Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Thank you Gentlemen for all your advice.Teb & Joey i think i'm going to go with your advice and disconnect the 1" speaker.With all the other bass amps and basses i've owned i just used to plug in get a bassic bass sound,but since getting the Ric 4003 & soon the Ampeg i realy want to get a good Ricky sound.

I have gotten a good Rick sound with virtually all the amps I have had over the years. It's in the fingers, really.

Hi Jeff,What amp settings do you use then.Even Though i'm a pick player i still want that classic Ric sound,i know that a lot of the sound comes from how hard or soft you play etc,etc.But both Chris Squire & Bruce Foxton both had a nice bass sound and there pick players.

I usually use my fingers these days but to get a good tone with a pick you will need to cuts the mids around 500-800Hz, and maybe boost the treble a little bit in the area of 3KHz. Chris' tone as far as the high end goes is more lower treble as opposed to high treble which produces mostly finger and fret noise. I have been able to get a good Squire tone using my cabinets with 15" speakers (and no horns or tweeters) in it as long as the particular driver has a decent frequency response. Currently I have Eminence Delta Pro 15s in my two Traynor cabinets. Even with Chromes on my basses the tone is there.

Shawn, be glad you can still hear the hiss. I hear it, but that is coming from my left ear, not the speaker. Jeff's last post is right on, and the comment that a lot of it is in the hands is also true. I used to have a BA115 for a short while and you should be able to get there from here with that one. Boost the bass, have the tone selector on 2 or 3, mids flat or a tad cut, and a slight treble boost. On the bass all controls all open on 11.

Shawn, I should add that my logic was to get partway there with the bass tone & volume settings first so that you'd be closer to your goal once returning to the amp EQ settings. It is a two step process.

I forgot to mention that I also really like to use felt picks now, after having started out with fingers only. All of my various types of felt picks give me a sound in between *my* fingers and a hard pick, even though each of them has its own sound - all warmer though than a hard pick. I write "my" fingers, as some players can have really calloused playing fingers resulting in an edgier, almost pick-like sound.

Just experiment as much as you can with what you have available and go for that sound you hear in your head.

Did anyone mention the whole bi-amping thing as well? I didn't catch that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember Squire saying he split the pickups each into a different amp. John A. would be the expert here. I've also viewed Ric-o-sound as more of a pseudo-stereo as the pickup settings of one pickup affect the other one a bit.

According to info on the Ric corporate forum, Squire later used just the neck pickup at some point (no connection to the bridge pickup), but I'm sure that using separate amps and effects continued.

Also, from what I've read in the bass magazines (or their on-line versions), Geddy Lee has used at least 3 different channels (highs, lows, and distortion) so there are other tricks at work to get a sound.

I've got a Fender Rumble 100 that I use as practice amp. It has a horn, but since I my EQ settings are essentially at most one notch +/- zero I don't notice much of a hiss issue.

rickboy88 wrote:Did anyone mention the whole bi-amping thing as well? I didn't catch that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember Squire saying he split the pickups each into a different amp. John A. would be the expert here. I've also viewed Ric-o-sound as more of a pseudo-stereo as the pickup settings of one pickup affect the other one a bit.

According to info on the Ric corporate forum, Squire later used just the neck pickup at some point (no connection to the bridge pickup), but I'm sure that using separate amps and effects continued.

I sure don't consider myself an expert at this, but Chris did wire the single output jackplate of his RM1999 with a stereo jack and had each pickup seperatly going to that stereo jack. He uses a Marshall for his treble HS, and an Ampeg SVT-2 for his neck toaster.

As for the HS being unconnected, with each pickup having a separate amp, I would think Chris or his tech would have noticed if one pickup (ie, amp not outputting any sound) was not working. IMHO.

johnallg wrote: I sure don't consider myself an expert at this, but Chris did wire the single output jackplate of his RM1999 with a stereo jack and had each pickup seperatly going to that stereo jack. He uses a Marshall for his treble HS, and an Ampeg SVT-2 for his neck toaster.

As for the HS being unconnected, with each pickup having a separate amp, I would think Chris or his tech would have noticed if one pickup (ie, amp not outputting any sound) was not working. IMHO.

This one had me going for awhile too. Then, on one of our phone calls a few months ago I asked Chris about all this in detail. Chris assured me that he has always bi-amped his RM1999 to two different heads, or on occasion into two different channels on one amp. He said the HS pickup has never been disconnected while he was playing the bass, all these years. I mentioned that John Hall has opined before that he was certain that Chris' bass came to the factory from Richard Davis with the HS pickup wire disconnected. Chris asked Richard about this, and Richard said that this was only because Richard had been doing some work on it before shipping it to RIC (recording the exact impedance of the pickups before entrusting it to RIC), and he himself had left the pickup disconnected only that one time.

If you've never tried it, the two-amp or two-channel wiring, with each pickup going to a different set of eq controls is pretty neat. I've been using it an some of my basses since 1972 with each pickup going through it's own amp channel and then to a single cabinet. I like deep, deep bass tone, but I want it to have some very focused percussion when I pick a note - kind of like when you play a note on your bass and the drummer manages to kick his bass drum at the exact same time and it merges into a single sound. There is a short mp3 called "Two Fretless" in this folder if you want to hear it. It's the first bass you'll hear, set with the neck pickup very deep and bassy and the bridge pickup running to another channel and set very bright. It's fretless, but I generally flat-pick it to get that definition. The second bass on the cut is my Pedulla Buzz played finger-style and mono. The head for both basses is my ancient, two-channel Acoustic 140. The speaker is a single 15" JBL E-140 in a cabinet that I built myself - without any horn.
The folder is here:
http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/Music%20stuff/

It doesn't sound like Chris Squire, but I've never played in a cover band so I never had to sound like anybody but myself. Even so, the double-channel system can be a really great way to fine-tune your sound to get what you're after.

Thank you all for your help in my question,Joey contacted me offline and pointed out some things that i should try.That is one of the things i love about this forum,there is so much help & advice that everyone here benifits from it.I can see me sat down for a long while over Christmas finding my Ricky sound thank you all again you've been a great help.

Maybe you will find it under the tree.

Hi Jeff,I hope so.

Elys, thanks for that, as it had me puzzled also.I had to believe JH knew what he was saying, but I also felt Chris would have noticed the lack of the HS signal. Makes a lot of sense. So, what were the readings of his pickups?

johnallg wrote:Elys, thanks for that, as it had me puzzled also.I had to believe JH knew what he was saying, but I also felt Chris would have noticed the lack of the HS signal. Makes a lot of sense. So, what were the readings of his pickups?

That is something that Chris did not know, only because he is more musically and less technically inclined. Chris has a great memory, and can tell you with razor-sharp precision how it sounds when a change is made, but not the technical reason why a change made it sound different. For example, he can tell you what sound difference that recharging his HS magnets made that time, that he did not like it, and was glad when they weakened a few months later. I will try to ask Richard Davis directly, as he would doubtless be the only one who would know the impedances. I am sure Richard measured only to ensure that he could account for a change in sound after it returned from RIC - for example, if RIC changed out or rebuilt a pickup then he could tell Chris why it now sounded different and how to fix it back to how it was.