bass bridge dimension

[krizalid]

hai everyone, i'm just stumbled upon this vintage rickenbacker site and the bridge is pretty interesting. can anyone help with its dimension?

is it easy to machine one?

[westhemann]

cliff burton had a bass similar to that i think

[Primal]

I believe he had a white one though.

[GarageRocker]

I've owned three Rick basses and while I love the tone, I advise you to RUN AWAY! from even considering that bridge. It's difficult to intonate, the bridge part itself is a floating bridge that's completely unconnected, it rests only on two setscrews. The forward section is a mute that almost no one uses, those thumbscrews are used to raise the mute pad and damper but they usually don't work well and they get in the way of palm muting. The base of the assembly has to sit in a big rout to keep the bridge from being too tall. And to top it all off, the string spacing is narrower than most basses, it's about 2 3/32" center to center (vs. 2 1/4" for most 4 strings).

Take a look here: http://www.rickenbacker.com/pdf/btailpiece.pdf .

The only reason Rick keeps it is because of the purists, changing it would no doubt change the tone in some way.

If you still want to build one, you might ask at the Rick Forum http://www.brunnet.net/cgi-bin/rickresource/discus/discus.pl . You'll probably get an answer and their deepest sympathies!