Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I had a mapleglo V63 bass from 1990 that had all the "vintage" stuff on it,Except[inexplicably??]
this v63 had a Hi Gain in the neck. Sounded OK, but it got replaced with a toaster, which made it better. BTW, when I first got it, the previous owner had removed the horseshoes off the bridge PU.I put'em back on.My conclusion about the difference between having and not having the 'shoes on?? Very Little Difference.YMMV...

4003 Sea Green - I'm not sure if by high gain you mean the stock button top neck pickup? That's what I have along with the horseshoe - see my post above.

Jon, that's the beauty of it - you can get a large variety of sounds just by playing with pickups and caps. And since everybodys ears and tastes are different, there's no right or wrong way to do it!
Rob

Thanks Rob, I missed that, yes, by high gain I mean the stock button-top pickup on the neck.

You say that you mostly use the bridge pickup, but I like a blended tone. Is it hard to blend the two together, or does the Horseshoe blow it out of the water?

It's not hard at all to blend them - the 'shoe really does blow the neck PU away if you compare solo-bridge to solo-neck, but when you combine them with both volumes dimed, the tone mellows out a lot. It loses a little volume as compared to the solo-bridge, but not much... hope this helps! Any other questions, fire away!
Rob

Thanks Rob. I take it your happy with this setup. I'd like to take the plunge and get the Horseshoe, but I wasn't too keen on the toaster since I heard the volume was signficantly lower then the 'shoe, hence my idea of just getting the 'shoe and keeping the high-gain on the neck. So am I hearing that if you just play the 'shoe you get a louder volume then if blended?

>>So am I hearing that if you just play the 'shoe you get a louder volume then if blended?

Yeah, but it's still much louder than with the neck PU solo-ed... I LOVE the horseshoe pickup. I had bartolini's in my bass before, but the shoe blows them away! The thing just ROARS!
Rob

The 60's pickups are cool but they are not as hot as the high gain ... I tried taking the capaciter out of my '68 ric and it sounded dull and lifless ... the old horseshoe pickups need the capaciter to get that ric bite ... The 70's high gain pickups stand well on their own but the 70's basses came with the capaciter ... the 70's basses sound better without the capaciter ... somewhere in the 80's the 4003 pickups got even hotter and the capaciter was no longer included ... the 4003 is louder and a little thicker sounding than the 4001's from the 60's and 70's. Also the 4003s5 had the high gain bridge pickup and a toaster pickup in the neck ... this is a nice como of smooth and nasty bite .... Ric pickups are great ... just don't put a friken humbucker in the ric ... depending on what pickups you use you can get a variety of sounds ... the cool part is they are all good ... Jeff

My, there are indeed many of you hooked on the notion that Rick basses sound better without the C3 capacitor. It's all a matter of taste, no argument there, still I can't help feeling that you are trying to address an output problem rather than a tone problem - can any of you honestly say that you don't like the original tone of Rickenbacker basses? There's a couple of ways to deal with the bridge pickup low output problem found on SOME, and I mean SOME, 4001/4003 basses. I've successfully restored pickup output balance to two of my 4001 basses without removing the C3 capacitor.

one way to reduce gain on pickups is to install a resistor inline with the pickup that you want to have toned down. I would start with 1K and work my way up from there.