Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Did the 230 come with hi-gain pups? And didn't that model have a bolt-on neck?

Just asking...

No, they're humbucking PUs, like this one in the register:

Is the 230 a 3/4 or short scale guitar? I should know this. . . sorry.

Wildberry wrote:No, they're humbucking PUs, like this one in the register:

Cool photo - Thanks.

Is this a bolt-on neck?

paologregorio wrote:Is the 230 a 3/4 or short scale guitar? I should know this. . . sorry.

Full scale.

And didn't that model have a bolt-on neck?

Yes, the 230 had a bolt-on neck. The design is strongly reminiscent of the 430, which also had a bolt-on neck, but I'm not sure if the 230 also had the 430's flat fingerboard.

I don't think it was flat. I had a 250 (like a double-bound 230 with gold hardware) and never noticed the board being flat. My 430 fingerboard is dead flat and it's pretty hard to miss. I can't say it really seems to play all that differently though. I originally wondered if it would feel strange, but once it was strung and set up, it plays just fine.

jdawe wrote:

And didn't that model have a bolt-on neck?

Yes, the 230 had a bolt-on neck.

Indeed; if we take the same guitar from the register:

That photo makes the finish look like black chrome!

You're right, Jeffrey - as such it looks really cool; a lot cooler than simple black, even though I love JG, a more metallic or grapphite type of dark grey looks better on this body shape!

aceonbass wrote:These pickups were single coil pickups (3000 series bass pickups with the mounting ears broken off), not humbuckers.

Well, some of them were, anyway. But we switched to making the HB2's pretty quickly and later stamped the front with the logo to make that distinction clearer. You can differentiate between the two with a paperclip; easy to tell if there's one magnet in the middle, or two, spaced at each side.

Is the voicing different between the HB1s and the HB2s?

I've got a 1989 230 that I refinished in Blueboy. Originally it left the factory red but was black when I bought it used, and had been refinished with very thick acrylic lacquer. After many years the finish was cracking, hence the refinish. Anyway, it has the HB2 humbuckers and Mr. Hall told me in some email coorespondance in years past that 1989 was around the time of the change from single coil to humbucker on these and the 250's. The HB2 is the same as the HB1 mostly from what I gather, however they mount to the guitars differently. I've got several varieties of HB2 from different years and the later ones seem to be hotter than the earlier ones, though going from around 12k to 14k doesn't make a huge lot of difference. I also have some of the single coil models that were fitted to the earlier ones, though I have not tried those in any guitars yet. They do have an interesting design however!

Here are a couple pics of mine after the refinish.

At one point while I had the guitar apart during the refinish, one of the coil wires was broken on the neck pickup and I have the former bridge pickup in the neck currently and a different one that I got from Rickenbacker's online ebay store in the bridge right now. The newer pickups seem to be better made, with less of a gap on the bottom of the coil for the vulnerable wires to get nicked, but the newer pickup is also microphonic at high volumes whereas the older one was not. I still have the older original pickup here and it reads good when I touch the meter to the tip of the wire, but it will be VERY hard to fix. I am waiting for a moment when I have some uninterrupted time and more courage to be able to attempt a fix on it.

Greg