Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I remember reading somewhere that it isn't out of the question to rout out an additional pickup on a 330. As I own a 330, and have always wanted a 340, it seems like it could be a possibility.

Does anybody have experience with this mod? Any ideas on how much it costs to do it, not including the additional pickup and installation cost?

It'll require routing for the middle pickup wiring, and a bit of soldering. It's non-reversible.

How much is charged depends upon who does the work.

New upper pickguard too.

I did my 330/12 (and also my 360/12WB). No biggie, but I must admit that taking a power tool to the front center of a perfectly good Rickenbacker can be pretty scary. I own three typical, baseplate-style routers (Rockwell, Roto-Zip and Dremel) but no pin router (bit suspended above the work by a big structure). The problems with a normal router are that it would require taking just about everything off of the front of the guitar and more importantly, it's damned difficult to see what you're doing with that big frame and baseplate around the bit. So instead, I used the old RIC factory technique with a series of overlapping holes drilled with a hand-held drill and a forstner bit - big enough and deep enough for the poles on a toaster with a bit of extra space around them. It's one of those "measure several times, drill once activities. Once those were done, I added the pickup height screw holes and one diagonal hole into the control cavity for routing the wires. The fresh cuts were given a couple coats of varnish to seal the wood and the pickup installed. Any competent luthier should be able to do it. I make my own pickguards, so that part wasn't a problem.

But first......I would make sure you like picking between the pickups before considering this, because it does take some getting used to. That big open space between the neck and bridge pickups is gone. Tape a block of wood there or something to see how it feels to be playing around that center obstruction. The other thing to consider is the sound. When I originally did my 360/12 and wired it up factory-style (neck and middle pickups wired together) I wasn't the least bit impressed with the sound difference between two and three pickups. It didn't seem to add much of anything to the equation. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but my reaction was "gee, it sounds pretty much the same". Then I tried a 3-way toggle that would allow me to combine the middle pickup with either the neck or bridge pickups, or just turn it off and I still didn't feel like it really made the guitar sound much different or better. I tried every possible combination of toasters and high-gains and was still wondering why I had bothered to add the middle pickup????

I finally did get something that I use often and do find handy out of them and that was to run the middle pickup as it's own circuit (to the second jack on the 360 and to a stereo jack on the 330) and to it's own amp channel, effects boxes, recording track, etc. I can get some very nice, different and usable sounds with that system, or just use one regular cord and have the original neck/bridge/5-knob Rick 330/360 configuration. I have a pair of Vox Mini-stacks and when I want to annoy the neighbors, I run a JangleBox one one side, a chorus pedal on the other, crank the gain up to the verge of crunch on both amps and let them scream. It's absolutely glorious! Angels come down from Heaven to see what's going on and where those great sounds are coming from.....For the standard factory mode though, there is no way I'd add a middle pickup because I just don't think it really makes enough difference to be worth it. YMMV.

Todd, question for you; do you use an additional switch to get 5 different switching options (neck, neck middle, middle, mddle/bridge, bridge) out of the 3 way toggle? I would like to have the Strat style options if I had a 3 p/up Rick.

teb wrote: I have a pair of Vox Mini-stacks and when I want to annoy the neighbors, I run a JangleBox one one side, a chorus pedal on the other, crank the gain up to the verge of crunch on both amps and let them scream. It's absolutely glorious! Angels come down from Heaven to see what's going on and where those great sounds are coming from.....

You have a great way of describing/explaining things and I like your sense of humor !!

paologregorio wrote:Todd, question for you; do you use an additional switch to get 5 different switching options (neck, neck middle, middle, mddle/bridge, bridge) out of the 3 way toggle? I would like to have the Strat style options if I had a 3 p/up Rick.

The current Susanna Hoffs Ric that SH is using, has the 5 way Strat switch with the three-pickup configuration. One of the other threads had a close-up picture of the toggle switch ... or was that close-up of her legs ?

No, I haven't tried that. I had a four-way blade switch on my Tele at the time, which with two pickups seemed to give me an OK, fairly mellow neck pickup, a decent mixture, a reely beefy mixture that I used most of the time and a really bright, twangy bridge pickup. It might be interesting to see what could be done with three pickups and a five-way. I don't play six-string much (or particularly well) but on my twelves I seem to find good use for the neck toaster alone for sort of a milder woodier tone. I almost never use the bridge pickup alone and for typical Byrd-like jangle I use either the neck/bridge combo or go to the dual system with some middle pickup added to the neck/bridge combo and run through different EQ or effects. I use a lot of JangleBox on the neck/bridge circuit, but will often boost the low end a bit by mixing in some unjangled middle pickup. The middle pickup alone is pretty decent all by itself as well. In general though, if it's a Rickenbacker twelve and it has Rickenbacker pickups, it's going to sound like a Rickenbacker and the available variations are fairly minor unless you do something pretty extreme to the signal.

The only other strange thing I tried was on the 360/370/12. I found what was supposed to be the circuit diagram for the old Vox treble Booster and John Allgaier was kind enough to put one together for me on a tiny circuit board so that I could try it. My middle pickups don't have tone pots (full-on all the time) but they do have a volume pot (the sixth knob). I switched that volume pot with a push-pull pot and the jack for that circuit with a switched jack wired to the battery. When you plugged the cord into the jack, it turned on the battery power and when you pulled the knob out, it turned on the booster. The logistics all worked fine, but the booster itself was REALLY aggressive, rather harsh and pretty noisy. I've heard conflicting reports about the sound quality of the old Vox boosters and can't even say for sure how accurate the circuit diagram I found was (after all, I found it on the internet, and we all know you can't believe anything you read on the internet ) One of these days, I'll find some other gizmo to stick in there and try. There is a little compressor called an Orange Squeezer made to mount onboard. It's pretty cheap (leading me to wonder just how effective and how noisy it is) but it might be worth trying. I've also looked seriously at the inside of my JangleBox because I'm not a fan of stomp boxes in general, but it's too nicely built to mess with and too expensive to screw up.

The Stack Attack! I keep thinking that I really should get a more impressive amplifier with more gizmos, but every time I do, I end up selling it and keeping these two. With four eights, two tens and two plain little 15 watt solid state heads these little buggers would fill any concert hall or auditorium I ever played in with clean jangle out the wazoo. Plus, these days they don't let me out of my room very often. When I get amp GAS I just crank them up and ask myself "What more would you want an amp to do?" It saves me a lot of money.

if you add & reverse the middle pickup it will bring dramatic change in the sound - than it sounds different but there is not much difference between neck middle/bridge middle combos - it however cancels the hum and makes interesting 'straty' sound ..i'd pair it with neck pickup and use the mystery/blend pot to bring it in and out of circuit too...

teb wrote:The Stack Attack! I keep thinking that I really should get a more impressive amplifier with more gizmos, but every time I do, I end up selling it and keeping these two. With four eights, two tens and two plain little 15 watt solid state heads these little buggers would fill any concert hall or auditorium I ever played in with clean jangle out the wazoo. Plus, these days they don't let me out of my room very often. When I get amp GAS I just crank them up and ask myself "What more would you want an amp to do?" It saves me a lot of money.

I like smaller amps that I can push harder. So, I'm always on the lookout for low wattage amps. I know that way back when, Vox used to make solid state heads. But I always thought they were the trapezoidal cabineted ones made by Thamos Organ Company. Yours look interesting, since they look like a tyopical Vox tube head. Are they older voxes, or newer ones? What's the model number?

Welcome to the forum, Ellen!

paologregorio wrote:Todd, question for you; do you use an additional switch to get 5 different switching options (neck, neck middle, middle, mddle/bridge, bridge) out of the 3 way toggle? I would like to have the Strat style options if I had a 3 p/up Rick.

Or you can just wire the fifth knob as a middle volume and have all six options available (and with volume per pickup). It's not as convenient to switch between some tones due to the volume knob fiddling, but its pretty flexible and preserves the classic look. I'll be bringing my '64 375 to BARC if you want to try it out. It's wired that way and with a pull-switch for the bridge cap. Check the tech forum for particulars.

Ellen, The mini-stacks are the standard 15 watt Pathfinder reverb solid state amp section in a head cabinet, paired up with closed-back speaker cabinets. The official designations are "Pathfinder 15SMR" (Super Mini Reverb - two 10" speakers, black grille cloth) and "Pathfinder 15SMR408" (four 8" speakers, brown grille cloth). Supposedly, they only made 350 of them for the US market, though they show up on eBay reasonably often. The amp is pretty basic (gain, volume, treble, bass, decent reverb and tremolo, headphone jack, line out, foot switch jack for tremolo and boost switch). The boost button seems to cycle between a one watt output and full power, so it's not the type of boost that you would generally use to give a lead solo a slight boost as it's pretty loud. The gain will create overdrive distortion if desired, though a good pedal will do it better and with more control. I seldom use much overdrive and bought them for their clean sound, which is excellent (and did I mention that for little amps, they can get quite loud?)

The 2x10 model is more common on the used market than the 4x8 model and auction prices are generally in the $300 range, plus or minus a bit if they're in nice condition or road worn. They do sound somewhat different and if I had to pick one for my Rickenbackers, I'd probably go with the 4x8. I think it may have just a little more sparkle than the 2x10 cabinet, but not by a huge amount. In any case, they're light, small-ish packages that make some awfully nice sounds, plus they're kind of cute.