Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

How about a Westone Rail-esque movable 3rd pickup?

rickaddict wrote:Nice photoshopping, Joey!

Could we see what it would look like with 4 evenly spaced pickups?!

(Give me an inch and I'll take a mile!!)

Sure, but I have one request ahead of yours!

blueflamerick wrote:How about a Westone Rail-esque movable 3rd pickup?

Or Gibson Grabber!

rickaddict wrote:

VRICKY63 wrote:
Not impressed with that burpy tone

But whether you like the tone or not, the playing rocks!

Yes. The playing is excellent. I think 4 pickups or maybe 5 if they fit. The tone would be massive !

I was playing the 4004LK today, and with all pickups selected it definitely has a bit more mid range bite than the 4004cii. I assume that this is because the 4004LK tone is a combination of neck/middle plus bridge while the 4004cii is neck plus bridge (with the bridge pickup being farther away from the bridge than the 4004LK). I think adding a third pickup close to the bridge of a 4004cii would give a tone close to the 4004LK.

CJ, have you considered changing the HB1s out for Toasters? They would give you the change in tone you are talking about. Easy to do before you start getting the router out and attacking that beautiful maple. And easily reversible.

The current configuration has the ability to switch the pickups to single coil, which I'm told, sounds a lot like a toaster. Of course, that's just hearsay, so I don't know if it really does.

Still, it seems that pushing a pickup towards the bridge is bound to bring out some higher harmonics. I have a hard time thinking that just going to toasters will make that big a change. Of course, as I've implied, I've never actually had a toaster and certainly not on this bass, so I may be completely wrong...

I don't think the change in tone from changing pickups is ever all that huge... I did a lot of pickup swapping in my Jazz Bass and I've done plenty of iterations of various Ric pickups with my basses so I think I'm qualified to have my opinion. I like Toasters a lot primarily for their broad magnetic field. I don't personally think they'll give you much more brightness--although they definitely will give you some. I've had Toasters and HB-1s in the same bass and the Toasters did have more burp. But the difference isn't dramatic.

But have you compared the toasters to HB-1's connected single coil?

winston wrote:

cassius987 wrote:As for Steve's 4002 clip, I adore it. Good work buddy.

I could not agree more with the above comment. Well done Steve.

+1000

cjj wrote:But have you compared the toasters to HB-1's connected single coil?

No, but since there's already not much difference...

cassius987 wrote:

cjj wrote:But have you compared the toasters to HB-1's connected single coil?

No, but since there's already not much difference...

Yeah, I know. I've just heard people say they are even more like toasters in single coil. I was just hoping for a bit more confirmation or something. I probably won't go for toasters though. I really like the look of this bass with the gold. In general, I'm not a big fan of gold hardware, but in this particular bass, I think it really looks great. So, I'd have to gold plate toasters to have it look right...

OK, Joey went all out and made a number of mockups with 4 pickups.

First, here it is with the original 4004Cii pickups and 2 more at the 4004LK positions: Next we have the original 4004Cii pickups with the neck pickup and "extra" mid pickup spaced the same as the old 4004Cii bridge and the new 4004LK bridge pickup position: And finally, with all pickups evenly spaced. This would, of course, be impossible on this instrument since it would require moving the original 4004Cii bridge pickup: Of course, looks mean nothing, what matters is whether the pickups end up under proper harmonic nodes on the strings to give a good/useful tone...

cjj wrote:Of course, looks mean nothing, what matters is whether the pickups end up under proper harmonic nodes on the strings to give a good/useful tone...

Some might challenge you on that opinion. But that's how I feel about pickup placement.

cjj wrote: ... what matters is whether the pickups end up under proper harmonic nodes on the strings to give a good/useful tone...

cjj,

Pickups are mysterious to me. Does this mean that they would be properly placed for playing open strings? Would that placement become improper when playing a fretted note?

bluewhale wrote:

cjj wrote: ... what matters is whether the pickups end up under proper harmonic nodes on the strings to give a good/useful tone...

cjj,

Pickups are mysterious to me. Does this mean that they would be properly placed for playing open strings? Would that placement become improper when playing a fretted note?

I can't claim to be any sort of expert on pickups. But no, not necessarily. When you fret notes, you do change the vibrational frequency of the notes and also the harmonics. The pickups maintain a fixed relationship to the fixed bridge and so, the vibrational nodes will not move quite as much as you might expect by looking at the movement of the fretting hand. So, some frequencies/harmonics will be better at some locations and some worse, but due to the nature of the musical scale, it's not purely random, so there will be some positions that work better than others, so called sweet spots.

There was a time, 25 to 30 years ago when I would have been able to describe it better, even calculate these sorts of things, but it's been a LONG time since I took those acoustical physics courses, and the memory has become pretty vague...