Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

well that wasn't MY bass... but I did mod one kind of like that.

Remember that in 1976 my '73 bass was far from a vintage instrument. It was just a "not new" bass! I modded mine because it wasn't doing what I wanted it to do. I wanted more bottom end, so to me it did sound better... or different anyway. You see so many old Ricks with replacement pickups, especially the neck, so this kind of was the consensus at the time!

Now I do wish I had kept it stock... especially seeing what they go for now, should I want to buy another one from that vintage. Hindsight is 20/20...

Except maybe adding a 'J' pup to a P-bass. I had one for a few years & this mod made a big difference to the usable sound. Still not a Rick, though. It's now gone & I don't really miss it. I too only buy what I intend to keep, & resale is the farthest thing from my mind, but carving great holes in a Rick is something I couldn't bring myself to do. Except for a 4-2-5 conversion on a new one. Double standards!

Bob,your absolutely correct we cant. We think they[guitar manufacturers] just sit back and mass produce these things and don't care what they sound like,no I think they come up with a sound thats hard to improve upon and stick with it ,tweaking it little bits over the years,How come these after market pickup manufacturers don't make there own basses,cause they can make a killing off of idiots[people] who modify there basses thinking there improving there sound.

The thing is, I don't think aftermarket pickups sound bad. In fact, most of them sound quite good, whether you think they're "sterile" or not. However good aftermarket pickups sound, though, I bought a Ric for two reasons: Ric looks and Ric pickups. If I want something with EMGs in it, I'll buy a bass that I like the looks and feel of that already has EMGs (Steinberger, for example, or Spector). It's kind of my personal policy that I will never do a nonreversible mod on a bass UNLESS the bass is in serious need of help, i.e. there is something horribly messed up that would require modding the bass anyway. If I found a Ric that was "ruined", I might mess with it.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't modify, heavily or not, reversibly or not, your bass. It's YOUR bass; you do with it what you want. I can't control what others do, and they can't control that I'll cringe every time I see a Ric covered in hideous stickers or eight hundred thousand extra knobs and five sets of active pickups with side LEDs.

'It's yo' thang...do what you wanna do...'

Some things just don't go together ... here are some bad combinations ...

milk shakes and polish sausage
beer and church
p-bass pickups and Rics
spandex and grunge
disco and good taste
beer, rednecks, chainsaws, and shotguns ... quick call 911
heavy metal and melodies
jacko and kids
etc ...

Almost made me laugh my milkshake and polish sausage out my nose...at least we're 'back on thread' at last...

p-bass pickups and Rics

I remember a time when there were no aftermarket pickups! The choices were slim. I even wrote to Seymour Duncan, back when he had a pickup rewinding service (before he had a zillion pickup models) about having them rewound a bit hotter, and he said they were "limited in design" and wanted to make me some new pickups (which I guess is now his Rick replacements) or he could wind them about 50% hotter.

When I bought a P-bass pickup to put in my Rick, it was about the only replacement pickup you could buy (and I suppose J pickups). Later I bought an old style Carvin humbucker (a kind they stopped making a long tme ago).

Then of course DiMarzio came out, and everyone was using their pickups in Fenders.

As far as not being able to improve on stock pickups... I think the DiMarzio Model P was a better sounding P than the stock units, and the J's were humbucking, which to me is an improvement also.

And obviously when RIC decided to come out with some "modern" pickups (the humbuckers) they built a new bass around them! Which was pretty much what I was trying to do modding my bass.

Even the Hi Gains show that they think the old single coil pickup designs needed improving.

I appreciate the original designs now, because they are old, but I like modern basses too. For example, I couldn't see playing one all the time, but I'd love to have an EB-3.