The Last Bass Outpost
Gear Discussion Forums => Rickenbacker Basses => Topic started by: Fretless on March 26, 2016, 06:04:26 AM
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At the risk of getting flamed and my credentials as a bassist being pulled and being forced under pain of death to play nothing but guitar for eternity, I have to ask: What is this bass cap in a Ric that y'all are mentioning from time to time? I have only played one Ric in my short but miserable life and loved/hated it with a passion! Loved the way it played, but hated the fact that whatever I did to try to get that punchy 'Ric' tone, I failed! Wore blisters on my index and middle fingers in a 2 hr jam session. Forgive my ignorance, but I gotta know! Curiosity is gonna kill me one of these days... :P
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I think you're referring to the .0047 cap that's positioned between the 3-way toggle switch and the bridge p/u. It cuts 50% of the low tone out of the signal for the bridge p/u only.
Lot's of 4001 owners will either physically remove it or "bypass it" by simply soldering in a piece of wire at the same contact points (switch and p/u).
When bypassed or removed, the bridge p/u comes to life adding lots more bottom end from the bridge p/u.
The newer 4003 models have the push/pull function on them to give the player the option of either setting.
TD
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It is a capacitor which cuts the bass of the treble pickup. Ages ago this was ment to be used as a solo kind of sound. A lot of people dislike the capacitor. I like it a lot when both pickups are engaged.
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RIC removed that bass-cut capacitor in 1985, around the same time they replaced the "hairpin" expansion truss rods with standard compression rods.
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Thank you all! I have never been able to afford a Ric, so to avoid excessive GAS, I tend to avoid music stores that sell them. Even so, I loved the action and feel of the one I did get to play. The guy that owned it practically insisted I use the bridge pup exclusively(better tone, saith he), and now knowing about the bass-cut cap, I wanna try another one! But, that will lead to me wanting one...my, my, we are in trouble, aren't we? :o
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Tried one when I was 21 (and settled for a 12 string acoustic - gift, with the cash, from my parents) but never played one since... same story here... always been just that step too far when the time was right...
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i had a couple 4001s but they were never comfortable to play with fingers. that big , chrome pick up cover? was always in the way. no problem with the tone.
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I think you're referring to the .0047 cap that's positioned between the 3-way toggle switch and the bridge p/u. It cuts 50% of the low tone out of the signal for the bridge p/u only.
Lot's of 4001 owners will either physically remove it or "bypass it" by simply soldering in a piece of wire at the same contact points (switch and p/u).
When bypassed or removed, the bridge p/u comes to life adding lots more bottom end from the bridge p/u.
The newer 4003 models have the push/pull function on them to give the player the option of either setting.
TD
Bypassing the cap with a piece of wire works great for this, but simply removing the cap will leave one with no bridge pickup at all! :mrgreen: If doing so I would suggest a piece of wire as a replacement for the cap. 8)
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(post two ;))
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At the risk of getting flamed and my credentials as a bassist being pulled and being forced under pain of death to play nothing but guitar for eternity, I have to ask: What is this bass cap in a Ric that y'all are mentioning from time to time?....
Never any harm in asking a question. The cap issue has been well known in Ric circles for many years, but that's just a small part of the greater bass community. No surprise that you didn't know.
i had a couple 4001s but they were never comfortable to play with fingers. that big , chrome pick up cover? was always in the way. no problem with the tone.
It is removable, you know. A lot of Ric players remove it, and now there are a couple of aftermarket covers on the market that fill the big gap around the pickup when you ditch the cover.
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I quite like the cap. :sad:
In my head the cap it is a throwback to the '50s and '60s, when guitar manufacturers figured that the consumer and artist would prefer to dial through preset tones, rather thanhave the straight outputs of each pickup and the ability to blend the full output of each at will. I sometimes get the impression that until Larry Dimarzio and company came along people didn't really think too much about the pickups and wiring in their instruments; unless something went wrong. Players back then seemed to consider their whole rig as one single entity, from bass to amp to speaker, though there were exceptions! Even Gibson's 'Rhythm/Treble' naming convention on their pickup switches doesn't allude to the actual function of the switch, and other manufactures like Burns, Hofner and co would use similarly named switches to route the pickups through a phalanx of capacitors and resistors to otherwise shape the tone before it even reached the output jack. Pickups lurked under chrome covers out of sight, and you couldn't buy replacements at your local music store.
In a weird way the trebly, bass-free tone of the bridge pickup with the cap would be more useful in the '80s with fusion players. Perhaps a slightly lower corner frequency wouldn't hurt so much either. I've also read that the cap makes the bass respond differently to different amplifier impedance, which may throw another curve-ball. If you were using the Ric-o-sound output and running in stereo then you could always back bass off on the bridge pickup amplifier, and it is always nice to have a full tonal palette to meddle with, rather than one that already has a lot missing.
I was playing a fretless 4003 at the weekend that had a faulty 'vintage' switch, so the cap was always in the circuit on the bridge pickup. In that configuration it was a total nuisance, as the bridge pickup solo'd was totally gutless. However in the middle position I liked the combination of fat, rubbery neck pickup and sizzling bridge pickup; again my personal preference. Without the cap I can't help but think that modern Rick pickups just sound too warm and bassy anyway. The bridge pickup, minus cap on a modern 4003, is bassy enough for most uses, testament of the fact that it is already in the 'sweet spot' the pickup of a Precision bass occupies. In that scenario the neck pickup is redundantly bassy, and doesn't really counterpoint the other pickup very well. By contrast the early '70s 4001 I played last year had a lot more snap and snarl to the pickups, and less of the dark, rubbery tone I associate with modern Rickenbacker basses. For being 'hi gain' they don't seem to push useful frequencies a lot, in my opinion.
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i removed them. still felt uncomfortable.
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i removed them. still felt uncomfortable.
Then it's just not for you. Nothing wrong with that.
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No other bass says 70ies rock and "I wanna be heard" like a Ric 4001/4003. It's an epitome of an era.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE1ct5yEuVY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrHpK_1iXH4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxMpCKzReIA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wv1ij7KxWc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XWxyQVqP-M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep7FWnbAaCI
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Nice how you managed to sneak Purple People in... :mrgreen:
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"Going Underground" sounds more like a Precision to me. Of course Bruce Foxton chose the Rick for the video.
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"Going Underground" sounds more like a Precision to me. Of course Bruce Foxton chose the Rick for the video.
Could very well be, although his tone sounds about the same whatever he uses.
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Bruce had an Ibanez faker early on, and a later Rick/Faker was modded with Precision pickups at the bridge position. The answer to what bass is used therefore may be both!
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I first found out about the cap 10-12 years ago and bypassed it in my 79 4001 and suddenly realized why i had gotten rid of the one I bought new in 1977, the bridge pickup had always sounded tinny to me and didn't mesh well with the neck pickup, one was too deep and the other was too tinny, with the cap removed they blend together very well and the bass has a lot more presence. I also remove the silly cover as it's right over the sweet spot for me.
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Same experiences as Bob for me, though I've had a few 4001/3 basses it never occurred to me that I could bypass that cap in the pre-internet days, and I'd always sell or trade the bass. Once I bypassed it on the '79 I've had for 6 years the tone opened up and it became a keeper. Such a wealth of info we have at our fingertips now.
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Here'a Chris Squire's rig rundown, at about 3:00" when he talks about his '64 199RM, he says, "...this back pickup was always never very good (...) you know, it has a very low output, very tinny sound".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsGjl6kP0SI
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I cannot watch the video here
in work on my lunch break. :P From memory, didn't Chris have the pickup re-magnetised at some point and found it was too strong? I recall reading that the bridge pickup on his bass was disconnected, quite purposefully, though some took this to mean that he never used a bridge pickup while others claim that it was only done temporarily when the pickup was too far degaussed to be useable. There is also the fan theory that his original bass had the bass-cut cap removed in the early '90s at least for a short spell. I saw this theory fleshed out on the YesFans page (I think) or possibly on here.
I enjoyed, and was frustrated by, the Chris Squire rig rundown video in equal measure when it came out. He either had the civil servant skill of saying a lot while saying little, and keeping some tone secrets to himself, or he was maybe not the gearhound that some of his fans are. The heart of his rig seems to be an old Rickenbacker and some old Marshall amps. His bass ran in stereo but somewhere was mixed back to mono before hitting the Marshalls, which were used basically to fortify the signal before it hit other amps in turn. He used a few battered old effects pedals, some of which were in the stereo setup at least. Some of his signal chain seems unchanged from the Syn days, and given his state of confusion about the extra pickup on his Jazz bass (where he must be thinking of his Telecaster bass) perhaps he really wasn't hiding anything.
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From memory, didn't Chris have the pickup re-magnetised at some point and found it was too strong? I recall reading that the bridge pickup on his bass was disconnected, quite purposefully, though some took this to mean that he never used a bridge pickup while others claim that it was only done temporarily when the pickup was too far degaussed to be useable.
As far as I can remember without googling it, this story is about McCartney's bass. The horseshoe pickup was dead, Rickenbacker tried to re-magnetize it but it was impossible so they installed a new high-gain pickup, and Paul disliked the sound. Later on the high-gain was replaced with a reissue horseshoe.
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That rings a bell. :mrgreen: Paul hacksawed the shoes from the pickup, killing it in the process.
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Paul hacksawed the shoes from the pickup, killing it in the process.
Oy!
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Paul hacksawed the shoes from the pickup, killing it in the process.
Can you direct me to a source? First time I hear this.
According to Arnquist who worked at RIC at the time, they replaced the pickup only after several attempts to recharge it failed, so the shoes had to be there when the bass came in.
"... At this point a group of guys in the factory had a meeting. This is what was talked about and decided. If we can't fix the 'dead', We can't just give him something off the rack. He is too important to just give what we had. Many of the staff felt we were making something that was less than what we should have been, so we voted on what to make. The first option was to make a split coil pickup. This was due to the favor put upon the Fender Precision Bass pickup. We rejected this as it would sound too different and would not have the classic Rick tone. Arlo in the part dept came up with a coil that was the same but different. He made a coil that was the same dimensions as was standard but with wider pole pieces and he wound it to about 9K. The standard screw /button tops were not used. Instead a similar looking screw with a wider shaft was bought and I remember when he came back from the supplier with them. We all got together to talk it over. (...) Richard Valesquez assembled the bobbin and Arlo wound it. I got the job of re-installing all of the hardware and making a replacement pickguard. We took a tracing of the hole pattern and I drilled them and went over to the wood shop to cut it out. Greg Renois cut out the outline for me and gave it back to me. I took it over to the finishing building and finished the edges. I hope that he likes what we came up with."
Here is another source (http://www.thecanteen.com/arnquist.html) where he tells the story: "... after sending the cobalt magnets out for charging we got the bad news that they would not hold a charge."
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I never heard that story either. Doesn't make sense. You'd have to remove the entire magnet to kill it. If you wanted to do that, it could be easily unscrewed from above and below, there would be no reason to hacksaw it off. I doubt that a common hacksaw blade could cut a cobalt steel magnet anyway. And while Paul apparently doesn't care about technical stuff, he must know that a pickup needs a magnet to work.
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Yep, there was no hacksawing. I've spoken with Mark at length about this and it's a fascinating tale about an iconic bass.
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The only references to Macca and 'hacksaws' I can find is from Talkbass: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/paul-mccartney-and-his-basses.856808/page-7 (https://www.talkbass.com/threads/paul-mccartney-and-his-basses.856808/page-7). That must be where I got the notion from. I read a book about Paul's '70s period and his general DIY outlook then (in all regards), so I took the TB post as gospel. Woops!
The image posted of Paul in that thread shows the bass with a bridge pickup surround that doesn't look like the horseshoe footprint anyway.