Oil City: rewinding a sad Rickenbacker Hi Gain

OilCityPickups

Some thoughts on Rick pickups and why they need to be rewound so often:

The arrival of a sad and dead Rickenbacker Hi Gain for rewinding yesterday prompted me to think again about the reasons why ... along with old Hofner pickups, I see more Rick pickups that have given up the ghost than just about any other brand.

Wow ... the rubber compound magnet was clearly drilled for the poles by someone with no jig and very thick glasses: uneven gaps, some pole screws touching the magnet, some not. I'll leave the evidence to your own eyes! Shocking.

Nasty, gunky LX tape that leaves sticky residue everywhere ... horrible.

Now we come to the reason why Rick pickups fail .... all this lovely, fine 46awg wire is fine ... 

But it all has to come off ... even though it's perfectly healthy ... 

Because the coil start wire is soldered directly to a crudely sliced off machine screw driven through the bobbin ... no strain relief at all for the fine wire ... if that screw moves in the pickups life ... it's almost certain to snap the hair thin winding wire! This is what has happened yet again in this pickup's case. 

My solution is to solder a short 'pigtail' of insulated wire to the screw ... then separately wrap and solder the fine winding wire to it, taping the 'pigtail to the bobbin in such a way that there is 'give' should the screw move slightly, or the pickup get a blow.

Then the pickup is rewound .... I had to make a special jig to mount the bobbin as the glue used to fix magnet had 'infected' the pole screws and they wouldn't budge. Even with the correct allen key there was a real risk of stripping in the the bolt head. I could have dropped a soldering iron onto them for a few seconds to see if some heat would loosen them ... but with the plastic bobbin it's a tricky job. I figured the heights were set at the rick factory so they should be okay.

 ... and finally reassembled 

Is it just me, or is it ironic that Rickenbacker are legendary for pursuing small pickup makers who dare to try and make replacements, or products that resemble Rickenbacker ...  yet their own design and workmanship keeps us in a steady stream of rewinding business? 

They seem strangely reluctant to go after the Chinese copyists however ... 

Still another Rick pickup lives again ...

Electro_Ham

Good write up. I do hope John Hall reads it. Is there a particular era of pickup you receive? I think my 330 is a 2007 model and I'd hope the pickups would be better than this example.

ThePrettyDamned

I love these threads

That's very fine wire indeed!

OilCityPickups

Electro_Ham said:

Good write up. I do hope John Hall reads it. Is there a particular era of pickup you receive? I think my 330 is a 2007 model and I'd hope the pickups would be better than this example.

Sadly this is a whole mix of era pickups up to those around five years old ... not had any younger ones ... but then perhaps that's luck of the draw. I don't believe they have reviewed their manufacturing methods in the recent past ... if ever.

ICBM

Much as I love Rickenbacker instruments, the evidence of these pickups speaks for itself and is an illustration of a large part of their entire manufacturing process… an odd mix of high quality materials and quite crudely made in a way that's been arrived at more by accident than design, and with a stubborn refusal to change anything when they don't want to. (Which is different from changing things on a whim with no warning or apparent logic, which they do as well.) Despite the hype from most of their fans, the quality is quite patchy really.

And yes, they do relentlessly pursue any small pickup maker who dares to make anything that even vaguely resembles a Rick pickup.

Evilmags

A good example of why 50 year old intellectual property is often harmful to consumers. I can see why companies need some protection from competitors when they genuinely innovate, but these pickup designs are older than me and if others were allowed to make those designs of pickups (as they do strats, PAFs, High Output ceramic ect) they would not get away with building stuff that badly. Its basically a bobbin with wire round it and a magnet and some pole pieces. The intellectual property on it is hardly revolutionary and the only thing I can really see as having any justification of patent is the original science behind the charlie christian or early De Armond pickups and PAFs. (all of which should have expired years ago). A microphone, a loudspeaker, and all number of components rely on exactly the same principle, yet these things get more prolonged protection than microchips, complex pharmaceuticals, smartphones and most published books. Gibson, Fender, PRS, Gretsch, Ibanez, Yamaha ect all survive people making variants of their (generally ancient) pickup designs. This sort of patent abuse just allows for a worse product.    

FelineGuitars

Thanks for getting the rewind done so quickly Ash . Customer is overjoyed to have his left handed Ricky back and finally hearing what it should sound like .

 He says it was always broken from new - except he thought it was maybe just very weak as it made a tiny amount of sound, and as he'd bought it from an American store whilst on vacation it was going to be too hard to return.

ICBM

Evilmags said:

A good example of why 50 year old intellectual property is often harmful to consumers. I can see why companies need some protection from competitors when they genuinely innovate, but these pickup designs are older than me and if others were allowed to make those designs of pickups (as they do strats, PAFs, High Output ceramic ect) they would not get away with building stuff that badly. Its basically a bobbin with wire round it and a magnet and some pole pieces. The intellectual property on it is hardly revolutionary and the only thing I can really see as having any justification of patent is the original science behind the charlie christian or early De Armond pickups and PAFs. (all of which should have expired years ago). A microphone, a loudspeaker, and all number of components rely on exactly the same principle, yet these things get more prolonged protection than microchips, complex pharmaceuticals, smartphones and most published books. Gibson, Fender, PRS, Gretsch, Ibanez, Yamaha ect all survive people making variants of their (generally ancient) pickup designs. This sort of patent abuse just allows for a worse product.    

It's not a patent or based on the physics of how they work - it's more subtle than that.

What they've done is to take out trademarks - which as you probably know are open-ended, not time-limited like patents - on certain visual aspects of their designs, including the pickups. They then, in order to maintain the trademarks, have to vigorously defend them when any infringement is apparent, otherwise - as happened to Fender over their body shapes - they will lose them. So they have successfully stopped several makers from producing replacement or upgraded 'Rick' pickups.

In a sense it's then the fault of the consumer for insisting on replacement pickups which look exactly like Rickenbacker ones, instead of other ones that work just as well and happen to be the same size but look different… but that's the way of the guitar market.

JamesSGBrown

Necro-bump: if I wanted my neck high-gain rewiring to decrease the output, would that increase the clarity?

Funkfingers

FWIIW, the output of your Hi-Gain pickup could be decreased by reducing the strength of the magnetic material. Far easier.

Your question might be answered sooner if you post it in this other thread.
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/149931/ash-at-oil-city-answers-pickup-questions#latest

OilCityPickups

JamesSGBrown said:

Necro-bump: if I wanted my neck high-gain rewiring to decrease the output, would that increase the clarity?

Simple answer: yes, decreasing the wind level, often combined with increasing the wire diameter will improve clarity. High-Gains are wound with 44awg wire which is super fine, this leads to lots of compression and reduced openness (read clarity) particularly in the mids/highs.

Funkfingers said:

FWIIW, the output of your Hi-Gain pickup could be decreased by reducing the strength of the magnetic material. Far easier.

Your question might be answered sooner if you post it in this other thread.
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/149931/ash-at-oil-city-answers-pickup-questions#latest

Not easy at all in a Rick pickup: The magnets are large, and rubberised ceramic, drilled to take the poles in some instances. In recent years they have also been superglued to the bobbin base (sometimes crookedly) so are impossible to remove without destroying them.