Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hi,

For comfort and tone purposes, I wish to remove the cover above the treble pickup of my 4003.

Please can anyone indicate me the most secure way to process ?

Thanks in advance,

A friendly hello from France,

Jean.

This is not a scarey thing to do really .

The strings need to be off the bass .

Unscrew the 4 small mounting screws that hold the plate onto the face of the bass.

Using a #2 phillips screwdriver (yes there are different sizes!) unscrew the height adjustment screws all the way .Make a note of where the washers and spring and standoffs are ,they will need to be reinstalled the same way ...with0ut that cover plate.

Then reassemble ,remount ,restring and readjust the height of the pickup.

As the neck pickup is not really an adjustable pickup ,you will need to adjust the treble side first and balance the volume with the treble side of the neck pickup ...do the same to the bass side .

Thats it ! Have fun doing this .Just be careful not to slip and stick something into the coil windings .

You really don't have to take the strings or mounting plate off the guitar at all. Just back off the two large pickup adjustment screws until the pickup drops off into the routed area. The cover can now be squeezed a bit and will angle out from under the mounting plate. Now you can grasp the pickup coil and pull it back into position to screw it back in place. Usually the springs stay lined up and there haven't been any standoffs or washers for maybe 15 years now. If the spring does slip, it's easy to reposition with some needle-nosed pliers.

This is something that with a bit of dexterity or practice only takes about 5 minutes.

To put it back on is another matter and you'll have to take the strings and plate off to do that.

Thanks to both of you,

Believing than the less you unscrew and re-screw, the more your guitar stays alive and well , I chose John Hall's method and removed the cover without removing the plate.

As I'm not very "handy", it took me a bit more than 5 minutes, but I succeeded.

Thanks again,

A friendly hello from France,

Jean.

My answer was for ALL the eras of 4000 style basses.

I find it easier to do it my way .And with less chance of troubles .

But this is sort of apples and oranges .Both work .

Given that Jean was specific enough to say he had a 4003, I think it was worth it to give him a more specific answer that would (and did) save him considerable time.

Actually even older basses, excluding those with the original metal covers, can be done as I suggested, although the needle-nose pliers and some dexterity are mandatory to line everything up. The standoff is actually unnecessary to retain on these older models when the cover is removed.

On all of these, I prefer to remount the cover under the strings to retain the shielding, which requires just a bit of drilling or grinding on the back of the cover to allow room for the pole pieces.

Oops,

I had no purpose to start any kind of polemic.

The only thing I wanted to say is that I am definitely no specialist of hand works, and the less I screw or unscrew, the best I feel For instance, when I decided to setup a Floyd Rose on my Hamer Centaura, I asked a luthier to do it. Any adjustment on my guitars or bass are also done by a luthier.

This is the only reason why I chose John's method. I could have called my luthier to remove the cover (as I did in the past with my previous 4001's), but it seemed stupid to me to call a luthier for a 5 or 10 minute handling.

Mark, I hope I did not upset you, and if I did I apologize because I did not mean to. I'm sure your method is also a good method.

A friendly hello from France,

Jean.

No you did NOT upset me. It is John's company after all and things have changed there since I left in 1976. Thank you John for getting rid of all those silly spacers on the bridge pickup.

Can I just chip in here and ask where the white plastic washers go - under or above the spring, above the plastic cover?
Also the two raising/lowering screws - what thread are they?

Ta from Lord of the Rings land.

I would place them up against the metal plate ,then the spring into the plate.

That did not come out the way I thought it would .

Do it this way ;

insert screw into metal frame ,
install spacer/washer (if it is tapered .wide side away from the plate)
next install the spring on the shaft of the screw ,
insert screw into pickup bobbin plate and insert screw.
Set pickup height.
Play .