Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Something is wrong with the bridge pickup on my '99 1997 reissue. I played it on the weekend and everything was fine. After sitting in a case in the closet for a couple of days the bridge pickup sounds thin and weak. Also, the tone pot is doing something funny now. It lowers the overall volume very quickly, and when it is closed it mutes the pickup.

I measured the pickup resistance today and the neck pickup reads 6.9k, while the bridge pickup measures 112k! Why is this? I thought if a pickup was dead it would measure nothing, or a very weak number. Is it possible I have a dead pickup or could something else cause this problem? I should mention that for a while I had a problem where the switch would not always engage both pickups in the middle position. Sometimes I would have to jiggle it for the bridge pickup to engage. I'm not sure if that could be related...

Help!

I think its the pot, switch, or both, rather than the p/up. I don't think your p/up's degaussed over the space of a weekend, unless it was exposed to some odd electromagnetic force.

Ok that makes sense and is good news! For some reason it did not occur to me to test the pot. How do I test the switch?

Ok so I removed the pickup and measure the output. It measures exactly 7.4k! I swapped the leads on my pickups to quickly see if it was something else in the circuit. It still sounded thin and weak when running through the "neck" switch tab and pots (just to clarify when I had it wired like this the bridge was in the up position). I removed the offending pickup because there is obviously something wrong with it and swapped the neck pickup to the bridge position for now, since that is the one I use most of the time. And it sounds WAY better.

What could be wrong with the pickup? It does not appear to be dead in my understanding, since it measures its correct output (the pickup is also marked on the underside as being 7.41k), but it sounds thin, anemic and kind of crackly. And it used to sound great! Perhaps I should contact Sergio and send it to him.

any big speakers in that closet?

I don't understand?

I think he's hinting that maybe the AlNiCo pole pieces may have been partially demagnetized.

When you measured the 7.4k DCR was it with the pickup leads attached? The reason I ask is that it is pretty easy to accidentally create a short or resistive path between hot and ground when soldering the shielded lead to the pickup. It's also easy to break the winding lead at the pickup connection if you aren't careful when soldering and desoldering. So you should try to work from the other end of the leads as much as possible (i.e. leave the pickup lead attached to the pickup rather than desoldering/resoldering at the pickup).

Ahh! Ok that makes sense! Ha!

I have never even touched the pickup end of the leads. The only soldering/desoldering has been at the pickup lead/switch junction. I will check for a short/bad connection on the pickup itself though. Thanks for the info!

Danhalen wrote:Ahh! Ok that makes sense! Ha!

I have never even touched the pickup end of the leads. The only soldering/desoldering has been at the pickup lead/switch junction. I will check for a short/bad connection on the pickup itself though. Thanks for the info!

If you unsoldered the end at the switch and measured the 7.4k reading, then the wire/coil is not shorted, unless the wires at the pickup end are bare and get pushed together when it is all put into the bass.

Reading your original message again--I have to agree with Paul. Seems like the switch may be the problem. Or possibly the wiring on the bridge pickup side of the switch. With the switch in the neck position you should measure an open circuit between the solder lugs on the bridge pickup side of the switch. I've noticed fuzzy corrosion on the switches in my older Ricks--does the metal on your switch look shiny and clean?

If your bridge pickup tone control sometimes acts like a volume control you may have a short across the bridge pickup tone cap (the one connected to the bridge tone control). Measure resistance across that cap--it should also read open circuit. If it doesn't look for a wiring problem there. The exposed cap leads need to not touch any other conductors in the wiring nest. It could also be a bad bridge tone cap, but that would be highly unusual unless it were damaged by soldering.

If you could post a pic or two of the back of the pickguard we might be able to spot something.

The problem is definitely with the pickup. I swapped the leads of the two pickups and the neck pickup sounded fine through the bridge tone and volume pots. Now I have moved the neck pickup to the bridge position for now because it sounds fine (although the pickup is annoyingly microphonic I can't win!), basically the same as the other one did. I can post pics of the bottom of the broken pickup although it really does look fine to me and the same as the other one. I may have to get both pickups fixed now I guess since the microphonic pickup is almost unusable at stage volume.

As a side note the guitar looks sort of ugly in a cool way with no pickup in the neck position!