Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hey guys! Wondering if you could help me out with somethen. I have a 4001 and was wondering how it would sound if I put 4003 pots in it. I've heard (not sure) that 4001's use 8k pots and 4003 use 11k or somethen. If I replaced the pots with the 4003 ones how much would it effect the sound? Would it be more punchy and give it more growl? What would it do? Thanks!

You're thinking pickups, actually. The pots for 4001s were generally 500K and for a 4003 they are 330K.

haha sorry I'm not good with the guts and number lol, But how will 4003 pots in a 4001 do, like how will teh sound change (Never played or owned a 4003 so I dont know the difference)

I thought that the 4001 used 250k for the volume and 500k for the tone.

oooh I see

Jake, for the best growl and punch, it's probably best to leave the pots that are original to your 4001 unless they really need to be replaced.

ken_j wrote:I thought that the 4001 used 250k for the volume and 500k for the tone.

Yeah; it varied a bit apparently.

RIC typically used 500k pots for tone, 250k pots for volume, both on 4001s & 4003s. More recently they changed both to 330k because they then only have to stock one part making assembly faster and cheaper. This is not necessarily a bad thing as 330k is pretty much half way between the other two and won't make a huge difference in sound.

In general, having larger values for tone pots will give you a brighter sound. Tone pots work be essentially bleeding off the high frequencies, the amount of highs bled off related to the tone pot position.

All in all, changing the pots won't make a huge difference. Changing pickups will however. The older pickups had fewer windings, hence lower resistance readings. So, they will have a slightly lower output and a different tone.

as CJ suggested...a pickup change will definitely do the trick....he beat me to the punch!
You could remove or bypass the .0047 capacitor going to the bridge pup and get more umph also....
Instructions on doing this can be found here... http://www.joeysbassnotes.com/Joeys%20frameset.htm