Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I'm trying to organize my disaster of a parts drawer and have some pickup identification questions:
- How to you ID a bridge hi-gain from a neck hi-gain
- Are there different HB1's for the neck/bridge?
- Are there different toasters for the neck/bridge?

Thanks!

A bridge Hi-gain has wider pole spacing than the neck.

I think the answers to the next two questions are no although the HB's originally had different part numbers between neck and bridge. That may have been due to the length of the leads, just a guess. There is only one part number currently at the RIC boutique for HB's.

The only HB1's with differing SKU's were for the John Kay Model. The only difference was the way the leads were wired into the connectors, as that model had the ability to not only do single pickup mechanical and electronic differential humbucker, but also pickup to pickup humbucking.

Cut the connector off and you have the same part.

John:
Here's another easy way to tell a bridge high-gain from a neck one and vice-versa (I'm assuming we're talking bass guitar pickups here): a bridge high-gain - whether pre- or post-1991 - has two threaded holes on the bottom flatwork for the screws that fasten the bobbin + magnet to the plastic baseplate.
As for question two, see Ken's answer, and as for question three, I believe at one time neck toasters had short magnets and bridge toasters had long magnets, including on the 4005 bass. Anyone?

"I'm assuming we're talking bass guitar pickups here"
I think the ones I have are all guitar pickups (not bass) - same story?

Theoretically, bridge toasters should have longer magnets. I have seen at least two Ricks that, although they had the routes for the long magnets at the bridge, were factory fitted with short magnet pickups at both bridge and neck.

Toasters could be a thread on their own.

Much of it has to do with when it was made as to what went where.

The '64 360/12 I just bought has a long pole toaster in both positions, but the '67 and '68 12-strings have a long-pole bridge toaster but a short-pole at the neck. In '58 most if not all had flat backs with no poles showing no matter what the position was, etc..etc..

What is needed is a good cross-section of guitars to observe and the picture becomes clearer.

Only bass guitar bridge high-gain pickups have two threaded holes on the bottom. To tell guitar bridge and neck high-gains apart, look at the polepiece spacing.

I was referring to guitar pickups. I guess I didn't have my bass hat on yesterday.

In addition to the threaded holes on the bottom of a bass bridge pickup, the spacing is also wider on the poles than a neck pickup, just like the guitar pickups.