Pickup Positions

[jps]

Any of you folks out there with a 4002 or a 4004LK or even a 4005 willing to measure the distance from the 20th fret to the centers of the pickups? English or Metric are both fine, I can convert...

I'll be with you shortly.

[jps]

Feb 1967 4005WB JG
N - 1 5/16"
B - 9 1/4"

March 1973 4001 MG
N - 1 5/8"
B - 6 3/8"

May 1998 4001V63 FG
N - 1 3/4"
B - 6 5/8"

May 2008 4003 JG
N - 1 3/4"
B - 6 1/2"

While I have it here, this is Ron O'Keefe's:

July 2008 4004L BBR
N - 1 3/8"
B - 6 1/2"

[incubus2432]

Sorry, I've been kinda busy lately but I will get you the LK measurements. I'm heading to bed for some much needed sleep and have a full day of work followed by a house inspection and loan signing tomorrow. So it may be a day or so but I'm on it.....just thought I'd acknowledge your request.

[cjj]

Just a reminder, I'm still lookin' for those measurements for the 4002 & 4004LK...

[rickaddict]

Just a reminder, I'm still lookin' for those measurements for the 4002 & 4004LK...

Oh yeah! Hopefully this weekend, CJ!

[rickaddict]

Okay...It's the weekend, so I have no more excuses! Here's my 4002:

From the center of the 20th fret to the center of the neck pickup is 4 3/4". From the center of the 20th fret to the center of the bridge pickup is 8 7/32".

Measuring a couple of my other oddball Ricks, I found:

my 2030GF is 2 3/16" & 6 3/8",

and my '79 4005 is 1 5/16" and a whopping 9 1/4" to the bridge pickup.



Edit: I now see that Jeff Scott measured his '67 4005WB and posted exactly the same measurements as my '79 4005. Very interesting......

[cjj]

Thanks for the measurements! Now All I need is a 4004LK...

Measurements from the same model are fine, different years just might be different. Here's what I have so far, not necessarily organized well, but kind of following the footsteps of the "Measure your Girth" list First number is neck pickup, second is bridge, measured from the 20th fret (sorry about the formatting):

1964 4001s BAD RONBO 6.1875
1967-02 4005WB JG jps 1.3125 9.25
1968 4001 BAD RONBO 6.25
1970 4001 (21 fret) BAD RONBO 6.75
1973-03 4001 MG jps 1.625 6.375
1976-11 4001 AZ cjj 2 6.375
1984-06 4003 MG cjj 2 6.375
1998-05 4001V63 FG jps 1.75 6.625
2008-11 4004Cii MG cjj 1.5 6.5
2008-05 4003 JG jps 1.75 6.5
2008-07 4004L BBR libratune 1.375 6.5
4002 rickaddict 4.75 8.21875
2030 rickaddict 2.1875 6.375
1979 4005 rickaddict 1.3125 9.25

[cangaroo]

Hi ... i have this question for you, related to the thread topic.

I want to mod my 75 4001 and placing a toaster in 1/2 inch position. Anyway i noticed that i can place easily the pu in 1/2 position without the need for additional routing, and i was wondering if this is correct for a 75. Mine is a lefty so maybe the route was made the year before (as far as i know 74 is the last year of 1/2 inch basses), i also noticed that some pots are marked as 74 (but i guess this is rather common).

I guess the bass has not been routed again after production mainly because the route has the original finish in it, unless the whole bass has been refin, but i don't think so.

EDIT : where i can find a 1/2 inch pickguard for my rick ?

[cjj]

The one thing you can always say about Rickenbacker is that nothing is absolute. The 1/2 inch spacing stopped sometime in the 1973-1974 time frame, but there is no absolute cutoff date. I've heard that many basses were routed to accept either position much later than the supposed cutoff. So, it's likely that your bass was made that way.

As for a place to get a pickguard with the proper cut out, try pickguardian.com

[rickaddict]

+1 on Pickguardian.

+1 on the 1/2 route being done to the 4001 longer than the 1/2" spaced pickguards were used.

Although I've never tried to see if it will take it, my Feb '76 4001 has a route that looks like it would accept a 1/2" spaced pickguard.

[4003]

'05 4004LK 1 1/4, 4 3/4, 8 5/8

[cjj]

Thanks Bob!

Well, that's interesting. The 4004Cii, 4004LK & 4005 have the neck pickup in just about the same position, with 4004LK being closest to the 20th fret, 4004Cii being further away by 1/4 inch.

The middle pickup on the 4004LK is in the same position as the 4002's neck pickup. Unfortunately, this isn't all that close to the 4004Cii's bridge pickup, the Cii's bridge pickup is 1.75 inches further from the 20th fret. It would be difficult to get this position on a 4004Cii without a pickguard to cover the old pickup's position.

As for bridge pickups, the 4004LK is between the 4002 & 4005 bridge positions.

Here's a cheesy graphical representation of the placement of the 4002, 4004Cii, and 4004LK pickups. The fretboard would be to the left, bridge to the right:

Pickup_Placement.jpg (8.61 KiB) Viewed 2477 times

I wonder how they figure out what these positions are and just how much difference in tone there is with a couple of inches difference...

[cassius987]

Here's a cheesy graphical representation of the placement of the 4002, 4004Cii, and 4004LK pickups. The fretboard would be to the left, bridge to the right:

Pickup_Placement.jpg

Cheesy? CJ, I love you for making graphs. What software did you use? I tend to use GraphPad these days, but that looks unfamiliar so I am guessing it was done with something else.

I'd be interested to see the same graph with 4001 and 4003 data if it wouldn't be too cluttered.

By the way CJ, kudos to you for chasing this info--much like John A and the neck girth spreadsheets. You guys work your butts off to our betterment. Of course, that also means a big round of thanks to the people who submit their info as well. If you decide you need any more modern 4003 measurements I can always add mine in.

[cjj]

That graph was done with Microsoft Visio. The placement is to scale, nothing else is, I just picked a rectangle that seemed about right. It's cheesy because I whipped it out in about 10 minutes and while it gets the point across, it's not as good as I'd like. I'll try to add some of the other model's placements too, but it's starting to get a bit messy. I haven't really figured out how best to do it yet. I'm sure there's probably some slick way to do it directly from an Excel spread sheet (which is how I entered the data), but I'm a total novice with Excel graphs.

As for more modern measurements, I don't think I need them as I don't think things have changed much lately, but feel free to measure and post if you want. Who knows, we may find some new way that Ricks differ over the years...

[jps]

Can you make the graph more of a chart/grid with the "columns" representing the pickup distance relative to the left edge (20th fret) and the "rows" would represent each instrument listed individually to avoid overlapping data?