Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

What does this mod do for the sound?

Sometimes on a 4003s5 I put a neck jazz pickup in the mute cavity ...



this does 2 things ... it cancels hum and it adds a little treble ...

I usually wire it into the neck volume pot ... so the neck toaster and jazz bridge are controlled by the same volume pot and the mid high gain still has its own volume pot ... I then back off the neck volume to 6-9 range and it eliminates most of the hum and still growls nicely ... if you flip the toggle switch to the neck position and turn the volume to 10 it sounds kinda like a 4005 bass ... I came up with this mod because I had a 1990 midnight blue 4003s5 that was a little thick sounding ...



This mod works nice on the 4003s5 because of the 15k ohm overwound high gain pickup ... on my 4003 4-2-5 conversions it really adds bite because the high gains are 11k ohms ... on one 4003 4-2-5 I put in the jazz mute pickup and I wired an additional toggle switch to toggle neck/both/mute pickup selector ... when I ran the bridge and mute pickups only it had a real bite ...

the mute cavity pickup would be a nice mod for a 4000 bass ... wired vol, vol, tone ...

Im thinking off this mod on my new old v63 with other tailpiece of course,

The nice part is it is a reversable mod ... it does not change the tailpiece except for you have to remove the mute ... but that can be put back in ... I tried the Bartolini mute pickup and it didn't sound as good and I had to remove some wood to make it fit ...

That's an intersting mod! I'm surprised a Jazz PU fits in there! Personally I'd wire one of the tone controls as a volume for that pickup. If you really need a tone control for all the pickups, and want to keep the bass stereo, a dual ganged pot for the tone would do the trick. I did that once for a master volume.

You could also run it in series with one of the other pickups for a fatter sound.

I've never used the Bartolini mute PU, but I did once put a single coil PU in the mute cavity. Currently one of my five strings has an EMG Jazz PU right up near the bridge like this. Good for adding really high highs.

One thing to keep in mind regarding hum cancelation, the two coils must have opposite magnet polarity and reverse phase coils, otherwise you end up with either two in-phase pickups with no hum cancelation, or two out of phase pickups with or without hum cancelation. The interesting thing about humbuckers is that it's the reverse magnet polarity that cancels the hum, since the coil itself doesn't actually see the strings movement, but instead sees the disturbance of the magnetic field caused by the string. When the signal of the two coils in summed together, only the hum is the same phase in both coils, and since one coil is opposite, the hum is canceled out.

So depending on your Jazz pickup's magnets in relationship to the Ric's pickup's magnets, it may or may not cancel hum.

I use a seymour Duncan 1/4 pound neck pickup ... I remove the cover and trim the bobbin a little and put a small piece of foam underneath ...

I assumed that a pickup in that postion even though it's so close to the saddles would also add a bit of J-bass like growl.

Thoughts...

What about wiring up a master tone control and going VVVT? That way if you want the Jazz p/u out of the mix, you just dump it out, but say you want a little rhythm-guitar like sound just run the 2 back p/u's with some distortion?

Just brainstorming... either way I think my soon-to-be-arriving '77 4001JG's going to have it done. Anybody have a spare factory bridge/tailpiece laying around?

Joey ... the jazz pu back there does not add growl ... it does help reduce hum and add a little treble bite ...

There really is enough room in the cavity for a jazz pup in a 4000 tailpiece? Is there no routing involved?
Also, what pups would you recommend? I've never found much use for the mute anyway, & the one on my 4001 is rotted away anyhow. I've had to use stainless rounders on it to try & brighten up it's very dull sound. It still doesn't sound anywhere near as good as my FG 4000.

I use a Seymour duncan neck jazz pickup ... it will fit if you trim 1/8" to 1/4" off the bobins ... no wood needs to be removed and it is totally reversable ...

some other ways to brighten up your bass ...

put in 500k ohm volume pots or put in the .0047 bass cut capacitor ...

or it would be interesting wired with 3 volumes and one tone for 3 pickups ...

Here are my babies:

I assume the jazz pup goes in from underneath after removing the tailpiece from the bass. You may notice the Seymour Duncans (4001 neck & 4000 bridge). The 4001 bridge pup is actually from my 4000, which I found back in '85 (I think). The combo doesn't sound too bad despite some of the bad things said by other forumites about the S.D.'s. Like I said the 4000 is REALLY bright. I was wondering if it is an oddball: the neck is glued in about a 3-31/2 inch pocket,& the body is all maple. Very crisp sound which my drummer & guitar player love (easy to hear). I've always used the heaviest roundies I could get (105's) on the 4000 and the neck is absolutely perfect. You can drop the action (at standard pitch) to the point where the proximity of the frets chokes the note (kind of like a mute) with almost no fret buzz. The truss rods still have the factory dots of red paint on them, so they've never been touched. It is a little top heavy, though, so I have to use a wide strap. I'm the second owner & the previous guy played country in a local band.

I'm going to give the VVVT thing a shot. Hey, it's only wire, pretty easy to put back, right?!

Please let us know how it works out. I'm quite curious to see if I need more pickups.(Must tell the wife when she's not really paying attention).