Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hi,

I've got a question: If I flip over the bridge pickup on my 4003, will it affect the sound at all?

The idea is to cancel the hum, at least when both pickups are turned on.

Different ways to do this to cancel hum. 1st teach your pickup the words so it doesn't have to hum along to the music. Now in all seriousness, reverse winding will give you an out-of-phase setting with both neck and bridge pickup on. By itself it will make no difference. You can add a dbl. pole dbl. throw switch witch does the same thing by reversing the phase. This is done by reversing the + and - leads of the pickup and isolating the ground wires from the metal pickup casings. Very simple but it doesn't always stop the humming. There are alot of variables that cause this problem. Electro magnetic fields generated by outside ground loops, electric lighting, airconditioning, and your guitar may have a faulty grd. wire from the strings/tail piece to the controls. Sheilding the pickups and wiring, if not already done works well. But if you are refering to turning your pickup end for end(fliping it over you'd have to remove the magnets and lead wires) no noticable difference will be heard.

Thanks Dale. What I meant by "flipping" was turning it over, long-ways, and then switching the wires so as to end up with a reverse wound pickup.

Michael, this won't make it a reverse wound pickup. It would actually have to be wound backwards in relation to a normal clockwise wound pickup, the way Humbucking pickups are wound. 1 clockwise and the other counter clockwise, put together in a series they cancel electrical hum.

Dale, go to hell on vacation why don't ya.

so what about the "Eliminating buzz on a RIC bass" thread? Is that wrong?

It's not only wrong, but downright unnatural.

Boy...that sure eliminated my buzz...

Sergio can help you here ... He can make/modify pickups to be reverse wound ...

the basic priniciple is you reverse the magnet(s) and reverse the + - wires on one pickup ... usually the neck pickup ... then when both pickups are full on it will become a humbucker ... this will change the tone ... another way to do it is to put a reverse wound jazz pickup in the mute cavity and wire it into the neck pickup volume control and then when both volumes are at the same level it will be a humbucker ...

Any pickup is effectively "reverse wound" when you swap the wires. The key, as Jeff says, is reversing the magnet, too. On a Rick pickup, its as easy as flipping it. I've done this, and the tone didn't change much at all. Made the buzz go away, though.

Adding a jazz pickup can change the tone, also. To minimize this, remove the poles. They don't need to be there in order to eliminate the buzz.

Hm... A so-called 'dummy coil', right?

I don't understand why pickup manufacturers don't make single coil pickups with a dummy coil to eliminate hum, it seems like such a simple thing to do.

Wouldn't those be stacked on top of each other? I have seen some Jazz Bass pickups like that before. I forget the manufacturer; either Fender or Dimarzio, I'm thinking.

they don't have to be stacked to cancel hum ... but stacking does save space ...

Humbucking pickups have pole pices in both coils, what I would like to see is one that has the poles only in one coil with the other just sensing the hum and not actively contributing to the sound; it would have single coil sound but without the hum.