Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I just got a new 4003 a few weeks ago, and so far it is treating me decent. I've noticed that my new bass is not reacting well with my fuzz pedals at all though. I played it through a beat up green big muff and it doesn't sound anything like it does with my other basses. It sounds just like when the battery is about to die, lifeless and tone sucking. I thought it was the pedal but we have four or five muffs hanging around the practice space and all of them had the same sound. Has anyone else had problems with fuzz pedals? I'm getting nervous that there is something not quite right with my rick as my older 4001 never had a problem with a big muff. I'm playing through a GK rig, 700RBII and a 410sbx cab.

I dunno, I always liked Big Muffs but they simply suck all of the low end out of your sound. If you have the Green Electro Harmonix/Sovtek Big Muff you should put it on eBay. I bought my Big Muff new 7 years ago for $35 & just sold it on the Bay for over $100. The green ones are quite collectible now...you say that you have several?!

Sell 'em & get a Fulltone Bassdrive.
True bypass, NO loss of low end, nice fat (phat?) sound.

New Ricks definitely hold true to the HiGain promise of their pickups...I do have to make adjustments to my rig when I switch from the 4003 to anything else. As long as it sounds OK through your rig dry & your other effects it might simply be time to upgrade your pedal.

The 1990 and later 4003 basses have hot pickups ... as do the 4004 basses and the hottest are the 1990 and later 2000 basses ... basically the hotter the pickup the more it reacts to distortion ... with old 4001 basses you had to really crank up the distortion and overdrive to get a distroted sound ... those old basses were a good match for the old amps that had very little headroom ... but now days the passive pickups are hotter and active systems boost your signal a lot ... and when I make p-basses and jazz basses I use seymour duncan pickups wound to 11k to 20k ohms ... so a distortion setting that sounds good for a 7k ohm pickup will suck for a 15k ohm pickup ... and if you take a good setting for a hot pickup the when you play the weaker pickup through it you won't get much distortion at all ...

I sold all of my old basses with the weaker pickups so I make presets on my bass pod for hot pickups ... but I still notice a big difference from the 11k ohm pickup to the 15k ohm pickup ...

Posted by Chris...

"I dunno, I always liked Big Muffs"

Wait 'till some of the other Brits on the board get wind of this!

I know the big muff sucks the low end pretty bad, but for some reason I have always liked the sound of it with bass. I guess my friends agree because of all of them laying around the practice area. I know that sounds wierd but there are 3 bands practicing at this place. I just ordered a wooly mammoth fuzz and I hope it can live up to how nice it sounds on the website.

Jeff, I know the pickups are hotter than the older ones, I could tell that right away. Believe me I sat around for a good hour trying to get the settings right, but the muff barely would react to the rick, and anything it was doing was just odd. I plugged in one of my G&L's right after and I dialed in what I wanted right away. I don't want to deface it with new pickups, but if I'm not going to be able to play it in a band setting I guess it is either that or sell it.

John,
Could it be that the extra fatness of the new high gain pickups is causing the undesirable mud in the distortion? Were you using both pickups turned on full? The signal from the bass (neck) pickup could actually make the distortion effect sound ill-degined.

Have you tried cutting a little of the bass response (or cranking the "Tone" knob to give the pedals a little more highs to work with) on the distortion pedals or just used the treble (bridge) pickup alone? Mid high and high frequencies are easier to produce pleasant distortion from than low frequencies. That's why guitar distortion sounds are way easier to get than bass distortion.

Another possible solution: With the Ric-O-Sound output jack, I route my bass pickup signal to my Ampeg B100R in clean setting and my treble pickup signal, through my SansAmp Bass Driver DI pedal in distortion setting, to my Marshall JCM800 Super Bass amp+4X12 cab and always get a distinctively musical distortion sound with clean lows supporting it. If you distort the sum of the bass and treble pickups' signals from the mono Standard jack, chances are you'll get a sound that lacks definition, punch and power.

Just my very humble opinion.

Also make sure that if you are using an AC to DC adaptor that the milliamp rating is correct for the pedal. I have several 9 volt adaptors with different milliamp ratings.. one of my old pedals is very picky and sounds terrible if not using the correct one.

Hey Martin, I always preferred small ones

Yeah,I'm with you on that one Shaun

I think like other people here have intimated, you are overdriving your overdrive.

I love distortion on bass but I have never been happy with stomp box pedals ... they seem to work for guitar but not as well for bass ... back in the old days we would have 50 watt tube heads with a 2x12 or 2x15 cabinet and we would push the amp and speakers to the point where they would distort ... the problem with that approach is the distortion is dependant on volume ...

but these days I use my bass pod ... I use the model based on the Rat distortion pedal ... I set it on the lowest setting and that is enough to get some buzz and growl ... on bass a little distortion goes a long way ...

Power tube distortion is still the best sounding distortion IMHO.

Well, I did try it all different ways. I know when I have my G&L's cranked it makes the muff go crazy. Im pretty sure the pickups in the G&L are hotter than my rick and it works fine. I tried using different pickup configurations, all different settings on the muff, turning up/turning down, nothing seemed to work. The muff was powered with a battery and like I said once I switched over to another bass it started working just how it always has. I dont know if I can describe how it sounded, but being over distorted definately wasnt the problem. I play in a doom style band that is no stranger to major distortion, and playing without distortion just wouldnt work. It just seems really odd I couldn't get any sort of useable sounds out of it. Maybe it is time to start looking for an older model to replace my last one.

did you try rolling the neck pickup volume back a little ... when both pickups on a Ric are turned to 10 the Ric will have a cleaner, smoother sound ... when you back off the neck volume it gets more growl ... maybe you need to eq the bass differently and boost high and low mids and reduce the treble and bass ... maybe the strings are too far away from the pickups ... the closer the strings are to the bridge pickup the more growl you get ... is the action too high ... this can make a ric sound lifeless ... do you need new strings?

the 2000 series basses take to distortion quite nicely ... if you play heavy music these basses really will rock for you ...