Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Paul, is your cap still in place in your 72? Mine was as Owen once put it "a pointless twang" until I bypassed the cap, now it's just as hot as any other 4001 high gain I have.

haha, yeah it is a pointless twang!

Now im playing in a band again, i got the chance to play my 73 loud and proper for the first time. The cap is bypassed and i cant imagine it being left in line. The pickups on my 4001 are very underwound - as a result i cant depend on the toaster to provide the meat of my sound. My 4003 needs about half the ammount of input gain to acheive the same level - which suprised me.

Also, even with my cap bypassed , i prefer not to play my 4001 at home now. (as my proper amp is at the studio)

I can get a good sound out of my 4003 and my precision bass - even through my ****** 10w guitar amp (ahem) but the 4001 sounds like a load of harsh string clanking - not pleasant at all! So my point basically is that the 4001's can have the cap bypassed and still be a clank machine

clank machine! haha! Owen you have a talent for turning a good phrase. Owen you gotta break down and get another set of TI's for your 73, it will sound good through anything.

Bob - yeah um....haha

No Ti's for me anymore - i didnt like the rubbery feel.

Anyway, i did a bit of work for "The bass centre" here in london and as payment am getting £100 worth of Elites strings. They are really just like Rotos- stainless rounds, i get 8 sets - four of which are my very own "clank machine special" set of 40, 60, 80, 105.

Im broke broke broke, so free strings sound good to me

Thanks for the kind words, Sérgio and Edmond.

Bob,
Yes I took the cap out and the '72 treble pickup is still less hot than the '86 and '98. However, Owen is right about it being a clanker even without the cap. The adjustable polepieces are a nice feature though.

I'd be first in line for a calendar. Even the "minor" shots have an unmistakable "Yan" appearance!

Paul,
what camera gear and lighting do you use?

It's funny, a couple of months ago I put in the cap and unwound the (overwound) pickups of my '92 4003 to get The Clank going. A couple of days ago I took the cap out on a whim, and I must now sheepishly admit I like the uncapped sound better! It's still a clank machine (love that term!) but it has a lot more mean muscle behind it. Unwinding the pickups is something I will never have second thoughts about though; I'm a real stickler for clarity and unwinding those pickups brought out a lot more clarity and definition in the tone.

Did you take resistance readings before and after the unwinding Kurt? I've been thinking about doing this too...

Yeah, they were in the neighborhood of 12k ohms before, and I unwound them down to 7.5k ohms.

From the images Paul has, I'd say Nikon, possibly a F5 or E2 with 85mm lens.. Paul bail me out!

You can't tell what kind of camera is used from looking at a photograph. I can show you prints I have made with my 4x5 Ebony view camera and those from my Hasselblad and you wouldn't be able to say which was which. Even those that say they can tell the difference between slides made from a Leica vs. Nikon are probably just trying to justify the expense of their Leicas. A good friend of mine has a Leica M6 TTL .72 with a 35mm f2 Summicron Aspherical lens and a comparable Nikon FM2n with the Nikkor 35mm f2 lens. I have been trying to get him to compare the two, he won't and I think it is because he is afraid that the $500.00 Nikon may be just as good or perhaps even better than the $2900.00 Leica!

Thanks for the nice words, John.
I was flattered.
Hmm, a mini RIC Basses calender seems like a good idea...not for sale, but as a gift for my Forum friends here. Wait 'til I come up with one! Me think I need a few more good shots for such a thing.

Jeffrey and Kendall,
I take pictures of my bass babies mostly with an old black '70s Nikon FM manual SLR (predecessor of the FM2, no "FM" logo but only a tiny "FM 2359809" serial number below the lever) that was owned by my late father, whose fastest shutter speed is 1/1000 sec. which is faster than I need most of the time as I like to hand-hold the camera, aperture at f1.4 -f2.8, shutter speed at 1/30-1/125 sec., with natural lights as the main source of lighting, enforced by household lamps and a white cardboard as reflector sometimes. The lens is the normal NIKKOR 50mm 1:1.4. Films are usually the Kodak Supra (Echtapress) 100 or 400 negatives.

I usually put on the Tamron 28-300mm f3.5-f22 zoom lens when I'm a tourist somewhere. I also have a Leica Minilux compact camera (f2.4-f16, 40mm, with aperture priority feature through an aperture dial on top) which has richer colours and details than the Nikon FM. It's very nice when the subject is more than 6 feet away but not so useful when I want to get close up as the lens is a medium-wide 40mm. I've been using it mainly for black and white shooting recently, making it sort of like my "Henri-Cartier Bresson" auto M6 haha! I haven't learned any large format B+W photography and darkroom techniques yet and would love to do so someday but wonder if that will ever happen 'cause for now, I'd rather spend my time and money on bass playing and buying/collecting (mostly) Rickenbacker basses. Maybe I'll do that after I retire in 20 years but who knows if "darkrooming" and large format B+W will be lost arts then in a digital word.

Here's the FM.
I even wrote a song called "Eyes" for it.

Jeffrey,
I know that, I'm a graphic designer by trade, I remember Paul had mentioned something about a Nikon a long time ago and was guessing about which camera he had. My main camera is a Nikon D100, I've about given up on using film, but when I do I use a Mamiya 645.