The Cheats Guide to getting a Rickenbacker Bass Sound on a Budget. Tips, Tricks ( Heated Debate).

Bridgehouse

TheGuitarWeasel said:

Bridgehouse said:

@TheGuitarWeasel - looks like I’m your new marketing department

I think some goodies can be arranged for putting me up to this :-)

Ooooh goodies

Funkfingers

vale said:
Funkfingers' experiment.

The comparison recording has served its purpose and been deleted from SoundCloud.

No Precision Bass guitars were harmed in the making of my recording. Indeed, no Precision or P-style basses were used at all ... nor any active pickups or onboard active EQ.

Bridgehouse

Funkfingers said:

vale said:
Funkfingers' experiment.

The comparison recording has served its purpose and been deleted from SoundCloud.

No Precision Bass guitars were harmed in the making of my recording. Indeed, no Precision or P-style basses were used at all ... nor any active pickups or onboard active EQ.

Shame. Would have sounded nice on a P bass.

Even with a touch of Mr East's active circuitry.

Funkfingers

The nearest P-ish thing I have that has any hope of approximating a RIC sound is the Yamaha Attitude Custom. The combination of its 33k mudbucker and piezo bridge elements might produce an interesting sound. 

Bridgehouse

Funkfingers said:

The nearest P-ish thing I have that has any hope of approximating a RIC sound is the Yamaha Attitude Custom. The combination of its 33k mudbucker and piezo bridge elements might produce an interesting sound. 

A piezo bridge with some careful eq can sound a reasonable amount like a P

Funkfingers

The Yamaha has a DiMarzio DP146 Will Power Middle pickup. That manages to sound a reasonable amount like a P Bass with no effort whatsoever.

prowla

I've had a very good Ric sound on a bolt-on neck Japanese faker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQl9Ho-RUls&feature=youtu.be

('scuse the fluffs and noodling....)

I've got 3 more fakers in various states of (dis)repair at the moment, along with a box of parts.

They can be good, but not quite as good as a real 'un.

I'd avoid the current range of Chickenbackers, though.

Funkfingers

prowla said:

I'd avoid the current range of Chickenbackers.

That is pretty much the object of vale's thought experiment and the OCP/Bridgehouse pickup.

Bridgehouse said:

A piezo bridge with some careful eq

Just to satisfy your curiosity, I had a go with the Yamaha. Mudbucker + piezo but no P middle pickup. Plectrum applied close to the end of the fingerboard yields something that could pass for the R neck pickup sound. The only way to get any clack is to play very close to the bridge. 

The mudbucker aspect makes sense to me. As a teenager, one of my favourite bass guitar sounds was Barry Adamson of Magazine. His fretted bass was an Ibanez 2389B R-style with the big humbucker in the neck position. Smother liberally with BOSS CE-1 Chorus Ensemble and you have that sound.

Funkfingers

@vale This is the sound of a bass guitar with one pickup near the end of the fingerboard and the other built into the bridge saddles. Anything that sounds like a plectrum attack transient is the nails of my index and middle fingers. There is no active EQ built in to the instrument. Perhaps, after modification, your Höfner could be persuaded to sound like this?

Funkfingers

It's, oh, so quiet. Looks as if I have killed another thread. 

Bridgehouse

Funkfingers said:

It's, oh, so quiet. Looks as if I have killed another thread. 

I suspect there’s a hiatus rather than death

vale

Bridgehouse said:

Funkfingers said:

It's, oh, so quiet. Looks as if I have killed another thread. 

I suspect there’s a hiatus rather than death

sorry @Funkfingers ;; didn't mean to miss your post. when i get more than a dozen or so notifications they go off the bottom of the screen. i usualy remember to visit my notifications full list, but if i'm dropping in for a quickie post or message i forget. no neglect intended.

Funkfingers said:

@vale This is the sound of a bass guitar with one pickup near the end of the fingerboard and the other built into the bridge saddles. Anything that sounds like a plectrum attack transient is the nails of my index and middle fingers. There is no active EQ built in to the instrument. Perhaps, after modification, your Höfner could be persuaded to sound like this?

thanks v mych for the demo. the rubberiness is great. that's why i love neck pickups best, all the bottom middle boing without the toppy twang.
was your idea to feed in just enough bridge pickup output to give it definition at the top, and rasp-buzz if you hit it hard, but keep the neck pickup prioritised? (btw what's the guitar and output of the pickups?).

as to whether it sounds rick-ish, i'm not sure i hear any characteristic clanky-clunk. it's an organic woody tone, not a mettalic one. but maybe that could be added in with an effect. hint of ringmod or something. there's substance to work with there, so i see where you are coming from (or so i think).

... or maybe this is really a ricky with all the clank dialled out (flat tone) and you are testing us??

https://static.cdnbridge.com/resources/18/160536/picture/C7/85414599.jpg

vale

prowla said:

I've had a very good Ric sound on a bolt-on neck Japanese faker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQl9Ho-RUls&feature=youtu.be

('scuse the fluffs and noodling....)

I've got 3 more fakers in various states of (dis)repair at the moment, along with a box of parts.

They can be good, but not quite as good as a real 'un.

I'd avoid the current range of Chickenbackers, though.

apologies for slow reply @prowla ;;;;; have only just spotted this.

bloody hell! that will do. if it's not a dead on match it's easy close enough for me.
what brand is that one? if i could find an affordable copy that sounded like that i'd be thrilled. congrats to you for finding a decent one.
of the others you have (whole and bits), have you tried any of them when they were complete and got similar results, or does it vary?
i can honestly say that this (and one other hondo i have heard on youtube) are the best copies i have heard yet.

something else i noticed during this video (that i hadn't thought much about until seeing it) is action. i get the feeling this has a superlow action, to that point that it even seems to dead out at the very top frets (maybe it was just in need of a tweak, nut/bridge? or maybe a little bow/twist).
do you think having a low as possible action (and maybe baggy strings, or tone down even) helps with adding that buzzy grit in the attack and getting your copies as close-sounding to the original as possible?
that seems to add a lot of grit-buzz and metallic clank. maybe not in the same way that ricky pickups distort, but it hits a similar spot.

do they have glossy fretboards? that's another thing i've been wodering about. not sure that would be a huge factor but maybe it means something.

anyway, thanks for that clip. it's really opened my eyes. most i have heard are lookalike but sound generic.
is it full (34"/33") or shortscale (30")? if it's short then i think i will have to find one, because that's easily good enough for my rick-fake needs.

Funkfingers

vale said:
maybe this is really a ricky with all the clank dialled out (flat tone) and you are testing us??

Nope. The bass guitar on the Feet Of Clayton clip was the Yamaha Attitude Custom bass that Bridgehouse imagined I might have used on the earlier Soundcloud comparison track. 

vale said:
glossy fretboards ... that's another thing i've been wondering about. not sure that would be a huge factor but maybe it means something.

Unless you press down very hard or use piccolo bass string gauges, your fingertips will very rarely come into contact with the fingerboard. When they do, it will usually be between the G string and the edge of the 'board. On a RIC or posh copy, that is where the binding is. Thus, the varnish makes very little difference.

prowla

vale said:

prowla said:

I've had a very good Ric sound on a bolt-on neck Japanese faker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQl9Ho-RUls&feature=youtu.be

('scuse the fluffs and noodling....)

I've got 3 more fakers in various states of (dis)repair at the moment, along with a box of parts.

They can be good, but not quite as good as a real 'un.

I'd avoid the current range of Chickenbackers, though.

apologies for slow reply @prowla ;;;;; have only just spotted this.

bloody hell! that will do. if it's not a dead on match it's easy close enough for me.
what brand is that one? if i could find an affordable copy that sounded like that i'd be thrilled. congrats to you for finding a decent one.
of the others you have (whole and bits), have you tried any of them when they were complete and got similar results, or does it vary?
i can honestly say that this (and one other hondo i have heard on youtube) are the best copies i have heard yet.

something else i noticed during this video (that i hadn't thought much about until seeing it) is action. i get the feeling this has a superlow action, to that point that it even seems to dead out at the very top frets (maybe it was just in need of a tweak, nut/bridge? or maybe a little bow/twist).
do you think having a low as possible action (and maybe baggy strings, or tone down even) helps with adding that buzzy grit in the attack and getting your copies as close-sounding to the original as possible?
that seems to add a lot of grit-buzz and metallic clank. maybe not in the same way that ricky pickups distort, but it hits a similar spot.

do they have glossy fretboards? that's another thing i've been wodering about. not sure that would be a huge factor but maybe it means something.

anyway, thanks for that clip. it's really opened my eyes. most i have heard are lookalike but sound generic.
is it full (34"/33") or shortscale (30")? if it's short then i think i will have to find one, because that's easily good enough for my rick-fake needs.

Cheers (the sound is into a Trace Elliot BLX combo with a hint of distortion from a Boss SD-1 guitar distortion)!

It was a Diamond (an Aria brand), but pretty generic Matsumoku bolt-on.

I picked it up on ebay in bits and with the treble pickup disintegrated. The seller had replaced the machines and also started routing a hole 2nd jack socket, but not finished it.

I put it back together, re-wired it, put in a more authentic Greco treble pickup, finished the 2nd jack, added a twin "Stereo-Sound" Jack plate on ebay (from France), put an Allparts bridge/tailpiece on it, and re-wired the electronics.

I like a bit of fret buzz on a Ric and yes, it did have the action quite low.

How I got it...

Finished.

(Yep, glossy fingerboard.)

That was my first 'faker restoration; I've since done two more (a CMI bolt-on nech and a Shaftesbury thru-neck) and I now have three more on the go (one CMI thru-neck and two Hondos), though one Hondo is going to be a testbed for various pickups, etc.

Bridgehouse

@prowla - cracking stuff! Lovely...

bbill335

Yeah, my gf has a hondo ii ricky copy from the 70s (I think?). Not an amazing instrument by any measure but it manages to cop the sound surprisingly well!

vale

@prowla ; thanks for the background story, prowla. you did doubleplus good, as alex would say (clockwork orange). a triumph.

i;m guessing yours is full scale 34" or 33"? i'd like to find a shortscale (30") copy, if the typical mij's can be tweaked to soundas good as yours. nmost of those i have hear just sound like cheap sub-precision copies.

low action is definitely something i need to do next time i want to fake it. hadn't thought about that at all really, but it seems so obvious. best ricky basses are low frets, glossy fretboard making the fretboard to fret-crest height even shallower, and an action so low you an play just by thinking about fretting a note.

as for other copies i think are convincing, the swamp ash copy here (first one of three) i think is as good as any difference doesn't matter. i keep the video in my bookmarks as a reminder how good a faker can be (will add yours to that).
for that classic low end clunky thump and top end nasal spank it's all there in spades. delicious.

ICBM

I still think you’re over-thinking it. My 4001 has no lacquer on the board, is refretted with slightly larger frets and has a fairly high action - as well as the wrong pickups - and it still sounds like a Rick...

Funkfingers

vale said:

as for other copies i think are convincing, the swamp ash copy here (first one of three) i think is as good as any difference doesn't matter. for that classic low end clunky thump and top end nasal spank it's all there in spades. delicious.

Which brings you back to the Fender Jazz Bass.

D'oh!