Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Will the type of capacitor I use help eliminate mwah/fart/burp?

Never had that problem in 20 years of playing Rick basses. (Tone is in the fingers, or so I hear.)

None of this on my Pbass.
So not sure about fingers. Though I have heard that, too.
But the Pbass is burp-free.
Didn't know if caps can change overall tone, or they are just treble roll-offs.

Eliminating burp and mwah with a cap?

Nightcap, perhaps.

lumgimfong wrote:Will the type of capacitor I use help eliminate mwah/fart/burp?

You'd have to remove lots of highs and even high mids to do this. This sounds much more like a setup issue. I'm guessing you have a fretted bass and something is just barely buzzing out. And/or you have the foam mute partially up and don't realize it. There's a "sweet spot" where it makes a sitar-like mwah happen.

I made sure the mute was outta da way as the sitar effect happened to me before.

Neck is dead straight.
A touch of growly fret rattle when I play.

Usually I use a little relief, like a business card's worth.

lumgimfong wrote:None of this on my Pbass.
So not sure about fingers. Though I have heard that, too.
But the Pbass is burp-free.
Didn't know if caps can change overall tone, or they are just treble roll-offs.

Most caps in a tone circuit will accentuate a certain frequency when the tone pot is rolled off all the way, both Rics and P basses get a nice low mid bump with the tones off. I have always wished I could get that sound and some treble at the same time but of course have not tried to figure out a way. But as far as getting rid of noises, you might want to put a little relief in your bass neck as you said because a different cap won't do that unless as someone else said you choke all the highs out of it..

Maybe one or both of the pickups are too high. I had this happen with the Lollar HS pickup on my V63. It has quite low output and the guy who installed it tried to match the volume with the hot neck toaster and set it way high. Burp city..... I lowered it and live with the imbalanced volume, which is way better than having strange sonic effects when I play, though some listeners may argue otherwise.

rictified wrote:Most caps in a tone circuit will accentuate a certain frequency when the tone pot is rolled off all the way

+1

When you completely remove the resistor from the circuit (pot fully CCW), the re-tuned "hinge frequency" pops through and you do indeed get a low-mid boost of what tends to sound like 3-5 dB in my experience. This is the idea of the ToneStyler and previous similar designs. Instead of basically having a circuit with two hinge frequencies and everything in between acting more like a waterfall on the tone chart, the ToneStyler progressively dials the hinge frequency backward on the x-axis. I love how they sound.

As far as what is causing this "mwah" I have absolutely no idea. I need to hear clips to understand what is happening even remotely. Add a bit of relief, lower the pickups, make sure the bridge isn't too low ... that's all I can think of. I could be off base because I've never experienced the issue.

Have you tried a good digestive enzyme and a little more fiber?

An Orange Drop .022uf cap worked!
I didn't think I'd hear a difference, but I did!
Clear notes now. Same Ric bright tone.
Changed out from an Allparts Vitamin-Q .045 cap.
Even less burpy than the stock Ric Mallory-capped harness.

This is on my 2016 4003, modded with 2 HB1 pups and a mono jack harness with (1) CTS 500k pot and (1) 500k CTS tone pot. So it is a 4003 with 4004 style electronics, basically.

No hum no noise. Same Ric tone. Way less burp. New pguard from WD with one selector and two knobs!

lumgimfong wrote:...This is on my 2016 4003, modded with 2 HB1 pups and a mono jack harness...

What are you doing with the second output jack hole? Did you install a dual mono harness there?

Dummy jack where the ROS was.

I had to put humbuckers. The high gaines were so noisy. I like two controls better, too.