Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hello everyone
A new Rick 4003 owner here and loving it, tone is awesome but I noticed the bridge pup is crooked.
Is it sort of normal/acceptable to Ricks or in case its not, is there an easy way to align it?
Thanks in advance!

It seems someone wants to sabotage the sale of that thumb rest thingy

Just kidding

New bass? Used bass? I'm really hoping you tell me you purchased it used because if it's new, that instrument never should have left the factory like that!!

How handy are you? If you remove the pick up and loosen the screws that hold it to you the plastic mounting base, you may be able to straighten it.

Sepp

Using this borrowed pic to show the bottom side of the pickup assembly, and the two screws that hold the pickup in place on the mounting plate. Loosen those, adjust the pickup alignment, and re-tighten. That should fix you up!

Kopfjaeger wrote:New bass? Used bass? I'm really hoping you tell me you purchased it used because if it's new, that instrument never should have left the factory like that!!

How handy are you? If you remove the pick up and loosen the screws that hold it to you the plastic mounting base, you may be able to straighten it.

Sepp

Sorry I should have mention that, it is a Nov2015 model purchased in 2016, bought it it "used" from a guy that played it for one hour max and it looks and feels brand spanking new!

And yes, I agree with you that is a very poor QC and not on par with Rick's reputation.It sounds great though!

I am handy and I can disassemble it easily but because I am new to Ricks I wanted make sure with the experts first

Thank you!

bigbajo60 wrote:Using this borrowed pic to show the bottom side of the pickup assembly, and the two screws that hold the pickup in place on the mounting plate. Loosen those, adjust the pickup alignment, and re-tighten. That should fix you up!

AWESOME thank you!

I thought it could be glued up or so but this will make the task easier!

A little disappointed with the Qc but loving the Rick so far!

Most of the pickups that Rickenbacker instal are like that , they think because it is under the pickup cover they can get away with it, it is just sloppy work, i have had to fix this for many Ric owners in the uk, when you loosen the screws it is quite tough when you straighten the pickup it has a tendency to go back where it was, so you need to kind of apply a lot of pressure to hold it straight whilst tightening the screws.

The two pass through holes in the magnet are off center. Although sometimes the pickup can be adjusted so it's straight, it's not always the case. This "misalignment" has no effect on the tone of the pickup whatsoever.

Thanks everyone, I was able to loosen the two philips screws and center it a bit, is better now but still off.

In fact wanted to disassemble the pickup from the plastic mount and widen up the holes a bit so I would have more room to center, however because I am not familiar with the wiring I did not want to totally unscrew the two screws underneath the mount.
Is it easy to separate the pickup from the plastic mount just removing the two screws. Could it break the coil wire?

I understand this does not affect the tone but it looks sloppy

Thanks!!!

aceonbass wrote:This "misalignment" has no effect on the tone of the pickup whatsoever.

+1

A bezel may make it less noticeable visually. Even misaligned, it will work with a bezel in my experience.

Another +1 for the bezel idea. It's the first thing that came to mind.

I had the same problem on my 4003 w. I wanted to put on a
bezel, but after removing the cover i found it the way
you did.
No way to fit the bezel.
I had to widen the holes in the baseplate to get the pick up aligned to fit the bezel.
Broke of the ground wire while doing that.
Resoldering was easy.
The pick up should'nt look like that on a bass guitar with that prize tag.
But i suppose it's your problem if you start changing things that the manufacturer
don't want you to.

Its a pretty blatant cosmetic QC issue, some have argued deliberate, or as some kind of compensation for even output. If so then the perfectly straight OEM pup I bought a while is "defective".