Ripper - problems?

[PhilT]

As I get  better acquainted with the Ripper, I think there might be a problem with the neck, just not sure if it's enough for a trip to the luthier, or even if he could do anything anyway, so would appreciate advice ...

Where the neck is set into the body, on the E string side there's paint missing at the join and if I press on the fretboard there I feel a small amount of give. Difficult to photograph, being all black, but here's my best shot.





I've got the neck straight and it feels ok to play, so should I leave it and see what happens, or get it checked out now before it gets worse?

[godofthunder]

 Sounds to me like the neck joint is failing, sounds worse than it is. A lot depends on how you are going to use the bass. If it is your main player, you are working/touring with it get it checked out. If it is one of many, do it at your leisure or bass is playable and you are happy with the action, I would be inclined to leave it so long as it isn't your go to axe.

[godofthunder]

Refresh my memory, did you just buy this? If so where? If you got it off of ebay and this issue was not disclosed I would talk o the seller and get some $ back.

[Dave W]

If the action is fine then it doesn't need a neck reset, at least yet. It's possible that the glue joint has come loose on the E side. Hard to tell without a luthier seeing it in person. It shouldn't be a costly repair.

OTOH in the earlier thread you said something about the finish on the back of the neck being odd, that makes me wonder if it's not hiding a neck repair.

[PhilT]

In that case I'll see how it works out in gigs over the next couple of weeks and probably take it to the repair man after Xmas. It was a private sale, not eBay, and the price leaves me some room to have work done on it, so that's ok. The back of the neck just needed a lot of cleaning, it's not sticky now, though very prone to collecting hand prints, but I put that down to it being black.

The other probable issue is position 3, which I believe is the bridge pup solo, is much weaker output than 1,2 & 4. The bridge pup, I was told, was a Kent Armstrong custom job based on the original spec. I assume both pups should be giving the same output. Might be looking for a Ripper pickup at some point.

[PhilT]

OK, I'm talking nonsense (again).

Position 2 is the bridge pickup solo "for maximum treble response". Sounds like maximum bass response to me, but I'm not very good at analyzing these things. Seems like a fuller sound than the other positions. Bottom line is the KA rebuild pickup seems ok.

Position 3 was billed by Gibson as "more bottom end response", but to me there's a significant volume drop and it sounds all scooped out, less of everything really. What should it sound like?

Edit: I've listened to the clips on flyguitars, doesn't sound much like that, but that might be equipment and playing technique.

[uwe]

Stock from the company position 1 was both pups full throttle, position 2 the treble pup full throttle, positon 3 both pups choked/filtered (mostly mids filtered away, but a signifacant volume decrease to pos 1) and position 4 both pups even more choked and filtered (mostly bass filtered away, hence this position sounds more like position 2 than any other, but has less volume as well).

[PhilT]

Thanks Uwe. That matches what I'm getting from pos 3, so it's right to spec, even if it doesn't seem very usable.

On Monday I put pos 4 through a Big Muff. The guitarist said it was "immense", when in his dictionary means "you're drowning my exquisite guitar work".

[uwe]

Conventional wisdom is that only pos 1 and 3 make any sense though I can see pos 4 working well with effects. On one of my Rippers, I've scrapped pos 4 for neck pup full throttle solo mode (the variation never offered by Gibson stock for inexplicable reasons). That sounds a bit like an angry Jazz Bass with just the front single coil running.

[PhilT]

With the band I keep coming back to 4, even without the Muff. So maybe the KA makes a difference. Short of buying another Ripper to compare, I'll never know. Sometime when I'm feeling adventurous I might have a look under the covers, though on experience so far it would be pos 3 in fro a resoldering.

[doombass]

Technically it goes like this:

Position 1 is both pickups wired in series which results in the fattest highest output.
Position 2 is indeed the bridge pickup only.
Position 3 is both pickups wired parallell (less output, not as strong bottom end compared to pos 1).
Position 4 is both pickups wired parallell and out of phase. A thin weird sound that actually works sometimes on the fretless version.

[PhilT]

The plot thickens, or maybe it doesn't.

The tone alternatives on this bass didn't match any of the descriptions I've seen here or anywhere else. On 1,2 & 4 it was harsh and aggressive, the E string overpowering, the other strings very bright, really not musical at all. On position 3 there was no power, no bass, no definition.

When I got it the pickups were very high, touching the strings. I screwed them down as far as I thought they would go. Then last night I took the pickguard off to have a look at the electrics and saw there was a few millimeters further they could go, so I screwed them right down, put everything back and - complete transformation. Tone now absolutely matches everything I've read, it's like a different bass, and much more to my taste.

So I thought, great, but I'm surprised small differences in pickup height would make that much difference. Having slept on it, I now wonder if, in poking about very tentatively in the wiring, I've accidentally fixed something else. The only thing I can think of is maybe a wire trapped between the pickguard and the body.

I wouldn't know stock wiring for a Ripper if it bit me, but I can see it's been extensively copper shielded and earthing wires have been added from one of the pots and from the back of the neck pickup (also shielded) to the cavity shielding. Soldering's not the best I've seen, but seems to be holding.

Any thoughts on whether this could be a pickup height issue, or what else I might have "fixed"?

[dadagoboi]

Pickup height is (one of) the most important factor in getting the most out of a pup.  Raise the pups back to where they sounded wrong and you'll find out if you 'accidentally fixed something else'.

[uwe]

Depending on which side of the fence you are on, the Ripper pups are so docile/lame or musical/true that I would not have imagined that they could have ever sounded harsh. But with their magnetic field not the most even, the closeness of the strings might have led to overpowering and/or uneven signals and to harsh distortion.

[PhilT]

Pickup height is (one of) the most important factor in getting the most out of a pup.  Raise the pups back to where they sounded wrong and you'll find out if you 'accidentally fixed something else'.

You're right, that's what I should do, in the interests in scientific truth. Yet the fear lurks in the dark recesses of my soul - what if I raise them again, and the sound goes harsh again, and I screw them back down ....

and it doesn't change. 

Even atheists can be superstitious.