Moderators isaac42 Posted July 8, 2016 Moderators Share Posted July 8, 2016 New Rickenbacker 4003W arrived today, right on schedule. I have a gig tonight, so no time for a full report. Details tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted July 8, 2016 Members Share Posted July 8, 2016 You'll have to get really stoned now... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mikeo Posted July 8, 2016 Members Share Posted July 8, 2016 Hello tomorrow How'd the new Ricky do? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted July 8, 2016 Author Moderators Share Posted July 8, 2016 Oh, I didn't take the new one. I've learned over the years that it's usually a bad idea to use a new piece of gear on a gig without using it a few times at rehearsal. Besides, it was an "unplugged" gig. Acoustic instruments only. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted July 9, 2016 Author Moderators Share Posted July 9, 2016 And now for the "Pics or it didn't happen" crowd... pics! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted July 9, 2016 Author Moderators Share Posted July 9, 2016 i have to say, I wish the front looked like the back. The back is beautiful. The front? Well, let's be generous and say less so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members lug Posted July 10, 2016 Members Share Posted July 10, 2016 Gorgeous! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted July 11, 2016 Author Moderators Share Posted July 11, 2016 Looks beautiful, sounds beautiful, and plays like buttah! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted July 11, 2016 Author Moderators Share Posted July 11, 2016 Took it to rehearsal this afternoon. Notes. Complete consensus: it's beautiful. It sounds great. Even tuned to E♭, there was very little fret buzz. Tons of low end, brilliant highs. In short, the exact kind of wide range, hi fidelity sound I expect from a Ric. I didn't mention before that it came with roundwound strings. That surprised me a bit. I didn't know Ric was shipping them that way. The pickups are surprisingly hot. I haven't done an A-B comparison with any of my other Rics, but my impression is that they were noticeably hotter than the SDs on my 4000. One of these days, I'll do a direct comparison with my old 4001 with stock high gains. As the rehearsal went on, the smile on my face just kept getting bigger. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted July 11, 2016 Members Share Posted July 11, 2016 Congratulations and Happy New Bass Day. Glad you're liking it. Sure is purty. I think that's the first Ric I've seen with a maple fretboard. Then again, I probably just haven't seen enough Rics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted July 11, 2016 Share Posted July 11, 2016 i have to say' date=' I wish the front looked like the back. The back is beautiful. The front? Well, let's be generous and say less so.[/quote'] But if the two were reversed, you'd see a lot less of that beautiful grain due to the pickguard. It's a lovely bass - congratulations! May you enjoy it for many, many years! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted July 11, 2016 Author Moderators Share Posted July 11, 2016 Congratulations and Happy New Bass Day. Glad you're liking it. Sure is purty. I think that's the first Ric I've seen with a maple fretboard. Then again' date=' I probably just haven't seen enough Rics.[/quote'] No, I don't think so. The W (walnut) series may be the first Rics even made with maple fretboards. They may also be the first made without a glossy nitrocellulose finish. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about that, either, but after playing the bass for only a few hours, I can say I like it a lot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted July 11, 2016 Author Moderators Share Posted July 11, 2016 But if the two were reversed, you'd see a lot less of that beautiful grain due to the pickguard. It's a lovely bass - congratulations! May you enjoy it for many, many years! That's exactly what the guys in the band said! But I don't want the sides reversed. I want them both to look like the back. I imagine I'll get used to it. Everything else about the bass is so nice, quibbling about the vagaries of natural wood grain is a bit petty. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted July 11, 2016 Share Posted July 11, 2016 No, I don't think so. The W (walnut) series may be the first Rics even made with maple fretboards. They may also be the first made without a glossy nitrocellulose finish. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about that, either, but after playing the bass for only a few hours, I can say I like it a lot. I'm pretty sure I've seen other Ric basses with natural finishes without the gloss finish. Didn't some of the Rickenbacker Cheyenne and Laredo models have those features? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted July 12, 2016 Author Moderators Share Posted July 12, 2016 I'm pretty sure I've seen other Ric basses with natural finishes without the gloss finish. Didn't some of the Rickenbacker Cheyenne and Laredo models have those features? Not that I'm aware of, but I'm not as familiar with those as I am the other 4000 series basses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted July 12, 2016 Author Moderators Share Posted July 12, 2016 Today I took my old stock 4001 (well, mostly stock) to the studio along with the new 4003W. As I suspected, the 4003W has notably higher output. I think it's the pickups, but I suppose it could be the strings. If it is the pickups, are they wound hotter, or have the magnets lost strength on the old bass? If the latter, is there any convenient way to bring the strength back up? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted July 12, 2016 Members Share Posted July 12, 2016 It's unlikely the magnets have lost any appreciable amount of strength so I don't think you can get your old pickups up to the same output level as the new ones. As for the strings, unless they're profoundly different I can't see that being a factor either. I think it's just a matter of the new bass having hotter pickups. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted July 13, 2016 Author Moderators Share Posted July 13, 2016 It's unlikely the magnets have lost any appreciable amount of strength so I don't think you can get your old pickups up to the same output level as the new ones. As for the strings' date=' unless they're profoundly different I can't see that being a factor either. I think it's just a matter of the new bass having hotter pickups.[/quote'] That's what I thought, too, and that's what it turned out to be. I took some measurements, and got some surprises. Looking at the schematics, I figure that, with the volume control all the way down and a single pickup selected, I'll be measuring just the resistance of the volume potentiometer. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. The 4003W measures 161.9Kohms for both pots. Strikes me as being quite a bit on the low side, but nicely matched. My Mapleglo 4001 (January 1979) measures 95.8K and 95.3K, neck and bridge respectively. That strikes me as being far lower than they should be. Then, turning up the volume control, I measure the pickup in parallel with the volume pot. 4001 reads 7.68K and 7.39K. The pot resistances are more than 10x the coil resistances, so can safely be ignored for my purposes here. Same for the 4003W, which reads 11.04K and 10.88K. So the 4003W pickups are significantly hotter than the 4001 pickups, as I suspected. The low values on the volume pots are consistent with my 4004Cii, in which the single 330K volume pot measured around 180K when I took it out. I'm seeing a pattern here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted July 20, 2016 Author Moderators Share Posted July 20, 2016 Took the 4003W to rehearsal with my third band this evening. It's unanimous: the bass is beautiful and sounds great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted July 20, 2016 Members Share Posted July 20, 2016 I'll second what Deep end says on the magnets. They have an incredibly long half life and only loose a small percentage of power after they are made and take hundreds of years to discharge. You'd have to stick a pickup in a very strong AC field to demagnetize them and that's unlikely to happen with them in the bass. As par as pots go, you get a proper off them using a guitar cord because you're measuring between the center sweeper and one outside leg, and the pot has other components in parallel to it so you wont be able to read exact values with the pickups connected. You have to disconnect the pickup form the outer leg, then measure across the two outer legs with the pot cranked down. I doubt their reading would be less then 250K with the pickup disconnected. If you want to get the two basses to match in output better, you can install 250K pots in the hotter bass and 500K or 1M in the weaker one. As is, your hotter bass may have 500K. You should see stamps with the resistance values on them so its really not necessary to test them. The most they may be off is maybe 10%. Its not like pots loose or gain resistance. They simply fail when the carbon trace wears through and get scratchy. My Rickenbacker guitar which looks like the 4000's. It has single coil black pole pickups. The output is lower then many other pickups but that's exactly what gives it those clean jangly tones. Pickups with more winds and the same magnet strength loose highs and lows and wind up with more midrange as a tradeoff for the stronger signal. Though it might be less noticeable with a bass pickup, I'd think the bass with the hotter pups might have less high end then the one with vintage winds. You may want to keep them as is so you have both options. I don't know what other pickups Ric uses these days. I know they had the toaster type and the ones like mine. Both were single coil designs. I don't think they have any HB designs which might account for a higher output, but They do have the vintage and high output singles. Ric doesn't put allot of detailed info on their site because they try and keep people from Pirating their designs. I suspect one bass has High output pickup and the other has vintage. If you notice a difference in DC resistance it likely has more winds. Walnut is a brighter sounding wood compared to maple. They may have found their standard pickups made the bass sound too thin so the higher output pickups would darken the tone a little. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted July 20, 2016 Members Share Posted July 20, 2016 Took the 4003W to rehearsal with my third band this evening. It's unanimous: the bass is beautiful and sounds great. Heck, I could have told you most of that just by looking at it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted July 21, 2016 Author Moderators Share Posted July 21, 2016 It's well documented that Ric pickups from the 70s are weaker than recent ones, so this doesn't come as any huge surprise. The hotter pickups on the new bass really ought to have less high end, but frankly, I'm not hearing it. Maybe if I used a more trebley setup. What I have noticed with the new bass is that the higher output can overdrive the input stage of an amp, causing a bit of distortion on the attack. Didn't happen at Tuesday's rehearsal, but I don't play as aggressively with that band. The low resistance measurements on the pots still concerns me. Note that above I stated that the presumably 330K pot I removed from my 4004Cii measured around 180K. That's completely out of the circuit. So the low readings on the pots still in the bass are consistent with that, and the higher readings for the new bass indicate that it is more in line with what it is supposed to be. I do think that, if I replace the low-reading pots on the old bass with higher resistance pots, I might notice more of a difference on the high end. Maybe not with the Sunn 200S, though. Those 15" JBL drivers start rolling off at 2KHz. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted July 21, 2016 Members Share Posted July 21, 2016 I don't know how much difference you'll notice. Here's a set of measurements with a guitar pickup: [ATTACH=CONFIG]temp_117850_1469137144964_581[/ATTACH] Even going from 220K (green trace) to 1Meg (tan trace) only yields an extra 6dB at the resonance frequency of 4KHz. Given the response of your JBL's, unless your pickups have a very low resonance frequency you probably won't hear much difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted July 22, 2016 Author Moderators Share Posted July 22, 2016 Yeah, I don't know, either. I'll probably give it a try at some point, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members brikus Posted July 30, 2016 Members Share Posted July 30, 2016 Congrats Isaac! As mentioned in my other thread about the pb (to which I added the end of the story), I tried the black 4003 they had at that lefty store in Paris on Thursday. Not quite what I'm after, but definitely a lot of charm and a ballsy sound, so no wonder people love them, and no wonder you went for it. Congrats again and enjoy this pretty baby to the fullest! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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