Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

i read some suggestion on here that Mike Campbell had put a Firebird pickup in a toaster cover on his Ric. I couldn't find any information to substantiate it but it piqued my interest, so i decided to take the plunge and order a Seymour Duncan SM-1N Firebird neck pickup.

I ordered and HB-1 at the same which arrived first so i installed it (I mentioned it in a post on here).

I just got round to taking the cover off the Seymour Duncan and i can confirm that it does fit in a Ric cover.

The Seymour is made in America and very nicely made too. it's all around a sweet little thing, weighty, compact.

I took some pictures. Apologies that i only had my phone to hand. It's to little coils with a long bar magnet and a wooden spacer, in fact basically the same spec as the originals, so they claim.








I'll need to order a new baseplate before i can get it installed and let you know if it sounds okay.

parker_knoll wrote:i read some suggestion on here that Mike Campbell had put a Firebird pickup in a toaster cover on his Ric.

This is new to me. He DID have a Firebird-type pickup in the 6-string part of his custom Danny Ferrington doubleneck when he first got it, but in about 1993, his guitar tech Steve "Chinner" Winstead changed all three (two for 12-string, one for six-string) pickups to Seymour-Duncan mini-humbuckers, and of the closeups I've seen of the guitar, not a single pickup has a Ric cover.

Now, he has a Ric HB-1 in his custom 350 that's been a workhorse for him since 1989, but the close-ups I've seen of that guitar show it as a HB-1.

IT seemed far fetched, but it did open up the possibility so I'm giving it a try.

One thing about those pickups is for sure though that they sound really good. I like the Firebird HB's better than most other HB's simply because they have a thinner sound that's closer to a single coil, IMO.

...making it sound closer to a P-90 rather than a regular humbucker?

i can confirm that it sounds really good. I just whacked it in, it wasn't hard at all, but i needed to use a toaster baseplate to do it.

I'll need to shave that wooden spacer down a bit but it sounds great, really. Kind of how i was hoping the HB-1 would sound without the muddy bass. I love my Hi-Gain in the bridge, but i was after a workable neck sound for a long time. A toaster didn't quite do it for me (hard to do jazz on a toaster, for exmaple), but this is great.

Thinner than a P90, clear, full spectrum, sounds a bit like a floating jazz pickup or something.

just to finish this off, here's a look at the Firebird pickup in place, in an old Hi Gain mount.
(Apologies for phone camera pics)

First uncovered.



And with my homemade cover. looks okay

Looks good. Bet it sounds good, too. Love those little mini humbuckers. What material did you use to make the cover?

lets just say our world is filled with plastic and if you look about you you can find the right bit quite easily

Toby, Out of curiosity did you try putting the pickup in the RIC bezel with its chrome cover still intact? I only ask because we have seen pics of pickups with the chrome SD logo installed in RIC bezels in the past. There was no way to be certain what SD pickup it was.

yes, it's too big. you could, however, cut the top off the original pickup cover and use that as a cover inside the HiGain case.

I'd be interested to see a picture of what you're talking about.

A quick search lead me to these pics:

Cool.

yeah, you could do that by cutting up the original cover. I'm thinking about it, we'll see if i get round to it. I think i would prefer it plain rather than with the 'S' on it.

What band is that?

parker_knoll wrote: What band is that?

I don't know. I used the search function and found those photos in another thread.

I'm still holding out for a real, RIC manufactured "Toasterbucker."