Hi-Gain changes

[Blomp]

I am really surprised at how high that winding it.

Perhaps the really high DCR people are reporting are either rare anomalies, or they didn't have the blender pot turned all the way down when they measured?

[Goingblankagain]

I hope it's kosher to bump old threads around here.

I'm curious if anyone knows roughly at what point in time the DC of the hi-gains started to get more consistent in reading around 10-12kohms? Is it as simple as "if it has plastic bobbins it will have a very consistent DC resistance in both positions" and "if it has black fiberboard bobbins the DC resistance is gonna be pretty random with a trend toward the neck pickup measuring at almost double the resistance of the bridge unit"?

Reason I ask is I've potentially got a chance to check out a '95 360, which has plastic bobbin hi-gains - should I be expecting something similar to what I already know from my '98, '02 and '08 rics with both pickups on all guitars reading very close to 10.5kohms and everything being very well balanced... or something a bit less predictable and a bit more extreme, such as potentially a much thinner clangier bridge pickup and a kinda dark and bloated neck pickup?

I have two late 80’s Ric 360’s (1986) with hi-gains and the neck in both are about 12.5k and the bridge pickups are around 6.5k. They also have vintage valued pots. My understanding is the hi-gains were this way until 1992 or 1994 (not sure exactly). After that both the neck and bridge had the similar readings at 10k-12k. So the 1995 probably would have both pickups reading around the same value.

I prefer the sound of pre-1990’s Rics because of that difference between the neck and bridge pickups. That’s the sound for me.

[Blomp]

I have two late 80’s Ric 360’s (1986) with hi-gains and the neck in both are about 12.5k and the bridge pickups are around 6.5k. They also have vintage valued pots. My understanding is the hi-gains were this way until 1992 or 1994 (not sure exactly). After that both the neck and bridge had the similar readings at 10k-12k. So the 1995 probably would have both pickups reading around the same value.

I prefer the sound of pre-1990’s Rics because of that difference between the neck and bridge pickups. That’s the sound for me.

Thank you for the input - yep, that's exactly as I was thinking they were. I've heard of some people having guitars with 12k bridge and 20k neck as well, though, but it seems it's usually the neck that's wound hotter on those instruments. I've actually seen a 330 from as late as 1995 that had a 12k neck and a 7k bridge, which sounded phenomenal - can't remember if it had plastic or textured fiberboard bobbins though.

I think the plastic bobbins started to replace the textured fiberboard around 1992, so the change to the construction material probably coincided with the change in DCR specification as well, but I'd guess some leftovers were likely used on the slightly cheaper models while the more expensive ones prioritised using the most recent parts. Perhaps some of the early plastic bobbin pickups still had the 'mismatched' DCR too?

I'm happy with my modern spec, 10-12k hi-gains in both positions - but I do suspect I'd like the relatively underwound bridge pickup a little more due to the way that I use these guitars.