Need help with RICKENBACKER COPY please (!)

[nopainkiller]

I bought this guitar a few years ago in a shop in east Vegas. It was owned by that guy from Mr. Big. I forgot his name. Has anybody seen one of these? 250 bucks. It's been re-wired all funny. The volume and tone knobs do nothing. And the small fader knob is now a main volume. It also makes noise and cuts out when I turn it. And on full volume it sometimes cuts out. I'm posting pictures of the wiring and the guitar and stuff. Its a little dusty in there- Should I just take it in and get new knobs or something?? From looking at this, could this be fixed back so the controls work like normal? Or would I even wanna do that? What kinda pick-ups are these??

Maybe I should just get it totally re-wired?? Around how much would that run me?? I got a soldering iron, but don't really know anything. Any comments??




hey you can see what I ate that day so far. I had lucky charms and del taco right there!

 

[nopainkiller]

more pictures

 

[nopainkiller]

tried to get good angles

 

[nopainkiller]

and some more

 

[nopainkiller]

couldn't get them all in one post

 

[nopainkiller]

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[nopainkiller]

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[danw]

Hopefully one of the resident experts will respond to this soon enough. But while you're waiting, I'll get you started.

These pickups appear to be humbuckers where one of the two coils has standard polepieces and the other has a rail (or two). Notice in the control cavity that there are 4 wires coming from each pickup, and that on each one, the black and white are just soldered together. This means the signal path goes first through one coil then through the other. This is the standard humbucker configuration. If they were single-coils, you would only have 2 wires coming from each pickup, and maybe a shield.

I see why the volume and tone controls don't work, as there appears to be no signal path through them. If you trace the wires from the jack, the positive wire goes through that 5th pot, then the selector switch, then directly to the pickups. At the very least I'd rewire it in a standard 2-humbucker configuration a la

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/schematics.php?schematic=2h_2v_2t_3w

If you aren't familiar with the site, you might spend some time browsing through the wiring diagrams at

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/

to see what your options are.

If it were me, I think I"d just replace all of the pots if you have one cutting in and out like that. Even if they're not all bad, you may as well just replace them all while you're in there. It's not that expensive to just replace the whole deal -- 5 500K pots from Stewart-MacDonald would cost you about 15 bucks plus shipping. I have no idea what this would cost at a shop.

What's that 5th pot supposed to do? Is it a blend pot for the middle position on the selector switch? I'd be interested to hear about that from the folks here who know a bit more about Rics. If so, you'll probably want a blend pot (apparently the internal construction is a little different), which is only a few bucks more expensive. See
http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electro...sh-Pull_Pots/Instructions/I-4137.html#details

for instructions and whatnot.

 

[nopainkiller]

thanks, i prolly gotta read that through a little bit. The little 5th pot is supposed to be a blender knob or fader wutever that means. But the way it's wired, it acts as the master volume.

 

[nopainkiller]

hey, are you sure it's 4 wired comming from the pick-ups?? I only see two black ones.

Do you know wut that red wire is? it's from the jack

 

[nopainkiller]

Oh, are the two wires comming out the same tube??? Crap, I'm gunna go take it apart again.

So...any idea why that dude would do this?? It was paul gilberts guitar before I got my hands on it. Maybe I shouldn't touch it?? But I want more tone control. It's boomy in the low end i think.

 

[danw]

Yeah, the two big black wires coming out of the pickups each contain four smaller wires, black, white, red, and green. You can see it in the first picture you posted.

I can only think of two reasons to bypass all the controls, which are (1) because they didn't work, or (2) because he didn't use them anyway. I'd suspect the latter in this case. Some people just prefer a master volume, a selector switch, and nothing else. I personally would rather have more knobs to fiddle with, but that's down to a preference issue. I'd wire it up for maximum versatility, but I'm not much for historical preservation. The point is it's your guitar; it should sound like you want it to. First figure out what you want, then see if you can make that happen.

Even when the tone knob is all the way up, a little bit of the higher frequencies will get lost, so bypassing the tone controls will also get you a slightly brighter sound (like having the tone knob set to "11"). The way a traditionally wired tone control works is to bleed off some of the high frequencies to ground -- so a tone control won't normally do anything to take away bass. I'd suspect your guitar has a larger bass response because it's hollow. It may also be in the design of the pickups. Some just have a lot of bass. If there's no EQ on your amp, you might look into an EQ pedal.

The bridge pickup should have much less bass than the neck pickup, just because of where it is on the string. The point of having that 5th blend knob is so that when you have both pickups running, you can tweak how much of each pickup is in the mix. If you want a brighter sound, you can tilt it more towards the bridge. If there's not enough bass or it's too bright, you can send the mix the other way.

You may also want to check out some general info on the workings of electric guitars. Check out

http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/I-4000.html

Oh, and the red wire from the jack. Does it go anyplace in the control cavity, or does it kind of disappear? If it's the latter, it's to connect the bridge to ground. This kills a lot of potential hum issues while your fingers are touching the strings.

 

[nopainkiller]

thanks, dude. hmm so it will be less bright if I wire up the tone knobs?? Will wiring up the volume knobs too do anything?? I want full versatility. Can I just get better pots? Will different pots affect the tone?

 

[nopainkiller]

alrite I think I'm gunna work on it. Hey, are the polepeices on my humbuckers adjustable? Can I bring them up on the middle strings?

 

[nopainkiller]

I read that whole thing on guitar workings. But I still can't find anything about wiring a blender switch with 2 volumes 2 tones, a 3 way switch, and 2 humbuckers! I can find 2 humbuckers 2 volume, 2 tone and 3 way, but that's as close as i can get.

Anyone know where I can find a diagram?? Anyone else even reading this??

 

[danw]

Me again. A quick search for "rickenbacker wiring" turned up this page:

http://www.rickenbacker.com/service_g_schematics.asp

I believe the one you want is this one:

http://www.rickenbacker.com/pdfs/19511.pdf

That should do the trick as long as you don't mind reading a schematic instead of a pretty picture. If you're not familiar with the diagrams, I can't imagine they'd be that hard to translate if you compare the generic 4-knob schematic to the corresponding Seymour Duncan picture-diagram.

I've never seen a fake adjustable polepiece. If they look like screws, they probably are. Try turning them.

Yes, the choice of pots can affect the tone. All pots send a little bit to ground, but pots with higher values will send less, hence brighter tone when the knob is all the way up. If you want to hear the brightest possible tones you can get out of your pickups, for purposes of comparison, you can just wire the pickups straight to the jack. I see where the ric diagram calls for some weird pots (330K?), but I'd replace them all with 500K. You could go up to 1M pots if you wanted the brightest possible tone; I don't think I'd hear the difference between a 1M pot turned all the way up and wide open.

You're not going to fry your guitar by messing with the wiring, unless you plug it into a wall outlet or something. Once you've got a good idea of the setup you want, just try it and see if it works. Worst case you just get no sound or all hum, and you have to try again. If you're not sure, hook it up with twisted connections and electrical tape, and if it works like you want, go ahead and solder it. You already have a picture of the current wiring, so you can always go back to that if whatever you're trying isn't working.

 

[stevieb]

You're not going to fry your guitar by messing with the wiring, unless you plug it into a wall outlet or something...

Only a little to add...

I would not be suprised if those wer NOT humbucker pups. Often makes of knock-off guitars make single-pole pups LOOK like 'buckers from the top. If they has three or four wires comeing out of them, chances are they ARE 'buckers. If only two- single coil fake-outs!

And I HAVE seen fake "adjustable" pole-pieces. The screws were real enough, but very short- they would not screw in at all, but two full turns out, they just fell out!

 

[Roguetitan]

the wiring is right I would say that one or more of your potentometers have gone bad or even the pickups are bad it is hard to say without having the instrument in hand to know for sure take it to a music store who works on guitars , they can tell you what is wrong with the instrument.

 

[nopainkiller]

Thankx for all the input so far.

nothing wrong with the instrument, it's just I have no tone control, and only a master volume where the blender should be. And the 3-way switch.

The pick-ups are real humbuckers, they have 5 wires actually. And they look like the seymour duncan drawing. Do all humbuckers have 5 wires? Mine has a green, black, white, red, and bare. The white and black are cut and taped together. What's that for?? On the symour diagram it's the red and the white that are taped!!!!!

I bought 3 500k pots and 1 250k jus cus. I also got a 500k blender pot. I am going to redo everything wut's it all gets here. I also got a soldering braid and some flux.

I thought about looking up the rickenbacker schematic, but rickenbacker pick-ups are singal coil.

And could someone tell me what raising or lowering the pole in the humbucker do??? I turned the screws and they work. I never knew I coudl do that.

 

[nopainkiller]

I don't know what to do since the humbuckers have 5 wires! where do they all go?! I can find the 4 knob diagram, but I don't know how to incorperate the blender pot. The one i got is just another plain 500K pot. Do I connect it to the + terminal on the blender pot?!?! I try to think it through but I can't figure out how I would wire it up!! GRaaah! It's mindbending!

Another thing, does my 3 way switch have 3 or 4 ports?? I can't tell. Do they all come with 3 or 4?? Or do they differ. I got alot of dumb questions, but asking them here has taught me more than searching google. or youtube.

I guess I will try to mess stuff around. i don't have a solder braid or flux yet though, but since i'm getting new stuff the only thing i can't mess up is the 3 way.