My HB-1s in my 650D were too muddy from the start with much natural amp OD & distortion. I changed the Vol pots to 500Ks & the tone cap to.01s. A bit better but not there....now I read about using a 1Meg tone pot with 500K vol pots...I'm gonna try it. What tone caps should I use? The original .047s? or .022?
If this doesn't work I'm gonna have Pete Biltoft wind me a set of firebird minis to fit a Ric cover or try Hi-gains...
Thanks!
Mark
Help with 650D pickups...!
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FretlessOnly
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Re: Help with 650D pickups...!
I'm sorry that I can't help with your technical questions, but I found the sound of the mini humbuckers in my 650 D to be great. Nice clear tone in clean mode and also more amenable to natural amp overdrive than most other RIC guitars, and I like that flexibility.
Rather than a 650D, I think you need to drop a couple hundred more and get a 330. If you're really looking for that jangle sound, you need to get a jangler, as it were. The 650 series doesn't really fall into that category to me.
Rather than a 650D, I think you need to drop a couple hundred more and get a 330. If you're really looking for that jangle sound, you need to get a jangler, as it were. The 650 series doesn't really fall into that category to me.
Can we have everything louder than everything else?
Re: Help with 650D pickups...!
Try the high gains, you won't regret it. I would use two bridge pickups due to the wider string spacing on the 650 series guitars.
"The best things in life aren't things."
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beatlefreak
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Re: Help with 650D pickups...!
I don't find the HB1s in my 650S muddy at all. Great pickups for rock.
Ka is a wheel.
Re: Help with 650D pickups...!
I'd better explain...I bought this guitar new in 2005 and have loved it & played it a lot....Clean it sounds like a million bucks (articulate is the word I use) and with a little amp OD it oozes tone...but I swapped in new 500K pots cause the neck in particular would get muddy.
The problem is when I really crank up my amps.....all my amps are mid-heavy old circuits... (tweed Champ, tweed Deluxe, 18 watt Marshall, & 6G3 Brownface Deluxe, vintage Valco). The HB-1s are way higher output than my other pups....The Champs sounds great! I like natural amp distortion so I have no problem diming my amps....The HB-1s don't clean up much when rolling off the volume....all that being said I LOVE this guitar & when I want thick humbucker tone it is there.
So maybe I should try the 1Meg tone pots....or just swap in a set of Hi-Gains & sell them at a minor loss if they don't do it for me.
The cool thing is I like nearly all electric guitar tones. P90s would kill in this thing...as would Firebird mini-hummers.
We'll see...thanks for the help.
The problem is when I really crank up my amps.....all my amps are mid-heavy old circuits... (tweed Champ, tweed Deluxe, 18 watt Marshall, & 6G3 Brownface Deluxe, vintage Valco). The HB-1s are way higher output than my other pups....The Champs sounds great! I like natural amp distortion so I have no problem diming my amps....The HB-1s don't clean up much when rolling off the volume....all that being said I LOVE this guitar & when I want thick humbucker tone it is there.
So maybe I should try the 1Meg tone pots....or just swap in a set of Hi-Gains & sell them at a minor loss if they don't do it for me.
The cool thing is I like nearly all electric guitar tones. P90s would kill in this thing...as would Firebird mini-hummers.
We'll see...thanks for the help.
Re: Help with 650D pickups...!
Sounds to me like you should try new toaster pickups.
Re: Help with 650D pickups...!
I would love to try new toasters....who has 'em?
Re: Help with 650D pickups...!
Looks like the RIC Boutique has them in stock, but there are also the usual dealers to check in with.jakeboy wrote:I would love to try new toasters....who has 'em?
Re: Help with 650D pickups...!
The consensus seems to be that toasters are great for the vintage 60's sound or on the 12-strings. I've had 325v63 and 330-12 with toasters and they were great, but limited. If you MUST HAVE that Twist and Shout sound, they are the only way to go, but DO insist on a 325.
It's been stated before that the 3rd pickup was added to the older Rics with toasters because players were complaining that the sound was thin. Although some will disagree, toasters are NOT the route to go for distortion work. 2 wrongs don't make a right, but 3 can make for something a little unusual...
Fast forward about 40 years of technology. I just tried to duplicate your problems with my 650D and 330, without much success. My 650D neck sounds "bluesy", the bridge "Beatleish" and both together, I could sell this guitar to R.E.M., but never to Pink Floyd or Deep Purple, because it will never have that single-coil distorted timbre. I am using a Traynor YCS50 tube amp which is about the closest you can get to 1963 sound with 2009 features. Your comment about "articulate" is dead-on. I could do the same thing with my 330 and if you were blindfolded and I was left free to tinker with tone controls, I could sell you whichever one I wanted to. But neither will DUPLICATE the sound of a 325 with toasters.
STOP spending money on changing pots, etc. Go back to dead stock. Both those humbuckers have the same part number, so maybe you got a weak one in the neck position. Won't cost a lot of time or $$ to interchange the 2 so that you eliminate the pickup as your culprit. Measure the resistance of each individually while the parts are pulled.
If they are both identical, then try a volume pedal, just to see if there is some type of input level mismatch betrween the Ric and whatever amp you prefer.
In other words, do the cheap stuff first.
And if you can more clearly define what you're missing, we'll all try to help.
It's been stated before that the 3rd pickup was added to the older Rics with toasters because players were complaining that the sound was thin. Although some will disagree, toasters are NOT the route to go for distortion work. 2 wrongs don't make a right, but 3 can make for something a little unusual...
Fast forward about 40 years of technology. I just tried to duplicate your problems with my 650D and 330, without much success. My 650D neck sounds "bluesy", the bridge "Beatleish" and both together, I could sell this guitar to R.E.M., but never to Pink Floyd or Deep Purple, because it will never have that single-coil distorted timbre. I am using a Traynor YCS50 tube amp which is about the closest you can get to 1963 sound with 2009 features. Your comment about "articulate" is dead-on. I could do the same thing with my 330 and if you were blindfolded and I was left free to tinker with tone controls, I could sell you whichever one I wanted to. But neither will DUPLICATE the sound of a 325 with toasters.
STOP spending money on changing pots, etc. Go back to dead stock. Both those humbuckers have the same part number, so maybe you got a weak one in the neck position. Won't cost a lot of time or $$ to interchange the 2 so that you eliminate the pickup as your culprit. Measure the resistance of each individually while the parts are pulled.
If they are both identical, then try a volume pedal, just to see if there is some type of input level mismatch betrween the Ric and whatever amp you prefer.
In other words, do the cheap stuff first.
And if you can more clearly define what you're missing, we'll all try to help.