'76 4001 Pickup Rewind/Harness Setup and Repair
Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2023 2:47 pm
Hey y'all.
Just want to get your thoughts on what I'm thinking about doing here with my '76 4001's pickups and harness setup.
Over the years, I've done some experimenting with different pickups (humbuckers from JBE and also Creamery) and different wiring harness configurations and pot values. I've even crammed a Nordstrand active pre in there!
Right now, however, I've been wanting to get everything closer to it's stock single coil setup with some possible tweaks.
Regarding the original pickups, I was planning on sending them over to Tom Brantley for rewinding and repair. First, I'm asking him to RWRP the bridge pickup for humcancelling. The other thing I'm considering is having him overwind them about 5% to boost the low mid presence and decrease the higher frequencies slightly while upping the output a bit (I might be completely wrong about how this works, by the way). I had asked him about the possibility of the magnets having degaussed and whether or not I should consider having them replaced. He said it was pretty unlikely, but he offered to replace them with custom magnets he had ordered for other 4001 restorations if I insist on having them updated.
Onto the wiring harness, I want to reconstruct the original setup the best I can (again with tweaks). The pots need to be repaired as some are way off spec with one or two having leads broken off. One pot doesn't work at all. I'm thinking that I may replace the wiper/lead parts with those from new CTS pots while keeping the original casings and shafts. However, it seems the values of these original pots are 500k all around. Typically I would have the volumes at 250k, so I'm not exactly sure what I to do here. In terms of caps, I'll be using PIO .047s with the .0047 possibly either bypassed or removed.
I realize that so much of this depends on what I want to achieve tonally. In general, I love the vintage Ric tone, but I prefer a little less treble/high mid with a more deep bass and low mid emphasis. Anyway, as I said, I just want to get the informed opinions from the pool of enthusiasts on this forum. Thanks, guys.
Phill
Just want to get your thoughts on what I'm thinking about doing here with my '76 4001's pickups and harness setup.
Over the years, I've done some experimenting with different pickups (humbuckers from JBE and also Creamery) and different wiring harness configurations and pot values. I've even crammed a Nordstrand active pre in there!
Right now, however, I've been wanting to get everything closer to it's stock single coil setup with some possible tweaks.
Regarding the original pickups, I was planning on sending them over to Tom Brantley for rewinding and repair. First, I'm asking him to RWRP the bridge pickup for humcancelling. The other thing I'm considering is having him overwind them about 5% to boost the low mid presence and decrease the higher frequencies slightly while upping the output a bit (I might be completely wrong about how this works, by the way). I had asked him about the possibility of the magnets having degaussed and whether or not I should consider having them replaced. He said it was pretty unlikely, but he offered to replace them with custom magnets he had ordered for other 4001 restorations if I insist on having them updated.
Onto the wiring harness, I want to reconstruct the original setup the best I can (again with tweaks). The pots need to be repaired as some are way off spec with one or two having leads broken off. One pot doesn't work at all. I'm thinking that I may replace the wiper/lead parts with those from new CTS pots while keeping the original casings and shafts. However, it seems the values of these original pots are 500k all around. Typically I would have the volumes at 250k, so I'm not exactly sure what I to do here. In terms of caps, I'll be using PIO .047s with the .0047 possibly either bypassed or removed.
I realize that so much of this depends on what I want to achieve tonally. In general, I love the vintage Ric tone, but I prefer a little less treble/high mid with a more deep bass and low mid emphasis. Anyway, as I said, I just want to get the informed opinions from the pool of enthusiasts on this forum. Thanks, guys.
Phill