Rickenbacker Glenn Frey p'ups

[LtKojak]

Hi guys!

a friend of mine just called me telling me that the bridge p'up in this guitar just stopped working:

http://www.rickenbacker.com/news_ite...id=34&news=old

I just can't find any info at all 'bout these p'ups. From the looks seems that they're epoxy-encapsulated, but I'm not certain.

Are any of you familiar with these particular p'ups or can point me to any source of info on 'em?

I'll really appreciate any kind of help I can get. He recently lost two family members to cancer in a short period of time and I'd really like to do something for him to cheer him up.

[soundmasterg]

These are a Rickenbacker-made humbucker that is similar to the current one they make...how similar...not sure. I've got a 1989 230 which has the same pickups and I refinished my guitar and when I went to put the pickups back in the bridge pickup was dead also. I looked closer and there is a circuit board on the bottom of the pickup. At one end are the 4 wire connections going into the bobbin and epoxy. One of these wires was broken, and I couldn't find the end so I used a soldering iron and melted away the epoxy down to the bobbin and finally found the wire end. The bobbins are nylon or something similar as they don't melt and are off-white. I haven't been able to fix mine yet though I have some ideas. I can touch a probe to the tip of the wire and to the other end of the pickup and I have a working pickup, but I haven't figured out how to solder to the tip of a 44 gauge wire....

Anyway, RIC doesn't make this exact pickup anymore, but I think their current model only differs in the mounting, though I haven't looked closely enough to be sure. I ended up emailing Mr. John Hall, the president and owner of Rickenbacker, and he found a pickup they still had around the factory and stuck it on ebay so I had to outbid everyone but I was able to win it. Unfortunately it is microphonic and was the last one they had....grrr.....so I have to fix the other one, which sounded better anyway. The one I won was newer..perhaps 1993, and was made better in that the epoxy went all the way up to the wires instead of leaving such a gap as my original pickup had. I will add that the black top of the pickup will melt and is some type of plastic. I can't remember if these pickups are called the HB-1 or HB-2 but its one of the two. You should go to the Rickenbacker company forum or the Rick Resource forum and get all the answers you want about the pickups themselves. You could also email John Hall and see if he can help you. There is a guy Sergio Silva who hangs out at both of those RIC forums, and is here also, though I haven't seen him post in awhile, but he is very well versed with RIC pickups and is in Portugal. He may be able to help you fix it, though I'd guess you'll have to do similar to what I have to mine. I'd look closely at the pickup with a magnifying glass and see if the wires on the end of the circuit board broke somewhere, because if you can find it without delving into melting the epoxy, that would be preferable. Pictures of the pickup would really help too!

Greg

[LtKojak]

These are a Rickenbacker-made humbucker that is similar to the current one they make...how similar...not sure. I've got a 1989 230 which has the same pickups and I refinished my guitar and when I went to put the pickups back in the bridge pickup was dead also. I looked closer and there is a circuit board on the bottom of the pickup. At one end are the 4 wire connections going into the bobbin and epoxy. One of these wires was broken, and I couldn't find the end so I used a soldering iron and melted away the epoxy down to the bobbin and finally found the wire end. The bobbins are nylon or something similar as they don't melt and are off-white. I haven't been able to fix mine yet though I have some ideas. I can touch a probe to the tip of the wire and to the other end of the pickup and I have a working pickup, but I haven't figured out how to solder to the tip of a 44 gauge wire....

Anyway, RIC doesn't make this exact pickup anymore, but I think their current model only differs in the mounting, though I haven't looked closely enough to be sure. I ended up emailing Mr. John Hall, the president and owner of Rickenbacker, and he found a pickup they still had around the factory and stuck it on ebay so I had to outbid everyone but I was able to win it. Unfortunately it is microphonic and was the last one they had....grrr.....so I have to fix the other one, which sounded better anyway. The one I won was newer..perhaps 1993, and was made better in that the epoxy went all the way up to the wires instead of leaving such a gap as my original pickup had. I will add that the black top of the pickup will melt and is some type of plastic. I can't remember if these pickups are called the HB-1 or HB-2 but its one of the two. You should go to the Rickenbacker company forum or the Rick Resource forum and get all the answers you want about the pickups themselves. You could also email John Hall and see if he can help you. There is a guy Sergio Silva who hangs out at both of those RIC forums, and is here also, though I haven't seen him post in awhile, but he is very well versed with RIC pickups and is in Portugal. He may be able to help you fix it, though I'd guess you'll have to do similar to what I have to mine. I'd look closely at the pickup with a magnifying glass and see if the wires on the end of the circuit board broke somewhere, because if you can find it without delving into melting the epoxy, that would be preferable. Pictures of the pickup would really help too!

Greg

Thanks for the tips, Greg. I don't have the guitar yet; I didn't want to take it on without any info. I don't want to say "Yeah, I can fix it", if chances are that I won't. He's not feeling very well at the moment and I don't want to make him feel any worse.

I've been to the Rick Resource place and seeing that the p'up's got a kind of computer board in the back didn't help me a whole lot. I don't feel very comfortable handling an iron with those things, as they can be finnicky at best.

If I decide to take it on, I'll keep the forum posted.

[soundmasterg]

I can send you some pics of mine if you like...the one I'm going to repair that I melted the epoxy back to the bobbin on....you can see how its made to a certain extent. They're really just like a PAF for the basic construction, with the exception of being a smaller and narrower footprint, using 44 gauge wire, using a samarium cobalt magnet, using the circuit board on the bottom, and using the epoxy. They're REALLY cool pickups for certain things and sound like nothing else.

Hope you get a chance to fix it for him.

Greg

[David Schwab]

Hey Greg, I'd love to see those photos.

[LtKojak]

Hey Greg, I'd love to see those photos

Yeah, me too!

[soundmasterg]

Well ok I'll see about posting some here for ya'all. I can email higher res ones...but let me see how the pics turn out first. I'll take them tomorrow.

More later.


Greg

[Possum]

...

Aren't those the ones that are completely epoxy sealed?

[David Schwab]

Aren't those the ones that are completely epoxy sealed?

Yeah, he said he melted the epoxy off with a soldering iron.


Greg, what's the DC resistance on those? And do you know about how many winds they used? Or did you just fix the connection?

[soundmasterg]

Yeah they are epoxy sealed, and I melted one corner down to the bobbin so I could find the wire end that broke.....I just am not sure how to fix it. If I touch a meter probe to the end of the wire and the other wires, I can get a full, working pickup, so the coil is still good if I can find a way to solder to the tip of a 44 gauge wire!!

The ones that were in my guitar (1989 230) were both 14.45k, and the new(used) one that is in the bridge is 15.22k, is microphonic, and doesn't sound as good as the former bridge pickup that is now in the neck. This guitar was my first guitar, and a lot of my songs were built around the sounds it made, so I NEED to fix it and get it back to where it used to be before I decided to refinish it.

The refinish was prompted because the switch went bad, and it was black acrylic lacquer over the original red RIC finish when I bought it, and the paints didn't like each other much and were checking and looking bad. So I stripped it down and repainted it in Blue Boy, a custom Rickenbacker finish for 2004 only. I put it back together and used discrete pots instead of the board mounted stuff that RIC used, but the replacement switch has a too short shaft. I haven't been able to find one with the correct length without having to order a whole bunch of them. but thats another issue.....

So the neck pickup is the one that needs the fix, and it is 14.45k DCR, 19.6k ACR @ 1k, 6.801 henries for inductance, 2.096 Q @ 1k, 44 guage wire, and I have no idea how many winds.....you would have to destroy the pickup to get it apart.....as it is, mine looks pretty shitty right now but you won't see it when its in the guitar I think.

Pics will follow soon.

Greg

[soundmasterg]

Ok, here are some pics. You can see in the corner there where I melted away at the epoxy....in the middle of that area is the tip of a 44 gauge wire that is flush with the bobbin surface that is the broken wire. I thought about using a dremel with a bit meant for cutting pearl inlays and carefully routing a small channel next to the wire tip to get a solder pool that I can connect some wire to.

You can see the blades on each side of the circuit board, and the samarium cobalt magnet is underneath the board arranged like a standard Gibson humbucker. While the epoxy is hard to melt, the black cover melts all too easily. Underneath the board on the connection end where the wires are, there is a gap about 1/8" high where you can see the 44 gauge wires going down into the epoxy. Anything can get in there and break a wire which is what happened to mine apparently. My RIC 230 is a 1989, which is the first year these humbuckers were made. The replacement pickup that I put in the bridge position is from around 1993 and they got rid of this gap and extend the epoxy all the way up to the undersize of those connections. A better design IMHO.

Greg

[soundmasterg]

A couple more pics.

Greg

[Possum]

....

I think I see Jesus in the epoxy, you should sell it on ebay for alot of money....

[Joe Gwinn]

You can see in the corner there where I melted away at the epoxy....in the middle of that area is the tip of a 44 gauge wire that is flush with the bobbin surface that is the broken wire. I thought about using a dremel with a bit meant for cutting pearl inlays and carefully routing a small channel next to the wire tip to get a solder pool that I can connect some wire to.

A classic approach is to tin the end of the wire sticking out of the epoxy, and to tin the end of a piece of similar gage magnet wire separately, and then solder them together with a small solder drip, the wires being parallel (not twisted together). A pool of solder may weigh too much, and will tend to tug on the fragile wire of the coil. When done, glue the joint and the new wire down with wax or tar.

[roundmidnight]

Dave - Resurrection via eBay, sounds like the only way out. This looks like open heart surgery to me.

Greg - Might be time to simply tear the sucker apart and see how it is made. If you can save the bobbins and magnet you should be able to eventually rewind it to get close to the original sound. Don't know how you will deal with the cover however.

Kurt