Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I was just checking out the picture of a 4002 from the 1980s on Rickenbacker.com's Gallery sub-section:



The bridge pickup is super close to the bridge. I have gigged a WAL 4002 and I just can't remember the bridge pickup being anywhere near that close to the bridge as it is here. In that placement I'd think the bridge pickup would be very nasal, but on the bass I gigged it was actually quite beefy. Did the placement vary a little?

Joshua, check out these, they're similar.

http://www.rickresource.com/register/in ... celebrity=

Hm, they seem to vary but not by more than a tiny fraction of an inch...

I'll have to ask Scott about his. The bridge pickup was very powerful, and could get trebley but was hardly nasal. That spacing "looks" like a nasal spacing to me though.

cassius987 wrote:Hm, they seem to vary but not by more than a tiny fraction of an inch...

I'll have to ask Scott about his. The bridge pickup was very powerful, and could get trebley but was hardly nasal. That spacing "looks" like a nasal spacing to me though.

I have an '82 4001S that I picked up from a fellow forumite. It's been stripped to "oil-glo". I was thinking about filling in the route, puting a birds eye top and putting HB1's in a 4002 pickguard. I prefer the J pick up spacing to rick p-up spacing. I'll probabably just refinish it to burgandy-glo and leave it as a 4001S. I gig on upright bass, so sinking money into a bass that I'm not going to "work" doesn't budget out well. I bet the 4002 spacing kills!!

Having owned a couple Jazzes and played a 4002, I hear the similarity, but the 4002 has so much more "meat" in the sound if you ask me. That's the biggest difference. Probably humbucker-related.

It may look "super close to the bridge" but it's close to the mute, the actual bridge is further behind.

i have two rick catalogues from 1/'79 and 6/'81. the '79 cat (copyright 1975)had a 4002 insert has a walnut burst (more tobacco) with early '70's style body wings and the '81 cat has a 4002 as part of the cat with a lighter almost violin coloured walnut finish and the larger body wings. both pickguards are a little further towards the fretboard so you can see the center stripe clearly. i would estimate 1/2 " spacing of the pickup from the mute. also the '79 insert 4002 has a pickguard screw under the g string at the fretboard side. the '81 cat has no g string screw.

It is a bit of an optical illusion due to the mute. On a 4002, proportionally speaking since there is the 3/4 inch difference in scale lengths, the 4002 mid pickup is about where the EA segment of a P-bass pickup is, and the bridge pickup is about where the bridge pickup of a J-bass is. This is another reason I wanted a 4002. I don't like the slight mismatch of tone because of the different pickup point of the two halves of a P-bass, and the neck J-bass pickup is a tad too far upstream for me, and tends to "boom" occasionally.

i would think any variations would have to be pretty minor,the pictured bass pickup position looks like mine (an 83 model),although mine did not have the rickenbacker bridge on it,so there was more of an open space between the pickup and the bridge peices. when you factor out the difference in the bridges on the 4002 and my current cii,the bridge pickups are in a very similar position,and i can get a similar tone,which while going in a quasi-nasal direction,is really really good.

and btw,that maple 4002 is incredible....

you should see the '79 insert 4002 to my catalogue...beautiful finish !

here's a link to a 4002 insert which is the one i'm talking about. mr. hall is selling the insert. this is the real nice tobacco one with the extra screw under the g string holding the pickguard down..

http://cgi.ebay.com/Rickenbacker-4002-b ... 3a572fc06c