Red Rickenbacker 230

[octagon]

I was seeking a friend for the end of the world and found this 1988 Rickenbacker 230 instead.

[kiramdear]

I like this. Have you checked out the circuit board under the hood?

[octagon]

I like this. Have you checked out the circuit board under the hood?

Thanks Kira! I bought this online but I wont actually get it in my hands till next week. I don't know too much about this model. Do you have one?

[hjarnett]

I was looking at that last night great buy mitch

[kiramdear]

No, but I have its big brother, a 2030 bass. They are much the same. Very cool player's instruments.

[octagon]

No, but I have its big brother, a 2030 bass. They are much the same. Very cool player's instruments.

Cool! Do you have a picture of yours? What does the circuit board do?

[octagon]

I was looking at that last night great buy mitch

Thanks Jerry! Do you know what kind of pickups are in this guitar? Single coils or mini humbuckers?

[kiramdear]

Here it is in the register:
http://www.rickresource.com/register/vi ... ine%3Dtrue

The circuit board takes the place of the wiring harness, pots, switch, even the jack are all built solid together on the card. It makes assembly a piece of cake, I'm guessing. I'm not sure what the pickups are.

[aceonbass]

They are probably single coils. These pickups were essentially old 3000 series bass pickups with the mounting ears broken off so they could be mounted with the set up they currently have.

[jdawe]

Yup, they are single coils, according to this:

http://www.rickresource.com/rrp/RIC200series.html

Very cool guitar, incidentally. While I can completely understand why RIC has decided to concentrate its limited production resources on the older more traditional designs -- which are wonderful guitars, and scarce enough as it is -- I do kind of miss their old attempts to make something entirely new.

[jingle_jangle]

Single coils, roughly 6.5 K ohms.

[octagon]

Ok thanks for all the info guys. Cool bass Kira,love that color! When did Rickenbacker change to double coil pickups on the 230?

[octagon]

Here is My Rickenbaker

[soundmasterg]

Those are actually humbuckers guys.

Mitch, you can tell for sure if you unscrew the pickup from the guitar and look at the back of it. If there is a circuit board there, then it is a humbucker, and very similar to the current humbuckers from Rickenbacker. They are probably a little less hot though compared to the HB1's(12.3k instead of 14.5k) and they are not made as well as the newer ones. If you take the pickup out, be very careful of the coil wires as they are extremely small and break easily. The humbuckers are epoxied and are almost impossible to repair. These guitars work super well for high gain and overdriven stuff, with a clarity to their sound that is missing from a lot of other guitars. The pickups use samarium cobalt magnets and are very powerful, rivaling the Full Shred Seymour Duncan full size humbucker in output.

If you see a piece of metal on the back of the pickup, then they are single coils. Another way you can tell is if you have one of those little magnet polarity testers...you can run it over the pickups and see what happens. A single coil will only have one polarity on the top whereas the humbuckers will have two. The single coils are weaker, though I forget at the moment what the DCR is. I can measure one for you if you want me to though...I have some here.

I have a 1989 230 that I've had since 1991, and have corresponded with Mr. Hall numerous times over the years in regards to this guitar and those pickups. I currently have a newer RIC HB2 humbucker in my 230 because the original neck pickup got the wire nicked, but you can see what it looks like with a Blueboy finish on it in the pic I attached. My guitar was originally red like yours but when I bought it used someone had stuck incompatible black paint over it, and the finish was cracking pretty badly, and besides I hate black guitars! So I refinished it in Blueboy.

The circuit board is setup like any other guitar circuit, but it has an extra cap and resistor in there to give a boost effect. It works sort of on the neck pickup but not as much on the bridge pickup. I didn't like the weird control order with the circuit board in there....the switch is backwards from the pots as far as which pickup it selects. So I took the board out and went with Gibson style pot order and duplicated the circuit in the Ric otherwise. It sounds just like it did before but is easier to use for me....but then I rewire all of my Rics to Gibson style pot order.

I can get you pics of the pickups (humbucker and single coil) if you give me a couple days. I have both types here. I can also post some of what Mr. Hall told me about these guitars in the past if you like?

Greg

EDIT: Forgot to mention that Mr. Hall said right around 1988-1989 was the transistion year from single coil to humbucker in these guitars.

[admin]

Greg, nice post. I see you are into the blues.