Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

So I decided to strat shielding my 4003 bass by first shielding my treble pickup cavity.

The gray lead wire that comes from the control cavity snapped off the treble pickup when I had it out of the cavity. It is still connected to hot with the shrink wrap in tact. I guess it was the ground wire from the gray wire that attaches to the grounding lug on the bottom of the pup that snapped?

The attached pic shows it. Do I need to reattach, or will it be fine without it?

Is this an easy fix for someone who never soldered before, or should I just take it to my favorite local repair man?

Also, is it ok to leave the bass unstrung while I wait to get in to the repair guy this week, or should I put the strings back on right away?

Your ground/shield wire has broken and needs to be resoldered. You'll need to remove some of the grey vinyl insulation to expose some of the shielding. This will need to be soldered back to that eyelet. I hate the way RIC does this, as there are better ways of wiring leads to the pickup that are less fragile.

Thanks.
I want to learn to do my own soldering one day. But I want to get it up and running fast so I will try to take to my tech tomorrow.
In the meantime I will start reading up and getting the stuff I need to do my own soldering. I can do alot of my own stuff on bass but never learned about electronics. Maybe next time I need to solder I'll try myself.

You got that right Dane, fragile is a kind word. I did the same thing when I removed the pickup surround on my new 4003s, it was barely soldered at all.

Doug Lewis of the Peppermint Rainbow is the owner and Luthier at Fair Repair in Glen Burnie, Maryland. He's taken care of all my basses for years. So he fixed it up for me today. He lengthened the gray hot/grnd wires and reinforced them so they shouldn't break again.