it's all good!

oh not that anyone cares, but it took forever to set my bridge pickup height just right, but i got it. i don't have a measuring tool so i was just raising/lowering by ear and volume through my amp. that lower pickup is a mother to keep dropping the strings/pickup, removing cover, adjusting pole pieces, re-installing everything, rinse and repeat! also, my silver pickup cover seems like it is plastic, i definitely couldn't bend it out of shape to remove as described on joey's website!

also those thomastik flats sound great, thanks for the advice once again everyone! (especially that joey guy's website, great help there!)

great, now my saddles are rocking back and forth creating an obnoxious clicking sound. All 4 except the D string after adjusting intonation through a strobe tuner. i ran a search on here (naturally, you guys have seen it all!) and saw some suggestions to stabilize the saddles, but i kind of feel the same way the other guy did who posted about it. this is an expensive instrument, shouldn't need to be stabilizing loose saddles when it's brand new. also interesting, the D string saddle's adjustment screw-head had its phillips head that was darn-near stripped before i even touched it. and i watched the man unbox the brand new bass!

did I get a factory lemon or something? lol!

just a bunch of little things that i'm doing with the hardware here that i feel like I shouldn't need to be doing to a brand new expensive, quality instrument.

going to see what the shop can do for me, might just see if I can get a different 4003 (don't even care about the color anymore) that doesn't have any of the hiccups I've run into so far.

what do you fellas think?

Hi,

As I understood it all post-horseshoe covers are painted plastic. Amazed me as well, but since I took this cover off anyway... thought to have seen that Lemmy (when not playing his signature) has that cover still on hiss bass, so unless he's replacing daily they must be fairly sturdy ;-)

Cheers

hah! yep, not even worried about that.

just a little irked here at the little things that are happening now that i've had it for all of a week.

i mean, you pay more for the attention to detail, right? hah!

i'll see what other ricks are in stock at the shop. maybe ricks just hate flats, which sucks, i love how they feel!

well, i went back and got the Rick that I originally wanted, the jetglo. much happier. call me crazy, but i just believe a brand new instrument should be trouble-free for at LEAST the first week I have it hah! thanks again guys, i'll be lurking about here... :-)

Congrats on this bass ThorK. Glad this one is working out for you. Mark

I just put some Labella DTB flats on. Great sound, but so smooth they feel like wax. At first, my fingers kept sliding around on the fretboard!

I'm fine with the feel of flats, really the only reason I put them on. But at the end of the day, sounds much more "Rick" with the factory roundwounds on hah! Plus with the tone rolled back, you can get a decent flatwound thump.

Don't know why I didn't just go with this jetglo from the get-go!

Rounds with the tone rolled off are nice but IMO there's no replacement for some solid flats...

I feel ya, definitely a difference and you can't get the tone-rollback to sound JUST like flats, I agree.

The flatwounds sounded good on that mapleglo, but just seems to be a little more alive with plain jane rounds on there. With the flats there was definitely a difference in the sound from neck to bridge and inbetween, but I feel like the rounds make the difference more pronounced, instead of just a more trebbley thud in the bridge and a softer thud in the neck, if that makes sense. Again, just to my ears, and this coming from someone who has always had flats on a bass! hah!

To each his own, I'm just glad I ended up with a great bass here!