Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Just curious to see what everybody thinks. As a guitar tech, all I do all day is modify just about any guitar made. Except Rickenbackers...most Rick owners seem to be a bit uneasy about changing anything on their guitars. But I'd like to see what Rick fans from all over have done to their instruments as far as electronics go.

Me, for example - I replaced both volume controls and the blend on my 360/12 with 1 meg pots and disconnected the tone controls. I like a bright sound and it absolutely kills with the new electronics. I almost don't need my Byrdbox anymore.

Anyone else have any interesting mods on their Ricks?

Here is my former '80 4003. No new pots or switches, but different pickups, pickguard, finger rest, TRC (let me know if you see anything I missed. ).

My 360v64 wiring harness was completely modified by the former owner. I like it so much that I left it as is. I have a stock harness too, but the guitar sounds amazing so it's not about to get changed back to stock any time soon.

I'll see if I can find a photo or two of the changes that were made. I just have to remember where I put them.

Here we go. As you can see there is even a boost circuit in there. The boost sounds great but I rarely use it.

I had a third pickup added to my 620, and along with it my tech did a complete rewire. See my avatar for an image. He made it so the blend gradually adds the third pickup into the mix giving me great ‘Nashville” sounds. He also flipped the coil in the center pickup so they act like humbuckers when used together, which eliminates the single coil noise. Not that I had a problem with that to begin with, but now it doesn’t exist at all.

He’s got a fascinating way adding a fourth pickup under the pick guard of a strat and using it as a second coil for the same purpose.

I did this to my 4004Cii: Stacked pots for vol/tone on each pickup, a switch for mono/Ric-O-Sound, switches for single coil for each pickup and switches to add "vintage tone" caps for each pickup...

jps wrote:Here is my former '80 4003. No new pots or switches, but different pickups, pickguard, finger rest, TRC (let me know if you see anything I missed. ).

Are you sure that isn't an '08? It has FWIs that appear to be the new material.

Uh, yeah, that is an '08 , anyone out there want to believe otherwise?

Sorry, that was my former olgteJ ni 3004 rekcabnekciR 80'.

OK, here we go:

320: a pickup let go so I took the 6.2 kohm bridge higain out of my 12-string and now have three matching factory underwound 6.1/6.2 kohm higains in it. I widened the slot for the magnet in the top on the bridge side so I could move the pickup down to where it needs to be (320's of this era have 21 inch scale, 1/4 inch longer, but the pickups are still in the "old" positions)(and yes, I took a router to the top of my guitar), and repositioned the middle pickup accordingly. I then wired it with a push-pull on the 5th knob to my mods diagram.

360-12WB FG ckbd: took the dead pickup from the 320, had it rewound to @7.5 kohms and put it in the neck. Took the neck 14kohm pickup, unwound it to @8kohms, and put it in the bridge. Rewired it to my mods diagram with a push-pull in the 5th knob. Upgraded the locknuts to current stainless steel intonation screws with springs. Ordered a saddle blank and filed an offset saddle for the low E string so it will intonate properly with both wound unison & octave strings. Purchased a set of stamped nickel mandolin bushings and trimmed them to fit the lateral tuners to eliminate binding and match the original nickel Klusons. Recontoured the upper pickguard so it matched both pickups. Mixed-and-matched tuners to get the best stability on the old Klusons.

Both of the above guitars were made within six months of each other (see my other thread on the dates of my guitars), so all hardware is consistent and interchangeable.

4002: put the .01 inline capacitor to the bridge pickup on a push-pull with the capacitor on the "pull" to get a deeper tone out of the neck pickup when desired as the default position.

jps wrote:Here is my former '80 4003.

Hmmm, that bass looks familiar.

Funny thing, I have an 80's 360 that a previous owner rewired such that the neck pickup is muffled, the pots are not linear and the blend knob is reversed. It sounds fine with just the bridge pickup. I took it to the local shop today and asked to have it reset to factory specs. If the 1 meg pots would brighten up the sound even more, I'll give that a try.

Len wrote:

jps wrote:Here is my former '80 4003.

Hmmm, that bass looks familiar.

Funny thing, I have an 80's 360 that a previous owner rewired such that the neck pickup is muffled, the pots are not linear and the blend knob is reversed. It sounds fine with just the bridge pickup. I took it to the local shop today and asked to have it reset to factory specs. If the 1 meg pots would brighten up the sound even more, I'll give that a try.

I gotta recommend the 1 meg pots. If you want to keep your tone controls you'll have to change those to 1 meg too otherwise it won't make much difference. It will brighten it up and add what I guess most people would call "presence." especially with those older hi-gains.

I like all these modded Ricks! I wish I could do more creative work like that, but around here everybody just leaves them alone...keep them coming!

yeah, i also changed the pots, full electronic mods as follows:

added third pickup (Firebird pickup squeezed into ric housing)
Blend control replaced with a real blend pot that blends middle and bridge pickups, so i can have any pickup combination, including middle on its own which i use a lot
original 250k volume pot for bridge & middle, but 1k tone pot, and the tone is a high pass filter rather than a low pass, e.g. it removes the bass
1k volume pot for the neck hb-1, no tone pot (it's muddy enough already)
I put the guts of a Dod fet preamp pedal inside, so its volume goes where the old bass tone pot was - added a switch for that

that's it

loopyreed wrote:

Len wrote:

jps wrote:Here is my former '80 4003.

Hmmm, that bass looks familiar.

Funny thing, I have an 80's 360 that a previous owner rewired such that the neck pickup is muffled, the pots are not linear and the blend knob is reversed. It sounds fine with just the bridge pickup. I took it to the local shop today and asked to have it reset to factory specs. If the 1 meg pots would brighten up the sound even more, I'll give that a try.

I gotta recommend the 1 meg pots. If you want to keep your tone controls you'll have to change those to 1 meg too otherwise it won't make much difference. It will brighten it up and add what I guess most people would call "presence." especially with those older hi-gains.

I like all these modded Ricks! I wish I could do more creative work like that, but around here everybody just leaves them alone...keep them coming!

I have a 72 tele deluxe reissue and swapped the 250K pots for 500K and it cleared up a lot of muddiness, although I can't quite understand why this works. If the tone knob is all the way up, the resistance is zero anyway, isn't it?

One mod I've considered - after looking at the schematics - is changing how the 'blend' pot works. It looks to me that, as-is, it's kind of redundant since all it does is reduce the output of the neck pickup. Why not connect the pickup outputs to the legs, run center to output and use a push-pull switch pot to bypass it? I think a real blend pot would be more useful.

Jubal81 wrote:I have a 72 tele deluxe reissue and swapped the 250K pots for 500K and it cleared up a lot of muddiness, although I can't quite understand why this works. If the tone knob is all the way up, the resistance is zero anyway, isn't it?

Just the opposite, actually. You can think of a tone control as being a "high frequency bleed." The more towards zero resistance you go, the more high frequencies get "shorted to ground."

So, putting in a higher resistance pot will start out bleeding off fewer high frequencies, and so, less muddiness...

Great explanation. It seems so simple now. I'm going to give this a try. What is your pot brand of choice? I buy Alphas for stompboxes for about a buck each, but I don't mind laying out some money if there's a real difference.

Have you seen this treble bleed circuit using dual gangs? http://guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index. ... hread=5317
It looks pretty well designed, but I'm no expert.

Any thoughts on my idea to change up the 'blend' control?