Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

iiipopes wrote:Has anybody besides me noticed that a guitar shipping box, with its relative proportions of the thickness to the width to the height would remind someone of the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly in Arthur C. Clarke's novel, "2001, A Space Odyssey"?

You evidently didn't see Jeffrey's photo further up in this column.....

woodyng wrote:

iiipopes wrote:Has anybody besides me noticed that a guitar shipping box, with its relative proportions of the thickness to the width to the height would remind someone of the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly in Arthur C. Clarke's novel, "2001, A Space Odyssey"?

You evidently didn't see Jeffrey's photo further up in this column.....

Wait, so you're saying that wasn't a totally original idea of mine?

iiipopes wrote:Has anybody besides me noticed that a guitar shipping box, with its relative proportions of the thickness to the width to the height would remind someone of the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly in Arthur C. Clarke's novel, "2001, A Space Odyssey"?

A bass shipping box is probably closer to the correct proportion, I think.

I don't think the proportions are quite right (though they might be; I haven't measured). The Monolith was 1:4:9 (the squares of the first three integers) in our three dimensions, extending into higher dimensions invisible to us. So, if the box were, say, 4" thick, it would need to be 16" wide by 36" high. Fairly close, really.

Today I took my old stock 4001 (well, mostly stock) to the studio along with the new 4003W. As I suspected, the 4003W has notably higher output. I think it's the pickups, but I suppose it could be the strings. If it is the pickups, are they wound hotter, or have the magnets lost strength on the old bass? If the latter, is there any convenient way to bring the strength back up?

jps wrote:

iiipopes wrote:Has anybody besides me noticed that a guitar shipping box, with its relative proportions of the thickness to the width to the height would remind someone of the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly in Arthur C. Clarke's novel, "2001, A Space Odyssey"?

A bass shipping box is probably closer to the correct proportion, I think.

Guitar box would be closer to the proportions given in the books, but a bass box looks more like the image you posted.

all of this coincidence? I think NOT!

Isaac wrote:Today I took my old stock 4001 (well, mostly stock) to the studio along with the new 4003W. As I suspected, the 4003W has notably higher output. I think it's the pickups, but I suppose it could be the strings. If it is the pickups, are they wound hotter, or have the magnets lost strength on the old bass? If the latter, is there any convenient way to bring the strength back up?

The 70's pickups have less output. A lot of people like the sound. I bought a 4001 in 74'. It wasn't long before I replaced the pickups. I would say buy some of the new one's & save the old in case you ever sell the bass.

Okay took some masurements, and got some surprises.

Looking at the schematics, I figure that, with the volume control all the way down and a single pickup selected, I'll be measuring just the resistance of the volume potentiometer. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. The 4003W measures 161.9Kohms for both pots. Strikes me as being quite a bit on the low side, but nicely matched. My Mapleglo 4001 (January 1979) measures 95.8K and 95.3K, neck and bridge respectively. That strikes me as being far lower than they should be.

Then, turning up the volume control, I measure the pickup in parallel with the volume pot. 4001 reads 7.68K and 7.39K. The pot resistances are more than 10x the coil resistances, so can safely be ignored for my purposes here. Same for the 4003W, which reads 11.04K and 10.88K. So the 4003W pickups are significantly hotter than the 4001 pickups, as I suspected.

The low values on the volume pots are consistent with my 4004Cii, in which the single 330K volume pot measured around 180K when I took it out. I'm seeing a pattern here, and it goes a long way toward explaining why Dane Wilder's wiring harnesses are consistently reported as being a big improvement over stock.

Badanovski wrote:

Isaac wrote:Today I took my old stock 4001 (well, mostly stock) to the studio along with the new 4003W. As I suspected, the 4003W has notably higher output. I think it's the pickups, but I suppose it could be the strings. If it is the pickups, are they wound hotter, or have the magnets lost strength on the old bass? If the latter, is there any convenient way to bring the strength back up?

The 70's pickups have less output. A lot of people like the sound. I bought a 4001 in 74'. It wasn't long before I replaced the pickups. I would say buy some of the new one's & save the old in case you ever sell the bass.

Yes, I rather expected that the answer would be lower output from the old pickups, so I wasn't surprised by those results. It was the very low readings on the volume pots that surprised me.

Good for you, but makes you wonder why they put the nicer grain on the back?

Maybe because the front is largely covered by pick guard, pickups, and the player's arm? I dunno. Maybe it's a matter of how the pieces get cut out.