Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

My favorite config is VVTT and a three way. Oh my, both my basses (4003 and a P/J) have that!

I have a Ric wired with two Volumes and one tone for both (which works great) and the last tone has been changed to a variable cap control which IMHO works better than a simple on-off switch. I also think one tone is enough if you don't play stereo, gotta have two volumes though for bite. Two tones have always been kind of a pain to me as I turn both of them to the same setting all the time, I got pretty quick at it though.

As far as I'm concerned I don't need any tone, volume, or pickup switches at all. On my old main squeeze I actually put the toggle UNDER the pickguard so I would not actually hit it my mistake. I play mostly with the bass wise open volume and tone and control the eq and volume with my amp. The only time I use the volume knob is at rehearsal when I'm too lazy to go to my amp to turn down we we might be going over song structures etc...
My ideal bass would just have a single volume, or a "hard to hit by accident" toggle on-off.

I agree with you about the volume, it's always full on for me. So your preferred setting is both pickups in a 50/50 blend? I like that setting a lot but I do like to go to a single pickup for a different kind of sound too.

I adjust each pup for optimal tone, but equal volume. I then use the bridge pup for fast tunes, both for in between stuff, and the neck for slow stuff. Then my right hand fine tunes the roundness or sharpness by where I play. Thus my love for VVTT and a three way!

rikk wrote:My ideal bass would just have a single volume...

Like this?

I appreciate everyone's input regarding my question, and based on the sample of answers it's pretty obvious that the stock configuration is also the most favored one.... but I'm still not sold on it.

I've played two unmodified 4003's this week and both suffer from the 'tone bleed-thru' I mentioned in a previous post in this thread: Put the toggle in the middle with all controls maxed and and play a root-5th-octave power chord on the A, D, & G strings and everything rings beautifully. Roll off one tone control and the overall treble output takes a nosedive. In other words, there's no way to get a bright bridge pickup and more subdued neck pickup (or vice-versa), because when you cut the treble from one pickup it disappears altogether. I find it hard to believe that I would have 2 different stock basses that are somehow wired incorrectly, but other posts in this thread mention rolling off the tone on one P/U and being happy with the sound. That's sure not the case here, but it's the least annoying of the issues I have.

My main complaint is the way the volume controls work and the ability to blend them. I'm now referring to the bass I play the most, the 4001 FrankenRic I picked up earlier this year. It has 2V and 1T. I have no idea what value pots it has in it or if they're Linear or Audio pots. If you start with either volume control fully closed and gradually open it up, the first 90-95% of shaft rotation increases the volume from zero to maybe 10% of full volume, but then in the final 5-10% of rotation it shoots up to full volume so you really can't fine tune the volume, it's basically on or off. Is that kind of taper/graduation common for all passive pots, or do I have cheap pots or a Linear vs. Audio pot issue ? The pots turn smoothly and are completely quiet. The percentages aren't that extreme on the two 4003's I have here but it could still be better.

What it boils down to with the 4001 is that I have 3 sounds to choose from:
1. Neck at full volume & bridge at 0-10% volume.
2. Bridge at full volume & neck at 0-10% volume.
3. Both pickups at full volume.

In scenarios 1 & 2 it doesn't matter whether the second P/U is at 0% or 10% since you can't hear its effect anyway with the other P/U being at 100% volume. What I lack is the option of having one pickup at at full volume and one rolled off to 50-75% of full volume. I don't know if I'd necessarily even like the sound of that mix but with the way the taper on the current volume controls works I can't even dial it in to see what it sounds like. I will say that the 3 sounds I get with the different pickup options are quite distinct from one another, much more distinct that the different sounds on the 4003's, so maybe 3 sounds is enough (without regard to the variations you get by playing in different places along the string, or fingers vs. pick). I don't know what it is about this old 4001 but it just sounds fantastic.

Ideally I'd like a blend knob that works smoothly over the entire 0-100% mix, but in an earlier post in the thread Jeff Rath said that the blend pots work better with active electronics. I'm not educated enough in this area to know why that is, but without regard to my complaints about the volume and tone ordeal, is there anything I can do passively to get a nice blend thing happening?

I guess the "tone-bleed-thru" can be stopped (should not exist) with the 0.0047 cap installed like the original 4001 wiring.
However as you don't have any pound of bass anymore, you then have the other historical Rick-Oddity problem.

For a nicer blend function you may try log pots, that do not cut off so quick like the normal ones do.