Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

stereo on a bass or guitar is pretty much an obsolete concept ... 1 or 2 or 3 mono signals will do the job ...

I still maintain that the sound of both pickups of a 4001/4003 full on is one of the best sounds ever. And you can't get that if you're running the pickups separately. An A/B type of splitter box seems a lot more versatile to me...

I prefer the sound of 2 4003 pickups with everything opened up to 10 but the neck volume backed off to 8 ... and run mono ...

I used to run my 4001 in stereo. I used a stereo Y cord instead of the Rick-O-Sound box. I then ran each pickup into a 10-band EQ and then to a small battery powered 2 channel mixer I made, to blend the signal back to mono, and then to my amp.

Back when I was a big Yes head, I had my Maestro Bass Brassmaster, and ran that on just the treble pickup, like Squire did. I also ran the neck pickup through an Electro Harmonics Mole bass booster.

In the 80's I just ran it in mono.

Jeff the idea of stereo guitars is for more tone shaping options, and as such they aren't really stereo, just multichannel. A true stereo guitar or bass would have it's strings panned from left to right as you went across.

I had a stereo Vox Phantom XII that had three split pickups, with each half being assigned to the left or right channel.. that was more of a stereo guitar than a Rick (Or the stereo Gibson's)

Alembic still makes "stereo" basses, like the Stanley Clarke model. Stan uses his with two amps.

IMHO, the heads we have to choose from today are so much more powerful and versatile that ROS isn't needed. I (finally) found the Holy Grail sound on my '74 this past weekend using a Behringer head of all things and just going slowly thru the EQ and "Shape"; been at it for weeks and there it was, growl, bell/piano ringing sustain. Then again the Behringer knobs turn so easily if I sneeze I'll lose it !