Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I recently did a radio performance and was killed by 60 cycle hum . I normally play my '73 FL as my main player and brought my '82 4001S, both hummed. I was thinking of installing one of those bartolini p-ups that go in the mute and wiring it as a dummy coil to eliminate 60 cycle hum. Do you guys think that would work?? I know there are hum debuggers and so on. I think those would definately effect the sonic spectrum of the sound. I was thinking a dummy coil would achieve the same without sacrificing the sonic spectrum of the basses. Thanks in advance.

My suggestion is having a competent guitar tech shield the control, output, and pickup cavities, as well as the underside of the pickguard to eliminate hum. You get to keep the original sound and look this way.

A properly wired dummy coil should not have any effect on the sound quality of your Rick. Pau's suggestion is very good as well. However, shielding is an art in itself. A poorly done shielding job can make matters worse. I've seen amazing shielding jobs like one done my Mike Lull for the former owner of a 4003 I used to own and I've also seen some horrible shielding job done by I don't wanna know who!

paul_yan wrote:My suggestion is having a competent guitar tech shield the control, output, and pickup cavities, as well as the underside of the pickguard to eliminate hum. You get to keep the original sound and look this way.

Thanks Paul. I had a FG 4001V63(the one with the fixed chip that Joey owns now) that had copper foil shielding, it seemed to work pretty well. The pick ups were rewound (before I bought the bass), I thought that had more to do with eliminating the hum than th foil. The mute pick up doesn't require alterating the bass to my understanding. I may try the copper foil though, probably cheaper than buying a p-up for dummy purposes.

rickenbrother wrote:A properly wired dummy coil should not have any effect on the sound quality of your Rick. Pau's suggestion is very good as well. However, shielding is an art in itself. A poorly done shielding job can make matters worse. I've seen amazing shielding jobs like one done my Mike Lull for the former owner of a 4003 I used to own and I've also seen some horrible shielding job done by I don't wanna know who!

Joey, do you think the shielding job on the V63 is good, does it work for you?? Dummy coil- does that mean you don't need a magnate? I was assuming it needed to be a complete pick up.

basmansam wrote:

rickenbrother wrote:A properly wired dummy coil should not have any effect on the sound quality of your Rick. Pau's suggestion is very good as well. However, shielding is an art in itself. A poorly done shielding job can make matters worse. I've seen amazing shielding jobs like one done my Mike Lull for the former owner of a 4003 I used to own and I've also seen some horrible shielding job done by I don't wanna know who!

Joey, do you think the shielding job on the V63 is good, does it work for you?? Dummy coil- does that mean you don't need a magnate? I was assuming it needed to be a complete pick up.

The shielding job is okay, it works. It's not one on the bad ones that I was referring to, however it's not superbly meticulous and perfect like Mike Lull's job was. When I said dummy coil I meant pickup that's not going to necessarily be putting out sound, sorry for the mix up.
I used to have a PRS Curly 4 which had 3 single coil pickups on the front of the bass and one in the back acting only as a "dummy coil" to cancel out the hum. That bass was dead quiet as far as noise was concerned.

The Bart mute pickup is a stacked Humbucking pickup that can be split if you know what you are doing (It needs to be one coil or the other to get the hum cancelling effect).
However it changes the sound quite a bit and can make your bass sound "reedy".
I'd go with the shielding idea. The other thing that may have some effect is retaining the treble pickup cover as it also provides some shielding.

I have two Rick basses and I have one of those mute pickups but note that it is not fitted to either bass.. (demonstrating that I feel it riuns the sound )

Eden.

weemac wrote:However it changes the sound quite a bit and can make your bass sound "reedy".
I'd go with the shielding idea. The other thing that may have some effect is retaining the treble pickup cover as it also provides some shielding.

I have two Rick basses and I have one of those mute pickups but note that it is not fitted to either bass.. (demonstrating that I feel it riuns the sound )

Eden.

I've never heard the Bart pickup that replaces the mute assembly in a Rick bass, but I would only imagine that placed where it is, it would have a growly sound similar to a J-bass bridge pickup, but a much thinner since it's so close to the bridge. Is it always on when wired in? If so, I could see why you would think the bass sounds "reedy".

rickenbrother wrote:

weemac wrote:However it changes the sound quite a bit and can make your bass sound "reedy".
I'd go with the shielding idea. The other thing that may have some effect is retaining the treble pickup cover as it also provides some shielding.

I have two Rick basses and I have one of those mute pickups but note that it is not fitted to either bass.. (demonstrating that I feel it riuns the sound )

Eden.

I've never heard the Bart pickup that replaces the mute assembly in a Rick bass, but I would only imagine that placed where it is, it would have a growly sound similar to a J-bass bridge pickup, but a much thinner since it's so close to the bridge. Is it always on when wired in? If so, I could see why you would think the bass sounds "reedy".

Eden, does the bart wire into the treble p-up?? Do you think it makes the treble p-up sound thinner?? I like the "reedy sound", I bet it would sound great on my fretless, especially since I use the treble p-up mostly.
Joey, I bet it you get some growl, percussive sound with the bart too.
I really would use it for hum cancelling. Is it possible to wire it into the treble pick up for that purpose only??

I'm not positive, but I thought that the Bart pickup was normally wired with the neck pickup so the thicker sounding Rick pickup would balance the thin sound produced by the Bart. I think you could wire it to either pickup though.

I remember Jeff Rath had one of those Bart pickups in the mute cavity....I just don't remember how he used it.

I have had a number of RICs shielded by my luthier, and one non RIC. Each worked out beautifully in my case.

There are MANY threads about shielding, some worked out great, some ok, some not so good. JH had commented at length about it over on the company forum. I wasn't able to find it quickly but I'm sure some digging will turn it up. All I remember is that there should be ONLY ONE GROUND when it is done.

My luthier referred to it as a Faraday's cage..... just remember if you buy the copper shielding, make SURE it is the CONDUCTIVE shielding, it will save you a LOT of soldering.

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics ... _Tape.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage

I've wired it several ways, the most successful was with a push pull switch that in one position all was normal, and in the other the neck pickup is out of the circuit the normal treble moves to the controls of the neck pickup and the mute slots in where the treble pickups controls are (This works well in stereo as well)
That way you either had a normal Rick sound and then a "J/MM" sort of sound with full controls

The other way I had it wired was in some strande way where it went direct to output and used a stereo plug in the mono position so you had two different style of stereo output (bass and treble + mute or Bass + treble)
This allowed you to have the normal "two pickups on" sound with and extra "hyper treble" for use with delay or a guitarish distortion.
I was also able to get a tripple output sound as well using the right combination of plugs..
It was fun but fussy..

If you wired it to run with the neck puckup it still sounded "kind of *****"

I tried to wire it with using only one coil and in series with the treble (as a big humbucking pickup, you know the "MM" thing once again) but I kept getting ground loop issues (noise) and I lost interest after that..

Do not wire the bart mute as "on" all the time it will throttle your bass, you need to be able to vary it's outupt.
I even had some success with using various bass cut caps on it as it then added top without messing with the low end of the bass (cone filtering)

I found ultimately that I got the best sound with it off....

It will eventually live in a "P" ish bass project that will have a fretless neck and an allparts/faker tailpiece (hey, call me odd but I like the narrow spacing and the feel of the Rick style tailpiece under hand)
With the stock "P" pickup and the added mute I should be able to get a real "Dave Pegg" kind of sound...

Eden.

IIRC, Jeff Rath had a Jazz PU in the mute cavity.

A true dummy coil has no magnet or pole pieces in it; you only need the coil in RWRP to provide the hum canceling, otherwise it will produce sound.

jps wrote:A true dummy coil has no magnet or pole pieces in it; you only need the coil in RWRP to provide the hum canceling, otherwise it will produce sound.

Yup! However it still will change the sound of an instrument to a degree as it changes the impedence of the selected pickup. It's an idea well worth toying with though.....

Eden.

weemac wrote:

jps wrote:A true dummy coil has no magnet or pole pieces in it; you only need the coil in RWRP to provide the hum canceling, otherwise it will produce sound.

Yup! However it still will change the sound of an instrument to a degree as it changes the impedence of the selected pickup. It's an idea well worth toying with though.....

Eden.

Thanks guys, That was the answer I was looking for. I have a couple old starfire p-ups I may take the coils out of (no, they're not hagstroms or DS's!). I may try the sheilding too. I don't want to alter the sound.