Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I tried to post this yesterday, but i screwed up somehow ... so forgive me if it showed up in the wrong conversation somewhere.

I have a basket case 60´s 4005 .. no parts on board at all ..

I have scrounged up three toaster pickups .. two reissues the some one managed to rip the leads out of and may need rewind/rebuilding anyway .. and one older, 60´s I think, that was on a Gibson bass I got.

Here is my question:
what kind of toaster pickup was mounted at the neck position and how was it mounted ?

The 4005 body has minimal routing at the neck position, looks like enough for the leads alone .. was the pickup floating off the top (on those rubber donuts) as on a 330 guitar ? .. or were there toaster pickups with shorter magnets that were used on 4005 basses ?

If there were shorter magnet pickups, would grinding down the magnets on the reissue pickups when I have em rebuilt (by Jake Jones pickups) work ??

I know these may seem like sorta stupid questions to someone who has had a complete 4005 in the hands, but I havent found anyone in Boston yet with a 60´s 4005 to use as a reference ..

By the way, the carcass of the 4005 has the full width crushed pearl inlays and checkerboard rear binding.

As i progress in my rebuild I will be posting more questions on how to go about rebinding the neck (which I may have to do) and the soundhole ..

Thanks !!

Krishna Jain
Somerville MA

in the late 1960's the neck pickups in (and I believe this is 100% true ,but this is just a guess) ALL Rickenbackers had the short magnets .

This was to give maximum strength to the neck /body joint .

Somewhere in the 1970's this was changed back to the original method .

The 4001 neck pickup may have been moved (at least part of the reason ) for this same strength issue.That is conjecture on my part ,but it is probably true.

I'll bet that with minimal routing ,you won't have any difficulty with installing the long magnet pickup.

Hi Krishna, I have a 60's 4005 & if you want to email me , I send you back some photos
of how the pickups are mounted , or whatever else you need to make your '005 right,
Cheers, Jaime

Hi Jaime, thanks .. you´re just the sort of contact I need. I will email you when I get back "stateside", and send a few pics of my poor old project 4005.

Krishna

Jamie: Please send in some photos of your Model 4005 for posting on the Rickenbacker Registration Page. In the meantime, before your return Krishna, you can see some close up views of the Model 4005 here.

Mark,
Based on a number of late 60s Ricks I've seen over the years[including my 1st 360-12,a '68 model],the Neck PUs were the ones that had the short magnets, and the middle PU seems to be short typically as well.The bridge PU magnets are long, though.I think a lot of 50s Ricks,like Lennon's '58, had all short magnets on them.Maybe
Larry Wassgren could comment on this; I know he's very familiar with this.

Krishna,
If you are needing parts to put that 4005 back together,I have a nice solid stainless steel bridge assembly I'd sell you, though it's not inexpensive.I did some mod work for a guy some years back who was really into these, and he complained that the stock bridges sucked,and what could we do to make this better.I took the original Rick channel bridge to a machine shop and asked if they could mill a very similar unit out of stainless, and so we had a couple of these made up, and they worked great. He supposedly was
getting a 3rd 4005 and wanted to do this again, and I went ahead and had one more stainless bridge made up, and then I never heard from the guy again. So...anyone needing a great replacement
bridge for a 4005, email me. [email protected]

???o .. here is a pic of the top of the Rick 4005 with the "non-routed" neck pickup position:

http://us.f1.yahoofs.com/users/db87ec81/bc/Rick4005_Project/__hr_4005_PU_rout.jpg?bcfGo_7Az7bz9yj4

There are more pics of the bass and its various problems in the following yahoo breifcase:
http://briefcase.yahoo.com/valakrishna

folder: "rick4005_project"