Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Any suggestions, references, or warnings as I get ready to put in a 0.0047mcf capacitor and install a push/pull pot for toggling the cap in and out of the circuit?

Will the P/P pot fit in the control cavity? Rick's are pretty shallow.

Instead of modifying the original electronics in my '73 4001 I had a new pickguard made and I put all new electronics in it with a Vintage/ Modern switch and VVT controls. This is totally reversible by putting the original pick guard back on.

Jon, you can wire a SPDT switch in parallel to the 0.0047 cap. Those switches are small, inexpensive and will easily fit in the control cavity

Nice bass Jeffery, I was just going to ask what year it was when I decided to check. I like those old fireglos, that one was shaded nicely.

You could also use a rotary switch, which would replace one of the tone pots. Another easily reversable mod I have used on my '74 to switch the cap in and out.

I was considering doing something like this, but I didn't really feel comfortable doing any kind of modification to my bass - my soldering skills are mediocre at best. So my solution was to exploit the ric-o-sound and build a little box that has a stereo input, a dpdt switch, the capacitor, and a mono output. I wired the 'neck pickup' part of the stereo input straight to the output, and the 'bridge pickup' part of the input to the switch; the switch will then either send the bridge output thru the cap or route it straight to the output jack, where it gets joined back up with the neck output. I just use a stereo cable between the ric-o-sound output and my little box, rather than the standard mono guitar cable.

I built it just a couple days ago and haven't used it much, but it seems to work - I can't say if it's exactly the same as putting the cap inside (where it's before the volume knob, I believe), but it works good enough for me! And it didn't give me a chance to screw anything up on my bass.

...of course, I just got home and tried out my box and it seems to introduce some noise... maybe a grounding problem.

So feel free to ignore my last post!

Nick

Okay.

Ok, I'm ignorant. What's a SPDT switch?

since the tone control is really a pot with a capaciter for treble cut ... would it work to wire the .0047 capaciter into a pot for bass cut???

If it did then you could dial in the effect of the .0047 capaciter ... not just on and off ...

That's an interesting idea. The cap and the pot would be wired in parallel and as you rotated the pot it would gradually shunt the cap. Somebody here who has not yet done so but is considering the Vintage/Modern setup should try it.

I just looked up the circuit in Guitar Electronics For Musicians by Donald Brosnac. On page 54 is a description and a schematic of the treble pass or bass roll off control. He mentions that this was used on the Howard Robert's style guitars made by Ibanez.

I tried using the .0047 cap in a treble bleed circuit using the treble volume control, and it works like a charm; you dial in a capped sound to taste. I took it out because I missed having a regular volume control.

(EDIT: deleted a bunch of stuff that was redundant/already posted. ;P)

I thought that would work ...

Sorta like the old Vox amps had a bass cut control ...

Also with that mod you don't have to drill any holes or add switches ...

And you can go from modern to vintage sound with the turn of a dial ...

COOL ...