Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hello,
I recently built a solid body guitar with an ash body and maple neck. I installed some New button style Rickenbacker pickups that someone gave me.
The guitar plays and sounds good but I do have a problem with some microphonic feedback squealing from the pickups when I use a high gain distortion.
I am probably going to try saturating the coils and potting the pickup with wax.
I was wondering if this is a common problem with these pickups as I have no experience with Rickenbacker pickups.
One technical detail I will mention is that I wired the pickups using 500k pots and there are no tone controls on the guitar.
I did this because in all the guitars I have ever built and owned I have never used the tone controls to cut highs so I decided to leave them out of this guitar.
One more detail is that I have the pickups screwed directly to the body with no rubber cushen or anything. Could that possibly be a problem?
Thanks for any help or any comments on this.
John Fisher

Take the Pickups apart and dip them in hot, melted wax, this will solve the microphonic problem. You must be very careful when taking the P-ups apart, they have to be down to the coil wire exposed, this is critical. If you break the .002/.003 coil wire you are in trouble. Be very careful when removing the tape from the coil.

You might want to check this out:

StewMac Pickup Potting Instructions

Specifically you might want to note the cautions.

Frankly speaking, I haven't found that potting our pickups made a tremendous difference. The problem is that the wax really doesn't get into the interior of the pickup coil windings as it solidifies more around the outside. The temperature you'd need to keep the wax molten long enough will destroy the bobbins we use.

The foam surround mounting as we use on many of our guitars is significantly more effective.

I totally agree. In fact, I find Rickenbacker pickups to be amongst the least microphonic of all.

So apparently, the fact the I have the pickups screwed directly to the body of the guitar without the foam rubber is what is causing the problem?

Not a simple problem...from everyone's responses, at least you know that you might have a place to start with that. Without actually seeing the guitar, its construction and "feel", it's tough to go deeper into it IMO.

The problem is in the way the pick up is wound. If it is wound with any loose wires it will cause a microphonic effect. I've been fixing these things for over 30 years and use the same method that Lindy uses. It's very simple technology, hot wax penetrates the entire coil of wire on the P-up bobbin, it takes 10 minutes or so but it solidifies the coil wire and stops the high freq. feed back. It doesn't matter what you mount your pickup on or how much foam rubber you put under it, if it's microphonic, it will feed back. Check with Seymour Duncan and get his thoughts on this matter. Tell him Dale said hello