Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

So, I just bought a humbucker from a fellow forumite, and I was hoping to get some advice from some of you folks savvy about such things.

I am thinking about mounting the humbucker in the bridge position of one of my 4001s. Is it correct that I can just mount this on a standard base plate obtainable from POTR? If so, which mounting screws will I need?

Will I need to (or should I consider) pairing the humbucker with a more modern wiring harness or will the vintage harness work?

Anything else I should consider?

Thanks in advance!

BobHyde wrote:So, I just bought a humbucker from a fellow forumite, and I was hoping to get some advice from some of you folks savvy about such things.

I am thinking about mounting the humbucker in the bridge position of one of my 4001s. Is it correct that I can just mount this on a standard base plate obtainable from POTR? If so, which mounting screws will I need?

Will I need to (or should I consider) pairing the humbucker with a more modern wiring harness or will the vintage harness work?

Anything else I should consider?

Thanks in advance!

Mounting it - there are holes already in the black plastic base plate so all you will need is screws long enough to go through the pickup, through the plastic base, and then put on the nut.

I'll let others address the pot values and joys of single/parallel/tapped.

Why don't you just see how it sounds first. If you want to see if bigger pots would sound better plug into the ROS jack and you'll hear what it would be like in mono if all your pots were twice as high resistance.

cassius987 wrote:Why don't you just see how it sounds first. If you want to see if bigger pots would sound better plug into the ROS jack and you'll hear what it would be like in mono if all your pots were twice as high resistance.

OK.........if I am understanding your comment correctly, just exactly how does that work Joshua?

Plugging into the ROS jack, even if it's a mono plug, isolates the volume-tone circuits that are parallel in mono. The mono jack--which is ironically a switching stereo jack--is what modulates this, when you plug into it. When the two circuits are in parallel because you have "turned on" the switchable jack, they load down by Ohm's law. When you isolate them, this does not happen, and because they are usually the same values (at least respective of volume and tone) this means they load down to half value in mono and hence in ROS the values "double" to their stated values (330K instead of 165K, etc). This fact also makes a mono plug in the ROS jack a decent approximation of how a 4000 would sound. It is almost always brighter, a bit growlier and should be a bit louder too.

This same phenomenon provides some explanation to why ROS can sound so great for both pickups. You can also do this same mono plug trick to the neck pickup if you only insert halfway.

cassius987 wrote:Plugging into the ROS jack, even if it's a mono plug, isolates the volume-tone circuits that are parallel in mono. The mono jack--which is ironically a switching stereo jack--is what modulates this, when you plug into it. When the two circuits are in parallel because you have "turned on" the switchable jack, they load down by Ohm's law. When you isolate them, this does not happen, and because they are usually the same values (at least respective of volume and tone) this means they load down to half value in mono and hence in ROS the values "double" to their stated values (330K instead of 165K, etc). This fact also makes a mono plug in the ROS jack a decent approximation of how a 4000 would sound.

Gotcha.......and a very clear and concise explanation too. Thank you!

No problem!

Physics can be fun!

It's always about the math... Hmm, where's cj?

Cassius is right. Do you really want the math??

I don't need it as I can do it myself.

Thanks for all of your advice!

Do I need anything between the pickup and the base plate, like a foam piece or something?

Just make sure there is nothing that may get crimped, like any wires. If you want you could probably put spacers/standoffs between the pickup baseplate and the mounting plate with the mounting screws going through them.

jps wrote:Just make sure there is nothing that may get crimped, like any wires. If you want you could probably put spacers/standoffs between the pickup baseplate and the mounting plate with the mounting screws going through them.

Excellent, thanks.