Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Thanks for the welcome, guys.
I listened to the file...very informative. Very obvious high frequency clarity with the toasters.
My "07 has the newest higains, and I think they may me a little brighter than the '04 ones.

I should explain what I am playng with here. I'm a techie (former Shure brothers audio r&d engineer)
that has played with guitar building and audio for many years. I have an acoustics lab that I use in my current engineering work, which is designing transducers.

So, just for grins I made a pspice circuit model of the typical rick 360 and have been running it. I only guessed at the higain pickup inductance (2.3H) and stray capacitance (100 pF). I get a resonance peak at about 3.4 kHz with a 1000 pF cable capacitance. That peak with only 100pF cable is lower and up to 8 kHz! That would be very bright and clear ...it prob would outjangle even the oldest toasters. I tried it....plugging the ric in with a 4" cord! It was indeed bright.

Again I am guessing at the pickup parameters. I do have an Agilent impedance analyzer rented in the lab ($1000/mo rental fee!!) and will hook the guitar to it today to see what I get. Wish I had other pickups to test, but only have the higains right now. This analyzer is MUCH more powerful than a typical LCR bridge or something. It will give a ton of information.

Anyway, it looks like I can get the 8kHz super crispy peak with a normal cord with the addition of some passive circuitry (no batteries) at or near the guitar. There might be some other issues like noise but Im checking that.

I don't really want to take apart the new Rick and do a toaster switch if I don't have to.

So that's what i'm up to.....can't play the Rick today because my fingers are shot. I have not been playing much for a while. I have not set up the action on the rick yet either.

If this bit works out I should start a new thead.

Well, I put the Ric on the Agilent analyzer. I got some funny numbers that I think are not right. I measured about 4.5 henries. I think I must program the equivalent circuit section a little differently. I didn't unhook the pickups from the rest of the guitar circuit....but the agilent should be able to handle that if properly programmed. I have to compensate for the series cap in the bridge pickup.

On paper the passive guitar cord toaster sound thing is still looking good though. It has some problems with component costs however. Of course a cheap JFET voltage follower will do the job too, but I just don't like batteries.

I found out one reason my new Ric sounds brighter than the recording we heard....My guitar cord is one I made up and is very low capacitance. It is only 600 pF for a 20 foot cord. I had forgotten about that. Brightens up higains a good bit.

Wish I could play the 360-12 some more....But last night there was much beer, Byrds on the cd player, and me playing the Ric through the 1980 Fender 30 bright channel with an old DOD stompbox compressor. The result? near blisters on my fingers and a headache in the morning. I'll do an action job on the Rick as soon as it gets used to the surroundings. From the factory the nut and saddle are a bit high for my fingers. Bleh!

Les, I understood very little of that. But nice work!