Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

How does phase shift affect the sound?

Since both tone controls have the shift, probably not at all, more than the signal passing through the two caps rather than just the one.

The distance from plate to plate in an HB1 is about 13mm. Measuring through the Tolex on the 4002 pickup I get about the same distance from plate to plate. Could the HB1s and 4002 pickups be related?

Maybe.
As for the .1 mFd capacitors, sounds like an old F****r Tele trick, but I could be wrong. Some years ago when I replaced the original pickups on my November '70 21 fretter with a set of my own, I also put in one such capacitor, more specifically between the "in" and the "out" lugs on the treble pickup volume control in order not to lose treble at low volume settings. It does work. Maybe that was the idea behind those caps on the 4002 harness.

Sergio: Are the coils of a humbucker wired serially or in parallel? My test HB1 measures about 7.2K Ohms per coil. The 4002 pickups measure about 7.7K Ohms. If they are humbuckers and serial, each coil would be about 3.8K Ohms each. If they are parallel, they would be 14.4K Ohms each.

Well, all I know is that every non-Rick humbucking pickup I've come across with so far was wired in series. On a Rick humbucker, about 4.0 K per coil makes more sense than 14.0 K. I could be wrong.

Series, Ted. You have email at your profile account.

Thanks John. I was going to grab the schematic for the 4004 to see how they are wired. Series makes sense. That seems to produce the most output.

You are right Serg, 4K per coil in series makes a lot of sense. Judging from the way the 4002 pickups are made, the goal was to make a very quiet instrument for recording. At this point I am guessing that the 4002 pickups are built this way:

Series humbuckers ~4K Ohms per coil constructed something like the HB1s with plates and/or bar magnets instead of poles.