Please tell me about Rickenbacker's humbuckers.

sunn · Post by **sunn** » Wed Aug 08, 2001 1:38 pm

I have a 620 which comes stock with single-coils and I have been wanting to swap them out with humbuckers. Instead of cutting up my guitar to fit Dimarzio humbuckers I was looking into Rick hums. So if your Rick has the humbuckers could you please describe their tone to me. How hot are they? How well are they balanced? What is the treble, mids, bass ratio? etc. thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.

markthemd · Post by **markthemd** » Fri Aug 10, 2001 5:40 am

I haver never had the chance to compair them to any type of other brand humbucking pickup .......BUT! they are about the same size as a Gibson Deluxe Les Paul model pickup and I would gather that structurally they are similar in tone .

Those are noiseless,crisp and are a great pickup .

No ...you will not get KISS tone ,or Boston ,nor classic LesPaul Standard tone ,but as the body of your guitar is maple ...it would make for a treble peak and a Bass peak anyway .You won't get the midrange bump like a Les Paul Standard .

In fact if you carve the guitar to install a typical humbucker ...you won't get the Gibson style tone from it anyway ....it does not matter what pickup you install .
Mahogany imparts a certain tone characteristic and a maple guitar will NOT give that to you .

Don't believe me ....try playing a Les Paul Custom and Standard unplugged ....the Custom is crisper ...always !
Why? the woods are exactly the same EXCEPT the fretboard! (this does not apply to the 1950's Customs )
The ebony fretboard turns up the crisp factor !

Try this ...you will hear it !

rickplayer · Post by **rickplayer** » Fri Aug 10, 2001 7:46 am

Howdy!
Hey, I had a 330 for ten years. I bought it with the original high gains but installed Rickenbacker humbuckers. What I found was the noise level was reduced (obviously) but the tones changed also. I was having problems getting the high E string to pick up well with the high gains. The humbuckers were slightly hotter with more bass and mid response. These fit right in the body with 0 modification. I was very pleased. Do not kid yourself, this is not a Les Paul with humbuckers, but a Rickenbacker with less noise and nice tone range. You lose some of your classic jangle, but not much. Hope this helps.

Jon

sunn · Post by **sunn** » Sun Aug 12, 2001 8:33 am

Great! the tone you described for the Rick hums is the exact tone I want. i am not interested in getting a Les Paul tone. I am definitely ordering the humbuckers as soon as possible. Thanks for your replies.
~Sunn0)))

kennyhowes · Post by **kennyhowes** » Mon Jan 14, 2002 3:47 pm

Has anyone ever found their HB-1 pickups to be LESS hot than a Ric Hi-Gain (closer to the output of, say, a 7.4k toaster)? This is an issue I'm currently dealing with on one of my Rics. Thanks!

markthemd · Post by **markthemd** » Mon Jan 14, 2002 5:09 pm

A volt / ohm meter is needed to test any pickup to see if there is resistance at each coil.

Then and only then can there be a determination of any thing wrong .

I suggest this be checked out first , then compare .

corey · Post by **corey** » Wed Jan 16, 2002 5:46 am

To add my two cents...

I've played Rics in stores with the Humbuckers, but still prefer the Hi-Gains, despite the annoying noise factor that occurs in recording. I'm a big "jangle" Ric player, so I can't bear to lose any of that classic sound.

I've really found that switching between the standard and Ric-o-Sound jacks with different strings can produce a wide variety of tones for me alone. Fender 250's in the standard jack got me a good Edge sound, for example.

Just experiment with anything you're curious about with a Ric - I'm constantly surprised how versitile my 360 is.

rick12dr · Post by **rick12dr** » Wed Jan 16, 2002 8:16 am

I've put the .0047 cap on the end of the hot wires
on the Rick HB, and that gets the PU to "sparkle" a bit more, especially the bridge pos.

kennyhowes · Post by **kennyhowes** » Wed Jan 16, 2002 12:05 pm

OK, here's the thing, fellas:

There is a good chance that I only have one coil wired up, as I'm doing this myself and haven't been able to find the right info anywhere (and haven't bought a good ohm meter yet, but plan on it).

The wires coming off of the HB-1 pickup are: black, red, green, white, and a shield. I have been confused as to how to wire it; I know the hot goes where the hot goes, the ground of that goes with the shield (grounded to a pot), and the other two are tied off, which should then give me a full, loud humbucking tone. Right?

What I haven't been able to find out is which colored wires correspond to which coils.

I am installing this in the bridge position, and at the neck is a '60s toaster. It's wiring and output are fine and sound like it should. I wanted there to a great contrast in output between the toaster and the HB-1 (with the HB-1 being pretty hot), but so far they're about the same.

Regarding the .0047, my experience with them is that they cut the signal (I removed one from the bridge p/u of my '67 330 and it ROCKS), so I left it out of my wiring.

Any help is sincerely appreciated. Thank you.

kennyhowes · Post by **kennyhowes** » Wed Jan 16, 2002 2:53 pm

To clarify:

The HB-1 has a little circuit board of sorts with numbers for each wire, and here's the layout:

1) black wire
2) red
3) green
4) white

...and then the shield/ground wire.

Thanks!

gregson1 · Post by **gregson1** » Wed Jan 16, 2002 4:42 pm

Regardless of wire color, the terminals on the circuit board labeled 2 and 3 are one 7.2K Ohm coil and the terminals labeled 1 and 4 are the second 7.2K Ohm coil. From the factory, terminals 1 and 3 are joined together inside a piece of shrink tube on the end of the wire that is normally soldered to these terminals. Together, terminal 2 (the hot lead) and 4 (the ground lead, which should also be tied to a ground strap that attaches to the ground on the face of the circuit board) provide most DC resistance at about 14.4K Ohms.

kennyhowes · Post by **kennyhowes** » Thu Jan 17, 2002 8:08 am

Groovy! Thanks Gregson!

Now, having made those changes, the pickup does have a bit more gain BUT, as Don mentioned above, should I, in fact, put a .0047 cap on, to crisp it out a bit? (i.e. should the HB-1 be inherently darker-sounding than a Hi-Gain?)

As I also said above, I've found that the .0047 cuts the signal slightly, which I'm trying to avoid (I want this pickup to scream), but maybe if it makes it brighter I could live with it. Hmmm...

Thanks again folks.
-KH

rick12dr · Post by **rick12dr** » Thu Jan 17, 2002 5:20 pm

The HB has a much hotter output than the regular Rick PUs, and I found that the .0047 worked fine, not like it does with so many 70s[these are the problematic years of mfr., in my experience, anyway]Ricks with Hi Gains, where the little cap just sucks the life out of the PU.

kennyhowes · Post by **kennyhowes** » Fri Jan 18, 2002 1:44 pm

Si, señor, I will try this. Any particular flavor of .0047uf I should try? (The local ham radio shop has quite a variety.)

kennyhowes · Post by **kennyhowes** » Tue Jan 22, 2002 3:05 pm

The saga continiues.

I realized one thing I did wrong that was pulling some of the power away from the pickup--duh--I was using a 250k pot.

So, having switched to a 500k pot, the HB-1, I'm happy to report, does indeed sound like a classic humbucker. Very snarly, like Rick Nielsen.

Now:

There is still not as much high-end jangle as a typical Hi-Gain; I am opening up to the idea of the .0047uf cap again, although now that I've got some more gain I don't want to give it up for the sake of treble. I'm trying to figure out if I'm mistaking treble for sheer output. Hmm. Whaddaya think? Don?