Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hi;

I just picked up this 1988 360WB lefty in Ruby. Great guitar, though I’m still trying to figure some of it out. Definitely different that the PRS, LPs, and Strats I’m used to. All part of the adventure.

I’m curious though, if it’s possible that the pickups are out of phase. In the middle position, there’s a definite comb filter happening, really thin sounding, but it regains some “meat” if I back either of the volumes back a hair. Either pickup onnits own is fine.


Oh, and besides moving the control layout to be closer to a Gibson layout, it appears a previous owner decided to rwire the pots for reverse “lefty” rotation, but kept the normal log taper pots installed. I have a full compliment of Bourns pots enroute, 250K reverse log taper for the volumes, linear 500Ks for the tones, and a little switch-up - a 500K Bourns blend/balance dual-gang pot for a blend control (rather than the secondary nexk volume).

moff40 wrote: Fri Dec 30, 2022 11:14 pm ...

I’m curious though, if it’s possible that the pickups are out of phase. In the middle position, there’s a definite comb filter happening, really thin sounding, but it regains some “meat” if I back either of the volumes back a hair. Either pickup onnits own is fine.
...

That sounds like they are indeed wired out of phase.

That's a beauty, congrats!

doctorwho wrote: Sun Jan 01, 2023 3:54 am [quote=moff40 post_id=880879 time=<a href="tel:1672456489">1672456489</a> user_id=5866]
...

I’m curious though, if it’s possible that the pickups are out of phase. In the middle position, there’s a definite comb filter happening, really thin sounding, but it regains some “meat” if I back either of the volumes back a hair. Either pickup onnits own is fine.
...

That sounds like they are indeed wired out of phase.

That's a beauty, congrats!
[/quote]

Thanks! That’s what it was, but simply inverting the connections in the control cavity would have made the body of the pickup “hot”, so instead, I pulled the pickup out and swapped the wiring to the ends of the coil. That way, the body of the pickup stays grounded, but the coil is inverted. That said, the out-of-phase sound was pretty cool too, so I think when I install proper reverse audio taper pots, I’ll also install a push-pull for phase switching.