Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I'm about to redo the electronics in my main Ric, an '88 FG 360WB which I had converted to a 370 with 3 Ric HB's many years back. The wiring layout was all changed (coil faders, 1 vol, 1 tone, no blend knob, mid pu on/off, dual outs no Rick-O-Sound) which was perfect for the Fender tube & Johnson Millennium modeling amps I was using back then. Now I have an Orange AD30 for my main amp & I find the tone on my favorite Ric is seriously lacking. I need a the guitar to do more sonically than most sane folks would ask of their Rics but don't worry, it is still going to look stock by using gibson push pull pots. I need a lead switch to bypass the volume & tone pots, I need a mid pu on/off, coil tapping, series/paralel, and importantly I want some form of EQ control so I can dial in the perfect usable feedback for each gig situation. Think 70's era Frank Zappa with some serious Ric tones.

Issues: I have now had 2 Ric HB's die on me which I chalk up to bad wiring by what turned out to be a ****** custom shop so I would like to know what the HB's can & can't handle. The mid pu died once & now the bridge pu has gone. I am considering a toaster in the middle position & if I go that route I might work it so I can have the option to use all or just the toaster or just the HBs. Any suggestions other than the crazy house?

No, I suffer from your same illness.

Try the new hi gains with the adjustable pole pieces. You can really fine tune each pickup to sound best for the position it is in. Since you have 3, you could have Sergio, who moderates the pickup section here in the "Vibrola", about making any one of the pickups reverse wound/reverse pole to give you the humbucking option. You could also have the pickups wound very hot, with maybe a tap put in so you could access only part of the coil for a lower output, vintage sound.

Turn the pickup toggle switch in to a lead/off/controls switch. This will give you instant access to either sound, a nice feedback "morse code" control, and a kill switch so you never have to touch your volume control once you set it if you don't want to.

Depending on how elaborate you want to get, you could replace 2 of the tone/vol pots with 4 pole 6 way rotary switches, and just take off the chickenhead knob and put your RIC one on there. I've done it, looks stock, and functions easily. 2 of these switches would allow you to get probably every combination you could think of. Lets say you only use 4 of the six positions of the switch to get all of the sounds you want, you could wire the remaining positions like a varitone, with capacitors and inductors like the Gibson ones.

Now you are left with 3 pots-2vol/tone and the blend. Get a Bill Lawrence Q control, or the midrange control from the link, and hook it up in the blender position. This will give you a serious amount of midrange control in a master position, so you're not just stuck with it in one place. This is yet another thing that could be controlled by the 4 pole 6 way switches, but you do need a pot to dial it in.

Ok, including the blender pot, we still have 3 pots that can be push pull for whatever you like. Maybe you could attach a treble bypass cap(like a Tele has)so it could be activated by the switch, or have it wired to where 1 pot controls 2 pickups, depending which on is switched on. With all of these switching and tone options, you should be able to instantly access any one of the tones you need, preset and ready to go.

All of these items can be purchased here, http://www.stanhinesleypickups.com/index.htm, and they have boatloads of diagrams, and may even draw you one up for what you decide to do.

Hope this helps you out, and let us know what you do with some pics and maybe some sound samples. Good luck!

Oh, and welcome to the forum!

It is nice to see I'm not the only one afflicted!

Well, the bridge pickup was pretty much shot due to some seriously ****** solder work by a "repair" shop.

I got a wild hair & decided to put one of the original hi-gains in the bridge position. So now it is neck HB, mid HB & Hi-Gain at the bridge, yeah, the opposite of normal. Baby has now got some serious balls! I can get all the bite I need but I can blend it with the HB's to get some sweet drippy strat/tele/HB tones. I can only describe it as twangle.

I still want to go with an EQ where I have the master tone knob now since I never use the damn thing. Thanks for that link whojamfan, I had run across that site looking for EQ options long ago & lost it. I'm not sure I need the lead switch volume bypass since the Hi-gain has higher output already. I do like the coil faders I've got going now since I don't get a click or sharp volume changes. Looks like maybe a rotary might end up where the blend is just to give this sucker everything it needs (series/paralel/phase?). Then again...that is a great place for an RMC midi pickup volume knob...I use a Roland GK-2 midi pickup on my 330 which I use to trigger samples & voices in Reason but that's a story for another day.

Maybe some active modules or kits might do it for you. GFS and others offer different ones, and something along those lines may work for you. Also, you could check out just about every active guitar out there and find which one-or ones-does it for you. You mix and match features of various ones and provide schematics to a tech telling them what from each you want, and it would probably cost less to have a custom board made for you than buying different pickups. Maybe you could also incorporate your Roland system in to this project. Any way you go, good luck, and keep us posted.