Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Well, I finally got my long awaited 325v63 last Friday. I put D'addario flat "chrome" 12s on it and played it long enough to know that I like it alot. It sounds a little on the muddy side, at least compared to my 330 with high gains. I already had plans to unwind the toasters (it's a 97') and put the .0047 cap in it, and after playing flats for the first time, I now really understand why this operation is done.
So I start checking my resistance by actually pulling the pickups out and measuring the terminals on the back. The bridge pup is right at 12k, which I expected. But the neck and middle pups are reading 6k, exactly. I tried the jack style measurement as well, just to be sure and it's definately 6K. So I unwound the bridge down to like 6.5 which I know is a little too much but, no going back.
My question is - am I getting this reading on the neck and mid because they're wired together?
They go to the same pot...
I popped the tops off and there was just as much windings as the bridge had.
When I get home, I'm going to unsolder these and read them once they're completely out of the circuit. But I don't understand why the bridge read fine. I not real brainy with electronics, but is it possible that two 12k wired together to the same pot will read half of what it actually is?
BTW - unwinding takes alot of time and patience.
Hence the thread title...

I think they are wired in parallel so the combined reading would be half that of a single pickup. I would disconnect them and read them individually, my guess is they too are 12k.

Yep, I disconnected them last night and sure enough they are way over 6k. Actually they were hotter than the bridge pickup - around 14.5k.
So it looks like I'm in for much more unwinding.
I did run into problems last night however. When I soldered the winding back to the post, it moved and the lead wire popped off. I didn't think it was a big deal - I just soldered it back on. Well, now I can't get a reading off of it. I'm afraid that when the post moved, possibly the "start" of the winding came off down inside the bobbin. Which, if this is the case, there's no coming back from unless I completely unwind it, re-attach it to the terminal and then wind the whole thing again.
To me this sounds scary indeed, so I may end up with either a disconnected middle pickup or a new re-issue from ric. I don't know.
There's a awesome guitar tech that works at the family guitar store, so I'm going to have him check it out today at lunch.

It probably would have been better to disconnect the pickup at the switch end of the cable. Hopefully when you open up the pickup it will be easier than you fear it may be to fix.

JPS - Disconnecting it at the pickup end was an accident. It's been resolved...

Well I finished unwinding last night and inserted the .0047 cap and everything worked out fine. I ended up putting the 6.5k pup in the middle. It sounds completely different now - this mod is like you've had a blanket thrown over your amp and then you uncover it, really night and day.

I found out several things while doing this that I didn't see mentioned anywhere on the forum. and believe me, I scoured it well.

1 - Don't do the mod unless you want your guitar really bright and jangley. I bet if I put stainless roundwounds on it would be too bright.
2 - Measuring resistance on a three pickup guitar doesn't work if the neck and middle pup are wired together disconnect them.
3 - 5 to 6 windings come off each pull - it took about 550 pulls to get to 7.4k.
4 - The coil wire was a different color on the bridge pup, more gold. The others had more of a reddish tint to them.
5 - Without this forum, I would have never known how to get this guitar to sound so good. So many, many thanks to all those who have shared their experience.

Glad to finally be in the 325 club!