isaac42

So get back to 1975 and get us a clearer picture!

No idea. Good luck!

He says it has a problem: it works too well!

Specifically, the reverb crash is too loud. Y'know, like a real reverb crash. I hope he can find a use for it. The reverb itself sounds really good.

I did some looking. Seems there was a 200, as well as a 300 and 400. I got the impression that they were low end basses. Not bad, I'm sure, just not high end stuff.

16 hours ago, daddymack said:

and WHOMP...I did a quick search and Thomann has a Harley Benton version....dirt cheap!

Damn, that's tempting. I wonder how it sounds.

When I finished it and powered it up, the first thing I did was smack it to see if it crashed, and it does!

Ha! It works! Got it right the first time.

In fact, I made a couple of mistakes, but I noticed them and fixed them before I tested it.

I'm building a Summer Reverb pedal from Austin Ribbon Microphones for a friend.

I have the board populated. Just assembly from here on. Then I have to test it. I'm trying to think whether or not I've built a kit before. It's not uncommon to put it all together and have it not work. I hope that doesn't happen to me!

Should look like this when I'm done:

https://www.austinmics.com/reverb/

Not much of one, it seems.

18 hours ago, daddymack said:

looks good...neck dive much?

Not that I've noticed. Short scale, so there isn't as much neck to cause dive.

We've already established which bass I'll be using: my new Rickenbacker 4005XC. It has a great sound, it's beautiful, and he's fallen madly in love with it. Looks like this:

4005XC 01.dng

At band practice yesterday, band leader asked me to put the fashion show on hold. We have a gig coming up in two and a half weeks, and he'd like me to play the bass I'll be playing at the gig. Consistency and all that.

On 5/30/2023 at 7:19 PM, DeepEnd said:

The 3001 is interesting. I'd never seen one until now IIRC. Looking forward to the rest of the collection.

It's an interesting instrument. Bolt-on neck, unusual for Rickenbacker. Single pickup. I think of it as RIC's answer to Fender's Precision Bass. I've also read that it was intended to be a student model, less expensive. There was also the 3000, similar instrument but short scale. I've never seen one in person.

The 3001 has interesting wiring. Completely passive, it has both bass and treble controls, boost and cut! The way it works is, there's a resistor in series with the pickup that reduces the output. The tone controls are wired so that, in the boost mode, they bypass the resistor, boosting the output in that band. Cut is like normal tone controls.

My first Ric bass looked like this one, a 4001 MG. After I got the white 4000, I traded the 4001 MG for a Hagstrom 8-string. Probably not my best move, but hey, I was young. Besides, there's a Hagstrom H8 on Reverb for $2400, so I don't suppose I've lost much, pricewise.

For a long time, this one was completely stock, except for bypassing the bass blocking capacitor on the bridge pickup. I've made a couple of changes since then, though not including replacing the tone knobs. Not yet, anyway.

First thing I did was perform the RWRP (reverse wound, reverse polarity) mod. That involves taking out the bridge pickup, turning the magnet over (reversing the magnetic polarity) and reversing the pickup leads (effectively reversing the winding direction). What that does is, it turns the two single coil pickups into a humbucking pair, like on a Jazz bass. Makes for a much quieter instrument in electrically noisy environments. Other than that, it doesn't change the tone at all.

Later on, I did the "magnet trick." I took a rare earth magnet and put it on the bottom of the neck pickup. That increases the output of the neck pickup so that it can compete with the bridge pickup. The change in tone is very subtle. If anything, it sounds slightly better. Doing it with a magnet doesn't change the amplitude or frequency of the pickup's resonance peak much, if at all, so the pickup sounds pretty much the same.

Not too long ago, I shielded the control cavity with copper tape. That should help make it even quieter, but I haven't been in a noisy environment to test it.

19 hours ago, daddymack said:

not currently playable...because?

I want to redo the wiring. I opened it up to start, then got distracted, as I tend to do. Also has a bit of a buzz in the bridge.

2 hours ago, daddymack said:

so we get one pic a day?

Maybe. Maybe one pic each day I have a band practice. Or when I think of it.

This one hasn't made an appearance at band practice for a while. It's not currently in playable condition.

This one is a Rickenbacker 4000, White. I added a neck pickup, and the pickups in it are Seymour Duncans. It has some interesting wiring mods, too. That rotary switch where the pickup selector toggle usually is is a six-way, selecting both in series, neck only, both in parallel, bridge only, both in series, reverse polarity, both in parallel, reverse polarity.

We brought in a new band member not too long ago. She's fitting in nicely. A couple of weeks ago, she noticed that I was playing a different bass. Asked me how many I have.

"Oh, I haven't done the fashion show for you, have I?"

"The fashion show?"

"That's where I bring a different bass to each band practice until you've seen them all."

So the fashion show began. I started with my Rickenbacker 3001 Mapleglo.

The white one probably sounds better.
Certainly more versatile.
But the other has an undeniable cool factor!

As for the pickup, a guitar pickup in a bass is nothing new. Rickenbacker has been doing it since the 50s. There's really very little difference between a guitar pickup and a bass pickup. Number of pole pieces, mainly, and even that doesn't make much difference, if any.

This help?
https://digitech-x-edit.updatestar.com/en

Took it back. He put his old tubes back in and fired it up. That sucker cranks! So, whatever that wire was connected to must not be all that important.

I think that's pretty much exactly what he was selling it for, before the deal fell through.

Friend of mine has one. Has no real use for it, so He decided to sell it. Placed the ad, lined up a buyer. The day before the buyer was to come pick it up, he turned it on, and a fuse blew. Deal was off.

He asked me what to look for. I told him that the first place to look, in a tube amp, was the power tubes. Replaced them all, fuse still blew. Then I said to check the power supply caps. He said he did, still blowing fuses, so I said maybe it was time I looked at it.

"Oh, by the way," he says, "There's this loose wire. I looked, and there's only one place it could go. I tried that, and it still blew a fuse."

Intriguing. So I got the amp home and took a look at it. I found a shorted power supply cap, which is what I was hoping for. Easy to find, easy to fix, and cheap. If it had been the transformer, it wouldn't have been worth fixing. But that wire...

I looked over the schematic, and the node that the wire was attached to had five connections. All five were properly made. Was there a sixth connection not shown on the schematic? I looked at the spot he thought it should connect to. That location had all of its connections made. Besides, it connected to the grid of a tube. Applying 400 volts to the grid is not usually a good idea.

I was stumped. So I replaced the cap with one I had laying around, and brought it up to full power over several hours. Plugged in a microphone, and it worked. Plugged my bass into all eight inputs, checked the operation of all controls (except the reverb, as I don't have a reverb tank handy). Everything works.

So what is that wire? I have no idea. I taped it off. Damnedest thing.

20 hours ago, Michael Britton said:

Isaac,

So far I only have about $100 invested in this project, so I can afford to add a new pickup. Having said that, there are a plethora of H/Bs that claim to be tube amp "fat". The hardest part is making the choice.

Well, I can't help you choose. I'm just a bass player. What do I know from guitar?

FWIW, it's pretty easy to reduce the brightness of a pickup. Lower resistance on the volume control potentiometer will reduce the amplitude of the resonance peak, reducing the brightness. A capacitor to ground will lower the resonance frequency, making it less trebly, more midrangey. Either is easily done, and easily reversed if you don't like the effect. Either is way less expensive than a new pickup. OTOH, neither will make a bad pickup into a good one. Still, might be worth a try. I made a test box to put different caps in the circuit. A similar box could be made to put resistors in parallel. Two boxes, or one with two switches, and you can test the effects of both.

16 hours ago, Michael Britton said:

Thanks, I have that schematic saved. There is a lot of talk about shielded cable, but this guitar was originally wired with regular 26 ga plastic insulated wire.

I understand that the thicker the wire, the less resistance. I have a ton of 16-18 ga wire from my job with a big ag co. Can I use that?

You could, but you don't need to. The resistance of the wire is completely negligible in this context. Simple, solid hookup wire is up to the task.

Shielded wire is often used from the pickup to the controls, but not always. In my experience, shielded wire is rare inside the control cavity. Many people will shield the cavity itself. Odds are you won't need to.