Interesting way to insulate your pole screws...

[David Schwab]

This might be old news to some, but it was a real surprise to me. I own two 1974 Rickenbacker 4001 basses, and I had long ago changed out the bridge pickups for Hi-A pickups.

This was necessary on the first bass because I broke the coil when trying to remove the tape to see if I could rewind it hotter...

Long story short, I'm currently restoring the older of the two basses to as close to stock as is possible. So I have the bridge pickup of that bass which has long stopped working. Probably sat in a box too long getting bumped around. No problem, I'll just rewind it.

So I started pealing off the black electrical tape, and then I cut off the wire. I was curious what was under the wire... I figured they probably taped off the four slot heat screws that serve as the pole pieces.

So finally I get all the old 44 gauge wire off, and just as I expected, I see black electrical tape. But... this is interesting... there is a screw coming up from the bottom flatwork, that has been filed flat on the side facing out, and has a blob of solder on it. This was where the start of the coil was connected! It runs out the bottom of flatwork, and connects to a white wire which runs out of a hole in the big rubber magnet. This was a surprise.

The black electrical tape runs behind the screw, and there was another piece taped in over it after the connection was made.

I notice some of the magnet wire was going behind the tape... seemed there was some room there. So next I found the end of the tape and started pealing that off so I could see the poles....

Surprise! They wrapped the poles with foam rubber! The foam had some kind of shiny tape backing, so it must have been adhesive backed. It's about 3/16" thick, and was wrapped once around the pole screws, and behind the screw used as the start wire contact. Then it was wrapped with black electrical tape, and the coil was wound on that.

The last thing I was expecting was foam rubber under the coil!

Its a very unusual pickup.

Here's some photos. (I left the images large so you can see the detail... so warning to those on dial up connections... they are about 500K each)

[Spence]

Somethings never change. They still make pickups like that now only they have dispensed with the foam. I'm not sure but I suspect that adhesive backed foam was a type of draft excluder popular in the seventies for window and door frames.

[David Schwab]

What do they use now? Do they just tape the screws, or do they use something else as a spacer?

I think I'm going to put it back together more or less the way it was. I might wind it a little hotter though. It's pretty useless by itself unless you bypass the bass cut cap.

I have two working toasters, but I'm not about to take them apart! They have the 6 long magnets sticking out the bottom.

I think it's a real shame that pickups have more or less standardized on Fender and Gibson designs. There was some really cool stuff out there, like Shergold/Hayman Re-An pickups, Burns, etc. It pains me to see new Hagstroms with Gibson style humbuckers!

[SkinnyWire]

Pretty cool design. Is there an advantage to some of the designs you mention over standard Gibson/Fender fare? I know zippo about bass pickups.

[David Schwab]

I was talking pickups in general. I've had some cool guitars over the years with different pickups.. like DeArmond gold foils that sound like single coils, but not like Fenders, and my Hayman had very bright humbuckers that had their own tone.

[Possum]

toasters...

I rewound a couple toasters for Greg Simon, it has the same filed screw inside with a solder blob, none of them had any tape over the solder joint and were wound real sloppy. You'd think they would tape the solder joint, big blobs of solder making a large bump but they don't....

[Spence]

They don't bother covering the poles anymore.

[Instigator]

That's a very cruddy 1972 or 1973 Rickenbacker 4001 treble high-gain pickup. Earlier (1969/1970) ones had that strip of foam over the polepieces as well, the purpose of which remains unclear to me. If you're planning on rewinding that pickup you wanna get rid of the foam, believe me. Just tape the
polepieces. Better still, wrap a strip of paper (two or three turns) around them instead and apply some sort of lacquer thereon. That way the coil can be wound tightly over the polepieces, something you can't achieve with that stupid ) strip of foam standing in the way, and it will also become possible to adjust all four polepieces in height somewhat without killing the coil instantly ;o) Also, getting rid of that pesky negative terminal is a good idea. I've rewound many such Rickenbacker pickups. No doubt they'll perform better than originally once you eliminate said design flaws. Cheers!

[David Schwab]

It's a '74 bass with '73 features... it has the checkered binding, split bridge, and full width fingerboard markers. My other Ric is also a '74, but has the newer features.

I guess it's whenever they stuck the jack plate on the bass.

[Instigator]

Hi David. Well, I still say you got an early/mid 1973 4001 with period-accurate appointments, not a one-of-a-kind 1974 4001 with too highly irregular features for a '74 4001 bass. Maybe someone substituted the 1974 jackplate currently on it for the original, more "valuable" 1973 one? Can you check the date code(s) on the pot casings?

[David Schwab]

Hi David. Well, I still say you got an early/mid 1973 4001 with period-accurate appointments, not a one-of-a-kind 1974 4001 with too highly irregular features for a '74 4001 bass. Maybe someone substituted the 1974 jackplate currently on it for the original, more "valuable" 1973 one? Can you check the date code(s) on the pot casings?

I've heard '74 was the change over year. It was made in March, while the other was made in August.

I could have read the pot codes, but the original electronics are long gone! Well some odds and ends are in my parts boxes.

[Instigator]

Well, I'm afraid someone has told you wrong. 1973 was the actual changeover year. By the last months of that year, 4001 features such as toaster neck pickup, block binding, full-width fretboard inlays, "split" tailpiece AND treble pickup with screws for polepieces had been discontinued. I'm betting you got a March 1973, not 1974, 4001. As for your other 4001, August 1974 sounds difinitely like its correct date of manufacture.

[David Schwab]

Well, I'm afraid someone has told you wrong. 1973 was the actual changeover year. By the last months of that year, 4001 features such as toaster neck pickup, block binding, full-width fretboard inlays, "split" tailpiece AND treble pickup with screws for polepieces had been discontinued. I'm betting you got a March 1973, not 1974, 4001. As for your other 4001, August 1974 sounds difinitely like its correct date of manufacture.

Yep... you are correct, just checked it... March of 1973. The serial number starts with "MC". I don't know why I thought it was a '74. My August bass also has a toaster neck pickup, with the closer spacing, and the long alnico magnets. I don't have that jack plate handy, but now I remember it's a MH, so it's also a '73. I'm not sure why I thought they were '74's. I think that I used to think they were '72's, and then realized I was a year early.

Another interesting difference is the top two tuners on the March bass on aligned on an angle, and they are stright across on the Aug bass.

They both have the walnut stripe up the middle. The march bass has a the normal bubinga fingerboard, but the Aug bass has a much lighter orange colored wood that looks like Tulipwood. The body is also wider on the Aug bass.

[Instigator]

Hi again, David. Thanks for the update, as it were. March '73 is now consistent with the features you describe for the older 4001. As for the August '73 one, or for any 4001 manufactured at that particular point in time, all "old" features but the toaster pickup and the block binding had been discontinued by then. You know, my "motto" when it comes to "reviving" a dead pickup on a '70s 4001 basses is, keep it cosmetically unchanged, but otherwise improve it to make it much hotter. It's worth the while. Thanks for reading.

[David Schwab]

Hi again, David. Thanks for the update, as it were. March '73 is now consistent with the features you describe for the older 4001. As for the August '73 one, or for any 4001 manufactured at that particular point in time, all "old" features but the toaster pickup and the block binding had been discontinued by then. You know, my "motto" when it comes to "reviving" a dead pickup on a '70s 4001 basses is, keep it cosmetically unchanged, but otherwise improve it to make it much hotter. It's worth the while. Thanks for reading.

Hey Sérgio, are you the same guy that was rewinding pickups over at the RicResource forum?

I changed all the electronics on this bass a long time ago. I love the Ric tone, but I never got enough bottom end, and the treble pickup with the cap was pretty useless by itself. First I put a Hi-A at the bridge, and later changed the toaster for an early Carvin pickup. later I put the toaster back in, and then I replaced that with a Gibson Sidewinder.

I actually wrote to Seymour Duncan back when he was just rewinding pickups and asked if he could rewind them, and make a stacked humbucker out of the toaster. I got that idea from Les Paul Low-Z pickups.

He wrote me back and said the Ric design was very rudimentary, but he could wind them hotter.

This was all before email of course!

Now I just need to find a bridge unit for the "split" tailpiece. I seemed to have lost mine. I have the tailpiece, and not the bridge. Maybe I'll just make one. I do have the newer bridge from the other bass though.