Timeline: The Evolution of the 4000
The story of Rickenbacker’s first bass guitar
It’s rare that the first draft gets it exactly right. The very first Fender Esquire nailed the shape and the sound, but its lack of a truss rod quickly became its Achilles heel. The neck angle was bad enough on the first Les Pauls that players resorted to bottom-wrapping a tailpiece designed for top-wrapping, making palm-muting effectively impossible. In both examples the basic concept was right, but the execution just needed some fine tuning.
The 4000’s journey took a little bit longer than these examples, but you can still see the basic shape of what it would become from the very beginning—even if that final form has mostly been forgotten in the long shadow cast by its offspring, the 4001 and and 4003.
But without the 4000 there is no 4001 and 4003—and therefore probably no Rickenbacker today—so let’s tell its story.
1957–1959
From 1957 to 1961, Roger Rossmeisl went on an incredibly prolific run, with three of the body shapes he developed in 1957 alone still—after some refinement—in production today. The Combo 850 shape lives on in the 325 and 350, the cresting wave 450 continues in the 620 and 660, and then there’s the 4000 bass.
Clearly sharing design language with the new cresting wave 450 body, the 4000 was Rickenbacker’s attempt to claim a seat at the table in the emerging electric bass market—which was already dominated by Fender’s Precision Bass. But compared to the P-Bass’s utilitarian design, the 4000 leaned into a little atomic-age weirdness: sleek, asymmetrical curves, unexpected angles, and a personality all its own.
We should take a moment to note that while Rossmeisl gets most of the credit for the designs from this period, Paul Barth surely played a role as well—although we’ll likely never know exactly how much. One of the original founders of Rickenbacker and a holdover into the early F.C. Hall era, it was Barth who, in his role as factory manager, actually recommended Rossmeisl to Hall. He worked alongside Rossmeisl on the early Hall-era Combo guitars, but by mid 1957 the quiet, unassuming Barth had largely been sidelined by the gregarious German. He subsequently left to form his own company, which you can read about here, but his fingerprints are quietly all over Rickenbacker’s 1954-1957 guitars.
That said, the 4000’s design was daring and distinctive—yet appealing enough that changes to its basic outline and construction have been minimal over nearly 70 years. The 4000 employed the same neck-through construction (click to learn more) that had first appeared on the Combo 400 (click to learn more) in 1956, although in the 4000’s case the neck was mahogany rather than maple. The body was thicker than on modern instruments, at about 1 5/8” compared to today’s 1 1/4”, and this first draft’s upper horn was about 1” shorter as well.
Today’s industry standard 34” scale length—as set by the P-Bass—wasn’t an industry standard yet. The second bass guitar to market, the Kay K-162, clocked in with a scale length of 30”. Gibson followed Kay at 30 1/2” on the EB-1, and when Rickenbacker joined the fray with the 4000, they chose 33 1/4”—a scale length the company maintains to this day.
And while it may seem ordinary today, it’s worth imagining what it must have been like to see the 4000’s headstock for the first time in 1957. Swooping, asymmetrical, and swept back into a sharp cresting wave, it must have looked almost futuristic—especially next to the blocky, no-nonsense shapes players were used to.
The headstock was about 1/2” wider than it would eventually become, due to the real estate required on the back by the gargantuan Kluson 546 tuners. The front wore a gold back-painted Plexiglas truss rod cover.
While Rossmeisl had experimented with dual hairpin truss rods (click to learn more) on a handful of early Combo 600s and 800s (click to learn more), the 4000 featured them from the start, making it the first Rickenbacker model officially equipped with what would become a signature company specification.
The face of the early 4000 is the most unrecognizable element, thanks to its asymmetrical, unconventional gold back-painted pickguard, which feels less like a simple protective plate and more like a continuation of the instrument’s lines, echoing the same forward-looking, slightly futuristic design language seen throughout.
Electronics and hardware were mostly straight out of the Rickenbacker parts bin. The single pickup was, of course, the venerable horseshoe pickup (click to learn more) that dated back to the early 1930s—albeit modified for four strings. The chrome reeded knobs—one volume, one tone—were borrowed from contemporary console steel guitars. And then there’s the bridge.
Rather than develop and produce a specific bridge and bridgeplate for the 4000, Rickenbacker simply adapted the standard guitar bridge and bridgeplate. And “adapted” is the right word—not modified—because the six-hole bridgeplate was used as-is, and only four of the six holes drilled in the bridge frame were utilized, with two slightly larger saddles in the middle positions compensating for the uneven spacing.
Just as on all guitars that used this bridge/bridgeplate, the entire assembly was recessed slightly into the body to achieve the correct height. A Plexiglas frame surrounded it as an attachment point for the clip-on ashtray cover, which featured a foam mute on the underside.
The mute and the Plexiglas “tug-bar” located below the strings are two period features that can be confounding to modern players. It’s important to remember that the bass guitar was a brand-new instrument in this era. The mute’s purpose was to help duplicate the relatively dull “thump” of a plucked upright bass—what manufacturers assumed players would want. And the tug-bar is based on Leo Fender’s assumption that players would use their thumb to play his new Precision Bass—the tug-bar gave them something to hold onto while they did. Funnily enough, it took longer for these features to disappear than it did for the assumptions to be proven incorrect.
One final detail that would change over time was the location of the output jack plate, which sat much closer to the strap pin and the bottom of the guitar than it is today. You’ll also notice that the 1959 example above does not have a serial number stamped on the jackplate (click to learn more) as you might expect. Instead, the serial number on these early instruments was stamped on the bridgeplate.
Changes between 1957 and 1959 were minimal, although given the largely handbuilt nature of these instruments, minor variances occurred from instrument to instrument. That said, somewhere around late 1958/early 1959 the mahogany through-neck was replaced by walnut, which was itself replaced by maple with walnut headstock wings in late 1959.
A total of only around 50 4000s were produced between 1957-1959—at a time when Fender was making around 100 Precision Basses per month. Rickenbacker may have had an offering, but the market barely noticed.
1960-1962
Production of the 4000 ticked up slightly in 1960 and 1961, although Rickenbacker’s total production dropped sharply in 1962 due to the disruption caused by the factory’s move from Los Angeles to Santa Ana.
1960 and early 1961 4000s were effectively unchanged from late 1959 production, with the transition to maple necks with walnut headstock wings completed by early 1960. But in the middle of 1961, a number of changes brought the early 4000 much closer to the final product.
The first two of these changes were interdependent. First, the body thickness decreased from about 1 5/8” to 1 1/4”.
The loss of mass in the body threw the weight distribution off, making the guitar more prone to neck dive thanks to the large headstock and weighty tuners. To counteract this, the upper horn was extended approximately 1” and given a slightly more exaggerated crest, shifting the center of gravity back toward the body.
While the 4000-series horns’ silhouette has varied over the years—from what we see above, to very chunky starting in the late 1970s, and then to very delicate since the introduction of CNC manufacturing in 1996—the outline is unmistakable: it’s a Rickenbacker bass.
At roughly the same time, as the photo comparing body thickness above demonstrates, the output jack moved to a more familiar location—although the serial number still remained on the bridgeplate.
So why the changes? Because Rickenbacker was working on a new model—the Deluxe 4001 bass. The 4001 took the 4000 shape and added a second pickup at the neck, deluxe checkered binding on the body, and a bound neck with triangle inlays. In fact, what is largely considered to be the “first” 4001 very likely started life as a 4000. Here’s the first 4001:
And here is a period photo of a “Deluxe” 4000 from 1961, referred to today as the “Vagabonds 4000”—a prototype loaned to a local band, “The Vagabonds”, for feedback.
Sure looks like the same guitar to me.
From this point forward, the 4000’s story becomes inextricably linked with the 4001’s—as the 4001 changed, so too did the 4000’s. In just a few years, the 4000 would go from being Rickenbacker’s flagship bass to the less popular little brother, despite bringing the same clank and growl from the bridge pickup that the 4001 would become prized for.
All told, total production of the first generation of the 4000 bass was only slightly over 100 instruments, making them incredibly scarce for what was, in effect, the foundation of everything that followed.
1963
1963 marked the appearance of the 4000 in its most recognizable form. While it’s clearly the descendant of those earlier guitars, almost every detail was different from top to bottom:
The gold of the back-painted Plexiglas truss rod cover was replaced by white. The headstock shrank by about 1/2” in width, made possible by the replacement of the monstrous Kluson 546 tuners with smaller Kluson 538 tuners.
While the 4000’s silhouette may have been the same, the face of the guitar was an entirely different animal.
The swoopy, gold back-painted Plexiglas space-age pickguard was replaced with a much more “function-over-form” design of semi-translucent white Plexiglas known as “sign white”, a material originally intended for backlit signage. The chrome lap steel knobs were replaced by black Kurz-Kach knobs (click to learn more). And—finally!—Rickenbacker got a proper bass bridge instead of a repurposed guitar bridge.
The new chrome-plated, cast aluminum base unit was attached to the body with three screws and topped by a drop-in bridge with four adjustable saddles. The entire bridge assembly’s height could be adjusted via set screws located at each end. Two reeded thumbscrews at the very front raised or lowered a foam rubber mute. Fun fact: these were the same screws used for the strap buttons.
And with that, the 4000’s basic template was set—although continuous minor refinements carried over from the 4001 would become the norm for the rest of its life.
1964-1967
1964-1967 was peak Rickenbacker in terms of both demand and brand exposure, kicked off by four mop-top lads from Liverpool. It was a virtuous cycle for Rickenbacker—exposure made more people want them, which led to more exposure, which in turn made more even more people want them.
It’s hard to say if Rickenbacker’s inability to meet this sudden, staggering demand ultimately helped or hurt—scarcity can certainly increase desirability, but when alternatives are readily available, opportunities are lost.
Rickenbacker responded by ramping up capacity as best they could, and by focusing on core, high-demand products—which the low-volume 4000 was not. Consequently, production from 1964 to 1966 was very low.
The only change of note during this period came in 1964 and impacted all Rickenbacker guitars: at UK distributor Rose Morris’s request: “MADE IN U.S.A.” was added to the truss rod cover, below and parallel to the Rickenbacker logo.
In 1967, as Rickenbacker finally began clearing the backlog of the past several years, 4000 production ticked up—which was actually a bad thing. Capacity for the 4000 was only available because overall demand was declining—the market was beginning to pass Rickenbacker by. It was time for some changes.
1968-1973
While Rickenbacker’s 1970s pivot to basses was driven more by the market itself than anything the company did to create demand, a series of modifications beginning in 1968 helped make bass production more efficient and cost-effective when the good times hit.
One of the most notable changes came at the very heart of the instrument: the horseshoe pickup, a design that had defined Rickenbacker’s sound for decades. In late 1968 it was replaced by the very first Higain pickups, and at roughly the same time, lap steels followed suit. With that quiet shift, the 36-year run of Rickenbacker’s—and indeed the world’s—first electric guitar pickup came to an end.
These first generation Higains had unpainted translucent white/greenish PCB bobbins with dome-topped flat head screw polepieces and an aluminum baseplate. Although they looked adjustable, the polepieces were fixed, and many of these early Higains have been damaged or destroyed by people who simply didn’t know better. Around 1970 the clear bobbins would gain a coat of black paint.
So why the pickup cover on the new Higain pickup? The horseshoe magnets served a purpose, but the cover? I’ll quote the conclusion I came to in our article on the topic you can read here:
“They did it like that because that’s just how they did it. They liked the way it worked, they liked the way it looked, they liked the fact they didn’t have to change the way they made it. They did it because they knew they “needed” a better pickup, and rather than making the design fit the pickup they made the pickup fit the design. They did it because inertia is a bitch.”
While the Higain was 1968’s most consequential change, it wasn’t the only one—but the others were not unique to the 4000. Early in the year, the “MADE IN U.S.A.” marking on all truss rod covers moved from a position below and parallel to the Rickenbacker logo to just above the nut, perpendicular to it. Higher volume models also got their model number stamped above the “MADE IN U.S.A.”, but the 4000 did not qualify—although some guitars from 1970-1971 do have the model stamp. A few months later the black Bakelite nut found on all models was replaced with white Delrin—but black Bakelite would return in 1973.
Around May of 1969, the Kluson 538 tuners in use on all basses since about 1963 were replaced with Grover Slimline bass tuners with “flat” keys. Apart from the flat keys, these tuners are identical to the infamous “wavy” Grovers (click to learn more) that would replace them.
Also starting in 1969 the pickguard went through a gradual shrinking process, finally landing by late 1970/early 1971 with the bottom about 3/4” away from from the pickup surround.
1971 saw the headstock length shrink by about 1/2”. This shorter headstock had first appeared on the short-lived 21-fret 4001 (click to learn more) in 1969—the reduction in headstock length allowed them to fit an extra fret on the same neck blank. But without the extra fret—as was the case here—the shorter headstock was purely a cost-saving measure: 1/2” less wood per neck adds up over time.
But that wasn’t the end of the neck cost-saving measures. You’ll notice two other differences apart from the length in the two headstocks pictured above. First, the new, shorter headstock has maple wings—a less expensive wood—rather than walnut. And secondly, there’s the “skunk stripe”.
In early 1972, the 4000 and 4001’s one-piece maple neck was replaced with a three-piece maple-shedua-maple sandwich. Stronger, yes…but also cheaper.
With the 4000 clearly positioned as Rickenbacker’s entry-level bass, it wouldn’t take the company long to find another way to streamline production and reduce costs. Later that same year, the 4000 and 4001S both moved from their traditional neck-through construction to an easier-to-produce set-neck design with a two-piece body.
You may have also noticed in the headstock photos above that the tuners on the 1972 headstock look a little different than the “flat” Grover Slimlines that had been introduced in 1969. That’s because around June-July of 1972 the infamous “wavy” Grover Slimlines debuted. Put simply, the “ears” of the tuning keys were bent slightly in opposite directions, transforming the keys from flat stamped units into a “wavy” or “S” shape.
Demand for Rickenbacker basses had already begun spiking upward in 1972—thanks to high-profile usage by players like Chris Squire of Yes and Paul McCartney of Wings—and it exploded in 1973, with production tripling year over year. How much of an increase are we talking about? Between 1972 and 1973, Rickenbacker produced more basses than they had in all prior years combined.
While the 4001 went through a number of cost-cutting/production streamlining changes in 1973, most were related to deluxe features the 4000 did not share. Two changes, however, made their way to the 4000.
The first change was relatively minor. Midway through the year, the non-adjustable slotted screw polepieces on the black-painted Higain pickup were changed to button-top drive screws.
The second was more consequential. The chrome-plated cast aluminum tailpiece that had first appeared in 1963 was replaced by a cheaper chrome-plated cast Zamak unit. While visually very similar, it’s nevertheless quite easy to spot the difference between the two: the aluminum unit had a “gap” in the spacer between the A and D strings over the mute, while the Zamak version did not. This is why you often hear early tailpiece assemblies referred to as “gap-tooth” bridges.
While Zamak is a relatively strong material, it’s not as strong as aluminum. Consequently, the tailpiece received two additional screws behind the bridge to provide extra strength. Despite that reinforcement, almost all Zamak tailpieces develop some amount of “tail lift” (click to learn more) over time.
And with those changes, the modern 4000 was complete, well-positioned to meet Rickenbacker’s need for an entry-level bass just as the market was booming. All further changes over its lifespan would be largely cosmetic in nature. 1973 would be the high-water mark for 4000 production, although demand would remain fairly strong for the next several years.
1974-1984
Changes during the last phase of the 4000’s life were minimal, and none were specific to the model. Mid-1974 saw the Grover Slimlines on all basses replaced with the same Kluson 538s the Slimlines had themselves replaced in 1969.
In early 1975 the Klusons’ chrome bushings would be replaced with black plastic.
Starting in 1965, the black Kurz-Kach (KK) knobs found on all models began being phased out and replaced with silver-topped knobs. At first these knobs had no labels, but they quickly gained the now-familiar “Bass/Treble” “Volume/Tone” labeling. But not the two-knob guitars like the 425 and 4000—they retained the KK knobs. That would change in 1975, when the 4000 and 425 both transitioned to plain-topped silver knobs.
“Somewhere” around this time the chromed plastic pickup cover changed from “short legs”…
…to long legs:
On the shorter version, the springs around the screws that adjust pickup height are placed below the mounting ears, keeping the cover at a constant height regardless of pickup height. On the longer version, the screws are placed on top of the mounting ears, causing the cover to raise and lower along with the pickup.
Also somewhere around this time, a lead weight was added to the underside of the fretboard between the fourth and fifth frets. The weights had first appeared on the 3001 bass in 1974 to eliminate dead spots on the fretboard, and at some point after that, they were added to the 4000 and 4001 as well. The weights were recessed inside a cavity about 1” square and 1/8” deep.
In late 1974, the back-painted Plexiglas truss rod cover began phasing out across the entire line, replaced with an injection-molded cover with raised, painted letters. “MADE IN U.S.A.” was stamped at the bottom, parallel to the nut, and higher-volume models also got their model number stamped below that. The 4000 was one of the last holdouts, not making the transition until early 1976—and its volume did earn it a model number stamp.
The 4000’s last change would come when, after years of declining sales, Kluson closed their doors in 1982, leaving Rickenbacker without a tuner supplier. The company went the easy route and in July began replacing the Klusons with the “wavy” Grover Slimlines that the Klusons had themselves replaced in 1974.
And that was it for the 4000. Production had begun steadily declining in the late 1970s, and the model was quietly dropped from the price list in 1985 after John Hall purchased the company from his father the year before and began a program of line rationalization. But it was already dead before then—the last 4000 on the Rickenbacker Register dates to July of 1983—the only 4000 produced in 1983 to be currently listed.
So what killed the 4000? The short answer is that total Rickenbacker bass demand began ticking down slightly in the late 1970s—not precipitously, but enough to raise concern. The reason? Rickenbacker basses were designed for flatwound strings—and using roundwounds, with their higher string tension, could void the factory warranty. But the market increasingly wanted the roundwound sound.
Rickenbacker’s answer? The 4003 (click to learn more). The 4001’s thin neck was beefed up and the truss rods were flipped around (for reasons that remain unclear) to provide the strength the higher-tension roundwound strings required. Prototypes were produced in 1979 and production began alongside the 4001 in 1980.
And why “waste” capacity on an “old” entry-level bass when you had pent-up demand for your new premium product? Why develop an entry-level version of your upgraded flagship bass when you’re selling every one you make? The 4000’s time had simply come and gone.
The 4000 didn’t fail—it was outgrown. As Rickenbacker refined the design into the 4001 and eventually the 4003, the need for a stripped-down, entry-level version simply disappeared.
But without the 4000, none of it exists. It was the first draft—the moment where the shape, the construction, and the sound all came together. And even though it has quietly faded from memory, its DNA lives on in every Rickenbacker bass that has followed.
Want to learn more about…everything else? Check out our handy site map and see what’s already been covered. Have a suggestion about what we should tackle next? Drop it in the comments and we’ll add it to the queue.
Great stuff, as usual Andy. Informative, well written and a good read. Thanks!
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the litany of engineering excuses ending with "Inertia is a bitch".