It's 60 cycle hum! It's 60 cycle hum! I'm going

anonymous · Post by **anonymous** » Sat Jan 11, 2003 6:38 am

I have found that the new Ric high gain pickups are louder than just about any humbucker ...

I have never taken apart a pickup ... but I think I understand how a high gain could be reversed ... I suppose it could also be demagnetized and remagnetized in the opposite direction ...

The toaster pickups have six magnets ... I don't think I would try to take one of those apart ... but the high gain model has a ceramic magnet at the base ....

I must admit the idea of having a humcanceling Ric with single coils is intriguing ... The guy who runs the pa for my band would love it ... it would be great in the studio ...

So Sergio teel me more about making custom Ric pickups ..

anonymous · Post by **anonymous** » Sat Jan 11, 2003 10:16 am

With pleasure. What do you need to know?

Like I said, turn the magnet over. Unglue it from the bobbin, turn it over and re-attach it. Also, remember to reverse the connections on that pickup.

'Ceramic' magnet? I prefer to use the word 'rubberized'.

Toaster pickups are easy to take apart. I wouldn't touch a vintage one, though.

anonymous · Post by **anonymous** » Sat Jan 11, 2003 2:04 pm

You said ....

turn the magnet over. Unglue it from the bobbin, turn it over and re-attach it.

What do you mean unglue it???

Do you use pliars, visegrips, screw drivers, or what????

Ric pickups are expensive ... I don't want to destroy and if I can help it.

Jeff

anonymous · Post by **anonymous** » Sun Jan 12, 2003 12:38 am

Yes, Jeff, unglue it. The rubberized bar magnet on the 4003 neck pickup is glued to the bobbin. To separate it therefrom, remove the securing plate from the pickup casing and carefully insert, say, a knife between the underside of the bobbin and the magnet to make the latter come off. It's that simple.

anonymous · Post by **anonymous** » Mon Jan 13, 2003 4:06 pm

I got a mxr noise gate ... it seems to do the trick ....

Someday I will try to reverse a ric pickup ...

rictified · Post by **rictified** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 6:40 pm

I shielded two early 80's 4001's, I was running stereo into one head with just a Y cord, and the noise was unbearable I couldn't even play with them like that. (I guess the Ric O sound box helps a lot) Anyway I bought some sticky copper shielding, a roll about 2 to 3 inches wide, I took everything apart, put it under the pick guard, in the control cavity and both treble and bass pickup cavities. I soldiered little wires to connect them all together (every piece I mean, except of course the pickguard I just overlapped the copper onto the body where it would contact the pickguard thereby completing the circut.) I did not trust a sticky piece of copper to make a good connection to another. I left all ground wires in place as they are all supposed to be, any metal that is not grounded on a bass or guitar acts like an antenna picking up noise. The only shock hazard you will encounter is if you are holding on to your bass and you touch a live wire or something that is live and that will not be your basses fault, that is why there are three prong plugs on all modern amplifiers, the old amps with polarity switches and two prong plugs had 120 VAC going into your bass if you had the switch backwards, and you would get zapped if you touched anthing that was grounded like it should have been such as a mic. People used to die in the old days like that. Everything should be at ground potential.
Anyway the basses were absolutely moiseless unless I pointed the pickups right at a source of noise such as lighting. All metal parts on a bass are supposed to be grounded.
I had a white on black 4003 which was very noisy and found that the allen screws for the bridge were not grounding to the tailpiece, there was so much black paint in the little holes where the bottoms of the screws went that the paint was preventing the metal screws from touching the metal tailpiece, once I cleaned them out, the bass quieted right down.The strings and keys were not grounded at all and were picking up noise and transfering it to the pickups.
Grounding problems are a pain to trace though. I'll usually take them all apart, that can do wonders, I've fixed more old radios that way, and fixed more basses too, what did I do? I have no idea but it worked. No actually I probably loosened some corrosion or tightened something that was loose, things like that.
Sergio when you said that you unhooked the treble plate surround and cover did you make contact with the copper in the cavity? If everything else is grounded the ring probably wouldn't pick up too much noise but should really be grounded someway also.

rickcrazy · Post by **rickcrazy** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 11:23 pm

Yes, the foil that lines the treble p.u. cavity is to be grounded. Ideally the pickup should be shielded as well, however this is not always feasible (unless, of course, you either use a pickup of your own or don't mind making the original one look shoddy by wrapping it in shielding foil), so it's very likely that you'll still get some (negligible) amount of noise if you disconnect the mounting ring (and the handrest)from the ground path.