Everyone wants one of those early 4001 basses (click to learn more)—the ones with a real horseshoe pickup (click to learn more) and crushed pearl inlays (click to learn more) and a long headstock with walnut wings and that gloriously thin neck—but you probably can’t afford one. Sorry. As ubiquitous as the 4001 would become by the mid-1970s, it had been an also-ran in the marketplace until then, making those early examples rare indeed—and pricey today.
The 4001 you can afford, though? That one has a skunk stripe.
Now this is not your Fender skunk stripe like the one you see above. But it was that walnut strip—filling the back-routed truss rod channel of the maple-necked Broadcaster—that gave birth to the term “skunk stripe.” The Rickenbacker skunk stripe, however, is a different animal with a different purpose. So let’s talk about it.
The 4001’s Achilles heel throughout most of its life was one of the things it is most loved for today—that thin neck. No matter what Rickenbacker did—and it tried several things over the years—in the constant battle between wood and string tension, string tension just kept doing its damnedest to turn the 4001’s neck into a banana. The skunk stripe—paired with a shorter headstock—was the first attempt at a solution.
From the jump, the 4000 (click to learn more) and 4001 basses featured neck-through construction (click to learn more)—a key component of their ringing sound. Mahogany at first, then later a solid piece of maple running the entire length of the guitar. Rickenbacker’s hairpin truss rods (click to learn more) allowed for a considerably thinner neck than guitars with a more traditional single-action truss rod, and they took full advantage of that opportunity. And as long as flatwound strings were the norm, that thin neck was just strong enough to stand up to that tension. Mostly.
Rotosound introduced the roundwound string in 1962, but it didn’t really take off until 1966 when John Entwistle worked with Rotosound’s James Howe to develop what would become the “66 Swing Bass” string set. It went on to become probably the most significant set of strings in bass guitar history, and roundwounds began a decade-long climb toward market dominance.
Roundwound strings’ brightness came with a cost: they often featured higher tensions than flatwounds. Chunkier necks with single-action truss rods might need their relief adjusted to compensate, but once you did they were fine. But the thin Rickenbacker neck had met its match.
The weakest point was the headstock—long, relatively thin, and without any backward pitch, so higher tension strings could pull it forward to the point where strings no longer rested in the nut. So in late 1969 Rickenbacker began experimenting with a shorter headstock (click to learn more). But probably not exactly the way you’re expecting.
You see, they made these “short headstock” guitars—about half an inch shorter—side-by-side with the older, longer headstock guitars. And rather than keeping two different lengths of neck blank on hand, they used the same blank for both. So where did the extra half-inch go? Well, these short-headstock guitars got an extra fret—21 instead of the 4001’s normal 20.
Now the smart people in the room are doing some math in their heads and are going to ask, “So did the scale length get a half inch longer?” That’s a good question, and no, it did not. The bridge—whose bottom was normally flush with the edge of the guitar’s body—was slid forward a half-inch to compensate, keeping the scale length at the “normal” Rickenbacker 33 1/2 inches.
Rickenbacker must have thought the shorter headstock was helping, because by early 1971 all 4001s had the shorter version. So did all 4001s then get 21 frets? Nope, only 20—the neck blank was shortened by half an inch.
That may have helped stop the headstock bending, but it didn’t solve the entire problem. So the next step was more extreme: change the neck construction itself. And that’s where the “skunk stripe” enters the chat.
It might seem counterintuitive, but a properly constructed multi-piece neck can be stronger and more stable than a one-piece neck—less prone to warping, twisting, or importantly, bowing. A single piece of wood has the grain all running in one direction, and may have hidden flaws or weak points. Adding more pieces can introduce different grain orientations, reinforce weak points, and add the inherent strength that comes from lamination.
And so around March 1972, Rickenbacker changed the 4001’s neck from a one-piece maple through-neck to a three-piece through-neck, with a 5/16 inch strip of shedua running between two maple pieces—a stripe whose color and thickness very closely matched the walnut strip found on the back of those early Fenders. So naturally: skunk stripe.
Shedua wasn’t some random choice for the center stripe, either. In terms of “hardness,” it’s slightly softer on the Janka hardness scale than the rock maple the rest of the neck is composed of, but in terms of stiffness—as measured by the modulus of elasticity—shedua kicks maple’s butt. Ditto for the modulus of rupture or “bending strength.”
And those are three different things: hardness tells you how resistant wood is to dents and wear, stiffness tells you how much it resists bending, and bending strength tells you how much force it can take before it breaks. For reinforcing a skinny bass neck, the latter two matter a hell of a lot more than the first.
So why is the shedua strip so narrow? Well, it’s not cheap—shedua runs two to three times the price per board foot of rock maple. So it made sense to use just enough to get the job done without breaking the bank in the process. It would appear that that amount was about a skunk stripe’s worth.
At the same time, the 4001’s headstock wings changed from walnut to maple—perhaps to offset the cost of the new shedua strip?
One more attempt to strengthen the 4001’s neck would come in mid-1974, when the neck pickup moved about half an inch closer to the bridge. Previously, its rout removed a substantial chunk of the through-neck right where the body wings began, creating another potential weak point. Moving the pickup—and its rout—inboard left more wood at that critical junction.
And with that, Rickenbacker declared “good enough, problem solved.” The skunk stripe would go on to be added to the 4000’s set neck, the 3001’s (click to learn more) bolt-on neck when it launched in 1975, and even the super-deluxe 4002 (click to learn more) upon its appearance in 1977. The only 1970s bass not to get a skunk stripe was the short-scale 3000. But was the problem really fixed?
Well…not really, no. New 4001s still left the factory with medium-tension Maxima flatwounds…but players kept swapping them for higher tension roundwounds, and necks kept bending. Not every one, not every time, but it was a big enough issue that by the late 1970s Rickenbacker was warning players that using strings other than the factory-issued Maximas would void their warranty. So not “good enough, problem solved.”
The 4003 (click to learn more), formally launched in 1980, would be the solution. And how did they solve it? They took the 4001 and gave it a big ol’ beefy two-piece maple neck. They also flipped the truss rods around backwards for reasons that never really made sense. But it was really all about that honkin’ big ol’ neck. Sometimes there’s just no replacement for more mass.
The 4001 and 4003 were sold side-by-side through 1985—the 4001 with flats and the 4003 with rounds—but sales steadily shifted towards the 4003, big ol’ neck or no. The 4001 and the skunk stripe both disappeared at the end of 1985. But the skunk stripe would be back.
Around the same time the 4001 and skunk stripe disappeared, the 4003 saw a major change in construction. The dual hairpin truss rods were replaced by dual “conventional” single-action rods. And given how those rods are sunk deeper into the neck than the hairpins were, that beefy neck was now doing double duty—providing the structural strength the roundwound strings demanded while also providing the real estate the truss rods required. And more and more players began pining for the 4001’s skinny neck.
The good news for players who wanted a skinny neck was that Rickenbacker had cranked out a lot of skunk-striped 4001s in the 1970s, so they were easy enough to find. The bad news for Rickenbacker was that they had already made all the money they would make on those basses years ago.
That would change in 2022. The 4003AC Al Cisneros Signature Limited Edition Model (click to learn more), introduced in 2019, had come equipped with a single, dual-action truss rod. The dual-action truss rod sits in a small channel directly below the fingerboard, just like the old hairpins used to. In 2022 the 4003AC’s truss rod made it to all 4003s—which suddenly no longer needed all that real estate the single-action rods had called for.
And without the need for those deep truss rod channels, the neck profile could be reshaped from a deeper “C” shape to a shallower “D” shape. Not quite as thin as the old 4001, but pretty darn close. And just to be sure it would hold up, the two-piece maple neck would be modified to three-piece…with a walnut skunk stripe.
Does walnut have all the same beneficial properties of shedua? No, it does not—although more laminations are still a good thing in terms of overall strength. But does that thin stripe of dark wood mean something to certain Rickenbacker bass fans? It sure as hell does: “Oh. This is one of the good necks.”
What began as a solution ended up a signifier. But I have to believe that in 20 years’ time, there will be threads on whatever the current version of message boards is saying, “If you want one of those classic beefy Rickenbacker necks look for ones without the skunk stripe…”
Another great reference piece! Thank you. Its also worth adding that the lack of knowledge around at the time about how to correctly adjust the twin truss rods on those RMs and other old Rick basses contributed to the bent headstock bends just as much if not more than the Rotosound strings did. I’ve owned three RMs including Mo Gibbs RM and never had any trouble with the extremely thin necks.
Wow! That answered a lot of questions. I love these articles.