Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

JakeK wrote:The shoes on your V63 bent up, Jeff?

I bent the shoes on two different RI HS pickups, the first was one I bought from a forumite a few years ago, the second on my 4001V63. I did so, primarily, to gain more range of height adjustment downward to lower the output of the pickup relative to the toaster. With the shoe flat there is very little leeway before hitting the strings. Besides that, they look great that way, more vintage.

Second attempt.

re: "shoes bent up" got it, thank you

Original (functional) shoes were bent upward. RIC did this on thr reissue basses to make them more period correct.

cassius987 wrote:

woodyng wrote:i have really got to get a meter reading on my 4000's higain someday,when i figure out how to do that...

It's so easy a Joshua Chandler can do it. Basically just plug in a 1/4'' cable to the mono out, use the switch to isolate the pickup of interest (uh... in your 4000 I guess this isn't an issue!), then take the two probes from an ohm-meter and measure directly on the metal plug. You'll get a slight resistance drop IIRC, but it'll be really close--maybe off by +/- 100 ohms. (For instance my neck Toaster in my 4003FL measures 6.7 kohm outside of the bass and 6.8 in the harness.) If your ohm meter (or multimeter) has options, you want to make sure it's set for resistance and that you're around the right resistance range--2 kohms is going to be too low, so I set mine for the next option--20 kohms--and that does the trick.

Hi everyone - just resurrecting a post that Joshua made here - maybe Josh or someone else can help me out with this one. I used the above method to measure the ohms on the stock 70s high gain pickups of my '78 4001. Using a mono cable out of the mono jack with the toggle switch in the neck position only, the neck pickup read about 7.4K and using the Ring end of a Y-Cable out of the ROS jack, the neck pickup measured about 7.7K. Overall, I'm OK with those readings since it's close enough to the 8K I was expecting after taking into account the 100 ohm drop as Josh indicates above. The ohm-meter was set at 20kohms for these readings.

But a very strange thing happened when I tried to measure the bridge pickup - I got no reading when the ohm-meter was set at 20kohms which made no sense since the bridge pickup works perfectly through the amp when isolated either with a mono cable or using ROS (Tip end of the Y-Cable). So just to make sure it wasn't my ohm-meter doing crazy things, I moved the setting to 200kohms and the bridge pickup read 89K using the mono cable and 188K using the Tip end of the Y-Cable I tried it several times and even measured the neck pickup again at the 200kohm setting on the ohm-meter and the neck still read 7.4K - 7.7K but the bridge pickup continued to come out at around 188K w/ Y-Cable and 89K with mono cable, both measured with the toggle switch down to the bridge pickup setting only.

I had a new ROS wiring harness assembly installed in the bass a few months back (purchased form the Rick boutique), and I know the .0047 cap is there and wired up the way it should be (all stock no bypass). I'm also not getting any buzzing or ground noise from the bass other than the normal single-coil pickup hum that I've always gotten- if it weren't for the crazy ohm reading on the bridge pickup, there would be absolutely no indication of any problem. Both pickups sound great out of the amp either using mono cable or ROS.

Could the .0047 cap be causing this? Anyone have any theories?

Thanks,
Scott

Yes, with the 0.0047uF cap in the bridge pickup circuit, you will not be able to measure with an ohm meter.

Capacitors look like an open circuit to DC (which is what the ohm meter sends through the circuit). Capacitors will pass AC, such as the signal from the pickup when you play.

Thanks CJ. For a minute there I thought I had the hottest pickup in the land

Maybe those who try this on a bridge pickup with the cap bypassed will get a true reading.

The shoes on my both my V63 and C64 are flat, with the gap on the C64 being smaller than the V63. I've seen the C64's for sale on Ebay with the shoes bent up. It does make them look more authentic to the originals.

As far as the differences in tone between the C64 and the 4003, the front pup is in a different position on each so that is going to make a slight difference. But as was stated, if you use the vintage option on the newer 4003's, you could get an idea what a capped C64 would sound like. I personally bypassed the cap on mine, much fuller tone to me.