Any 230 hamburg owners?

[admin]

Todd: I love what looks to be the YCV40 in the background. A very nice amplifier by Traynor.

[kennyhowes]

I have a 230, and it's a great-sounding rock guitar.... Unfortunately mine has a short in the bridge pickup connection, which limits the sounds I can get--I keep meaning to take the back off and have an electricain friend look at it (I am not the leat bit handy when it comes to fixing stuff like this), but it hasn't been high on my priority list.... one of these days I will get it fixed, though! Mine is fireglo with gorgeous birdseye, which is kind of hard to capture with the camera.

230Hamburg2.jpg

That is a nice one!!!

[jcreasy]

Greg Simon,

Take a look at some black "anodized" knobs... I'll bet they'd look a little cooler than the "... speed" type knobs on there and since there are no "... pointer" gaskets, who cares?

Neat one. Thanks for the PICs.

JKC

[soundmasterg]

Greg Simon,

Take a look at some black "anodized" knobs... I'll bet they'd look a little cooler than the "... speed" type knobs on there and since there are no "... pointer" gaskets, who cares?

Neat one. Thanks for the PICs.

JKC

Thanks for the recommendation JKC. I happen to like the speed knobs but I'm not sold on them necessarily. I still have all the original parts including the knobs and the circuit board, but for me the current arrangement is much more useable than the stock setup. It doesn't really matter since I won't ever get rid of the guitar.

Greg

[Clifton]

The 230 got HB-2 humbucker pickups in 1989, but earlier than that should be single coils. The single coils were very quiet as far as hum level according to Mr. Hall and have an interesting design. I have one here that is broken, and I've never played one as my 1989 230 has humbuckers. You can tell if they are single coil or humbucker if they have a circuit board on the back (humbucker) or have a metal back (single coil). You can also tell by the magnetic pull at the top of the pickup and if there is one polarity or two. Both styles of pickup use a samarium cobalt magnet, which is very powerful. Here are a couple pictures of my 230 after I refinished it in Blue Boy.

Greg

Wow, the Blue Boy refinish is very cool, looks almost like a Sonic Blue. I like it a lot!

I wish Rickenbacker would go back to offering their solidbody line of guitars and basses like these, either with the humbuckers, or even Hi-Gains or Toasters. I'll bet you could get some very interesting tones out of them. I remember John Hall mentioning in Bacon's book how the neck pickup was more powerful than the bridge pickup. It would be very cool to install some kind of a Clapton-style circuit, which could boost the bridge pickup by about 20dB or so for solos if you needed it.