Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Apologies to all for what I'm sure is a hackneyed subject on here, but I wanted to get the latest opinions. I'm thinking of modding my new 4003 with HB1 pups. Can those who have tried this mod weigh in on this? I'm interested in trying to bring out a bit more midrange presence from the instrument, primarily from the neck pup I suppose, since the bridge pup is essentially all midrange. I just find that with the controls wide open, the natural character of the bass is ever so slightly "scoopy" for my taste. However, if installing HB1s and the appropriate Vol/Tone components is going to change the overall character of the bass too drastically, then I'll just stick with the original hi-gains and adjust mids at the amp.

Thanks

Get Dane Wilder (Aceonbass) to make a wiring harness for with 2 push-pulls for coil taps. It'll sound like a 4003 when you want it to, it'll sound like a 4004 when you want that. There'd be some cool places in between I'd guess/

Agreed, talk with Dane. He's the guy here. I had an HB1 on the neck of my '74 4001 for a while... but there were issues with balance to the terble pupand I didn't want to fool with. But my memory of the sound was good - as i recall it still had the the 4001 sound I loved. I now have a toaster and non-ric HS in it .... schweet!!! But seriously talk with Dane about it.. he knows the whole harness thing so well!

I would suggest Dane's take on this as well with one small tweak. When you coil tap, you can elect to leave either coil the active of the pair. Therefore if you like RWRP hum canceling, have one coil be the tapped one for one pickup and the opposite for the other. Then you can have a traditional RWRP setup any time, or the huge humbucker tone.

I have done this myself in the past the hum canceling works great. I am not sure what the best pots are to go with HB-1s if you primarily want to use single coil mode. I would say 500Ks and no higher. If you are into humbuckers more, maybe 1 Mohm. My take on using higher resistance pots is that it can make the tone very "brittle" or "glassy" at the extreme high end, especially in the case of volume controls. However you have to match the pickup to the control. A Toaster sounds great with "mere" 250K pots.

All my gear runs off of filtered power, and I don't stand in front of my amp when I play, so the RWRP thing isn't needed. That effect also goes away when you turn one or the other pickup volume controls down, so I'd keep it simple, unluess you want multiple push pull controls. HB1's are already out of phase from RIC single coils, which is easily remedied by reversing the red and blue wires. 500K CTS pots work great with HB1's. The pots I use are all within 10% of rated spec too.