 5-stringer featured an almost impossibly wide neck and another custom bridge from ABM. Because of the wide neck and string spacing, the HB-1 pickup’s sensing range was simply too narrow to cover all five strings so an HB-2 was used in its place.
So what, you may ask, is an HB-2—and how does it differ from the HB-1? That’s a great question with a surprisingly simple answer: it’s the same pickup with a different case.
The HB humbucking pickup platform was originally designed for the 381JK John Kay Signature Limited Edition (click to learn more) guitar. Ironically, the HB-2 version appeared in production first, on the 200 Series guitars.
The HB-1 is packaged inside the metal case used on Higains, which effectively focuses and limits the edges of the pickup’s magnetic field. The HB-2’s plastic housing doesn’t do that, allowing for a slightly wider sensing range. Were the B and G strings still a little weak on the 5-string 4004 anyway? You bet.
The 5-string Cheyenne never made it to the official price list, and production was limited to only a handful of 2004 examples.
2005 saw the pickups return to their original positions—a welcome change in many players’ eyes. But the next major revision to the 4004 was not one of choice.
In mid-2007, Klaus Mueller, the owner of German parts company ABM—who had designed and supplied the 4004 bridge—unexpectedly passed away. A period of uncertainty about the company’s future followed, and Rickenbacker was forced to find a new supplier.
Consequently, in 2008 a Schaller bridge replaced the ABM unit. The bridge was “fine”—and certainly still better than the 4003’s bridge that had remained essentially unchanged since its introduction in 1963—but most players (and even John Hall himself) didn’t think it was quite as good as the ABM bridge it replaced.
There’s a term you hear thrown around a lot these days: the “enshittification” of products. Little cost-cutting measures, subtle spec changes, and feature reductions that slowly pile up until the thing no longer feels quite as good as it did at its peak.
That term feels harsh in this context, but the underlying principle applies. The flame on the maple wings gradually became less and less dramatic—and around 2006 it disappeared from the neck-through section entirely. We’ve already talked about the switch to the Schaller bridge.
And then came the change that hurt the most. In late 2009, the 4004’s wider neck—one of the instrument’s defining features from the very beginning—was replaced with the same narrower two-piece blank used on the 4003.
To be fair, the Schaller bridge couldn’t provide the wider string spacing the older ABM unit was designed to deliver, so much of the extra neck width was effectively wasted. But still.
Don’t get me wrong—this didn’t kill the model. Demand remained more or less exactly where it had always been. And honestly, maybe the changes were a net positive overall—not everybody liked the wider neck.
But today, if you ask those people I’m a little afraid of, they’ll tell you that peak 4004 had the wider neck and the ABM bridge.
The 4004 would remain effectively unchanged until its discontinuation in 2016. There had been no precipitating collapse in demand. In both 2013 and 2016, special Laredo runs in Snowglo sold out almost immediately, and remain highly collectible today.
But as the last surviving example of a younger John Hall’s attempts to introduce “modern” models into the Rickenbacker lineup, the 4004 simply no longer fit the company’s broader product strategy. The final examples rolled off the line in July, 2017.
We’ve left out one important piece of the 4004 story: the 4004LK Lemmy Kilmister Signature Limited Edition. Based on the original walnut Cheyenne, the 4004LK was easily the most over-the-top of all the Signature Limited Edition models.
Built to Motörhead bassist Lemmy Kilmister’s specifications, the 4004LK featured hand-carved acorn and oak leaf motifs on the body wings, checkered binding, star inlays, gold hardware, and three HB-1 pickups. Of the design, John Hall once said:
I told Lemmy that it was a bit over the top, gilding the lily, sorta like a hooker overloaded with lace and gold jewelry.
He said "And that's bad, how?"
Sixty were produced between 2001 and 2006.
The 4004 occupies an odd place in Rickenbacker history. It was never a blockbuster. It never defined the brand the way the 4003 did. And for most of its life, it quietly sold in small but steady numbers, far away from the spotlight.
But the people who got the 4004 really got it.
To them, it was the perfect middle ground: unmistakably a Rickenbacker, but smoother, hotter, cleaner, prettier, and more versatile than your everyday 4001 or 4003.
And once you learn more about the 4004, you start to understand why 4004 owners talk about them the way they do. They’re probably wrong about it being the best Rickenbacker bass ever made—but don’t you dare say that to their faces.
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