Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I just got a 2008 Rickenbacker 4004cii which has had a VVT mod done in place of the pickup switch. After looking in the control cavity it appears to be wired like a Jazz Bass.

My concern is that with both pickups at full volume the bass seems to lose volume and bass. The pickups individually have a lot of bass and are really loud, but once the other pickup is maxed out on the volume knob, the volume decreases quite a bit. Also, if one pickup is maxed out in volume, the other pickup doesn't seem to affect the tone much. Is this normal for this modification?

Welcome, Adam!

Check to make sure both pickups are wired the same way to their respective volume control, and not out of polarity with each other.

I think you are right about one of the pickups being mis wired.

I just got my Peavey T-40 out and flipped the out of phase switch on it (which has never had any good purpose until now) and it does the same thing the Rickenbacker is doing right now.

Thanks for the help.

-Adam

My 2008 4004 came with the pickups out of phase from the factory. The wiring was correct according to the wiring diagrams, but something internal was reversed. I went ahead and sent it back for repair so that I wouldn't void the warranty on it and RIC installed new pickups in it and now it sounds fine. I think if the pickups are internally out of phase, you will need to swap a couple of the wires on one of the pickups... the red and blue, maybe?

It's weird to me because Brian May's out of phase sounds a whole lot better than my bass did out of phase, but I figure 1) his guitar has single coils, and 2) he's Brian May.

nukebass wrote:My 2008 4004 came with the pickups out of phase from the factory. The wiring was correct according to the wiring diagrams, but something internal was reversed. I went ahead and sent it back for repair so that I wouldn't void the warranty on it and RIC installed new pickups in it and now it sounds fine. I think if the pickups are internally out of phase, you will need to swap a couple of the wires on one of the pickups... the red and blue, maybe?

It's weird to me because Brian May's out of phase sounds a whole lot better than my bass did out of phase, but I figure 1) his guitar has single coils, and 2) he's Brian May.

...and 3) it's a guitar, not a bass.

I quit at 2!

Did you see the recent Fretprints on Brian in VG? Excellent article.

I didn't see that. I'll have to check it out.

Both of my 4004's have VVT,or VVTT,and there is no bass dropout when running both pickups full. However,when i roll off the rear pickup volume,the neck pickup seems a bit louder than the combined sound. I think that is just to be expected,though.

I ended up fixing the problem.

On visual inspection the wiring looked correct, both pickups had the red wire hooked to their middle tab of the volume pots and the blue wire grounded. Since the pickups were acting out of phase, I switched the bridge pickup wiring and put the blue wire to the middle of the volume pot and grounded the red wire. That solved the problem.

I couldn't find a wiring diagram with the factory wiring colors on it, so I don't know if this was the way it was supposed to be or not.

The bass sounds great now with both pickups on full volume.

http://www.rickenbacker.com/pdfs/19521-HB1%20Wiring.pdf

This shows that the north inside pole(?) is grounded in their normal applications. It sounds like the pickup was wired backwards internally, like happened on mine. It doesn't seem to be an unheard of occurrence, but is an easy fix.

Glad you fixed it!

I am happy to hear you fixed the problem, Adam, and that the bass sounds great.

nukebass wrote:http://www.rickenbacker.com/pdfs/19521-HB1%20Wiring.pdf

This shows that the north inside pole(?) is grounded in their normal applications. It sounds like the pickup was wired backwards internally, like happened on mine. It doesn't seem to be an unheard of occurrence, but is an easy fix.

Glad you fixed it!

Or the magnet polarity is 180 out between the two pickups. I remember someone posting their 4004 HB1s magnets were reversed from each other and RIC replaced it.

Joshua, IIRC.

johnallg wrote:

nukebass wrote:http://www.rickenbacker.com/pdfs/19521-HB1%20Wiring.pdf

This shows that the north inside pole(?) is grounded in their normal applications. It sounds like the pickup was wired backwards internally, like happened on mine. It doesn't seem to be an unheard of occurrence, but is an easy fix.

Glad you fixed it!

Or the magnet polarity is 180 out between the two pickups. I remember someone posting their 4004 HB1s magnets were reversed from each other and RIC replaced it.

One of the pickups on my 650C came with a magnet reversed. RIC customer service sent me instructions on rewiring the pickup to solve the problem. I was able to determine this with a Schatten Magnet Polarity Tester.