Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Can someone explain how the controls and the two output jacks are supposed to work?

I've seen some stuff on this forum but it doesn't seem to gel with what my guitar is doing.

Should be the regular jack sends a mix if you only use that jack. If you plug in two cables, the regular jack sends the electric and the "other" jack (which on most deluxe models would have been Rick O Sound) sends the piezo. And then there is a weird thing you can do where you ONLY plug a cable into the "other" jack and get a mix, but with a darker tone. Is yours not working that way? Here is the old version of the manual, from when it included PZ controls, from the internet wayback machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040429081 ... ntrols.htm

...oh and here is a video I made a few years ago. You can hear the two signals on either side of stereo.



...and the guts...

IIRC, the 380L PZ I had appeared to have the piezo wired out of phase with the other pickups, so I got better tone when they weren't blended.

I've read before that it's the nature of magnetic and piezo wavelengths to be 90 degrees out of phase. I think JH may have explained that here before, but I can't find it. You don't get the full cancellation of a 180 degree shift, but there is still a significant drop at the midpoint of the 5th knob.