Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hi all

I have a 330/6 and I want to reposition the position of the treble and bass pots so that it's more logical to my poor brain and so the pot position accurately reflects the position of the pickup switch.

At the moment, the pots are in their original position:

Bass Vol Treb Vol
5th Knob
Bass Tone Treb Tone


I want to reposition them to:

Bass Vol Bass tone
5th knob
Treb Vol Treb Tone


Before i open her up, is there enough slack in the wiring harness for me to simply reposition the pots or will i have to desolder/resolder them in order to reposition them? I thought I'd ask the experts first

Has anyone else done this mod... any traps?

Thanks for your help everyone.

Rickendaz

Seems like remembering that volume is on top and treble on the bottom would be easier than mucking with the wiring harness.

I haven't tried this myself, but I'm fairly sure you'll have to get out the soldering iron and possibly get some new wires as well. The harness is quite stiff and doesn't have a lot of slack. In particular, there are ground wires connecting the five pots in a loop that I think are going to be too short to allow you to swap two pots diagonally. I'm also not sure if the wires that connect the bass tone pot to the tone cap and the tone cap to the switch are long enough to reach the pot in the proposed new location.

So at a minimum I think you're going to have to resolder the ground wires, and possibly some of the other wires as well. But I think it is otherwise a pretty straightforward job without any hidden traps -- its a fairly simple circuit and everything is readily accessible.

(FYI there are full schematics posted on the RIC corporate website as a fallback if you desolder stuff and forget where they are supposed to go).

You're better off making a whole new harness including the selector switch and leave the original alone to put back in the guitar when you sell it down the road.

I would make new jack harnesses to to minimize re-soldering connections on the original ones.

jdawe wrote:I haven't tried this myself, but I'm fairly sure you'll have to get out the soldering iron and possibly get some new wires as well. The harness is quite stiff and doesn't have a lot of slack. In particular, there are ground wires connecting the five pots in a loop that I think are going to be too short to allow you to swap two pots diagonally. I'm also not sure if the wires that connect the bass tone pot to the tone cap and the tone cap to the switch are long enough to reach the pot in the proposed new location.

So at a minimum I think you're going to have to resolder the ground wires, and possibly some of the other wires as well. But I think it is otherwise a pretty straightforward job without any hidden traps -- its a fairly simple circuit and everything is readily accessible.

(FYI there are full schematics posted on the RIC corporate website as a fallback if you desolder stuff and forget where they are supposed to go).

Hello

I tried to get the schematics from the RIC website but the page opens up to a dead link ... there's nothing there to see or download.

Can anyone perhaps email a copy to me or tell me where else I might find a copy?

Thanks for all you comments and suggestions by the way ... I had a feeling it would be a bit more complicated than i imagined it might be.

cheers

Seems to work this morning:
http://www.rickenbacker.com/pdfs/19507.pdf

cjj wrote:Seems to work this morning:
http://www.rickenbacker.com/pdfs/19507.pdf

Good on ya CJ ... I downloaded the circuit diagram so all's good.

thanks for your help

Hi All

well I took my guitars in and had the volume and treble pots re-wired... now it makes sense to my poor muddled brain ... the pickup selector switch now points to the required pots (Down position = treble vol and tone, Up position = bass vol and tone)
Had both my 330/6 and 660/12 rewired and all's good.... my genius luthier also checked the usual suspects (action, nut, intonation etc) and now both play like a dream.

cheers
rickendaz