40s Rickenbacker "Electro B" for only $600??

[Bill Creller]

I agree with Rick about a frypan treble peeling paint! Good one Rick!
I got sneaky with mine. I have a little plastic industrial pot mounted (epoxied) inside the body, which can be adjusted with a small skinny screw driver, through the output jack. (not while playing of course ) Just enough capacitance tweak to take that edge off...

[Mitch Crane]

She's gone.. anyone here snag it ?

[Jon King]

"Posted: 10 Nov 2010 5:58pm Post subject:
Quote:
It wasn't a Ricky, but the pickup was supposed to be an original vintage, and I had it shipped to Rick Aiello for a check before it was shipped to me. If I remember correctly Rick wrote that most vintage recordings were done with the treble rolled off on both the guitar and amp.......?



Quote:
I think quite highly of Rick Aiello & put a lot of stock in his opinion. But I wonder what testing he did. Your description struck me as sounding like a low strength magnet.


I remember the Asher well ...

As far as what I "tested" ...

The magnet saturation was at a max ... around 210 gauss - midgap ... standard fully charged Ricky magnets ...

And the coil ... which was an "Asher" wound coil, not a Ricky ... was probably wound with 42 AWG magnet wire ... to a DC resistance of around 8 kOhm ...

He didn't use 38 AWG ... "

Rick, Thanks for the detailed description. It really helps to understand how specifics affect performance. I also think you nailed it on the tone issue.

[Tom Wolverton]

I agree. Thanks Rick A for chimming in. I always appriciate your info to us.

One thing about the post war Bakes, for gigs. You can see the fret markers better. I've played both pre and post wars on gigs, and on a dark stage, the pre-war was tricky to see the frets during lighting changes. The tonal differences in the two guitars (prewar vrs postwar) are minor and can usually be adjusted with a minor amp tone setting tweak.

I hope someone from the forum got this B6. It was a nice fair price, me thinks.

[Steve Ahola]

On my second romp with a Rickenbacker Bakelite, I used the tone control for the first time only to find that is where the magic starts. I suspect that if I were to come upon an old Rickenbacker with a single volume control, I would probably convert it into a tone control instead, which seems more useful to me.

Ron- I hate to resurrect an old thread like this but I have a 1937 Silver Hawaiian with just a single control for volume. I discovered that as you turn it down to maybe 4 it starts to act as a tone control as well, so I haven't felt the need to add a tone control. One option that I haven't considered- wire up the volume control as a tone control and then use a volume pedal. I had thought about making a stomp box with tone controls on it but that would be hard to adjust when playing.

BTW Jon's comments about the 1 1/2" vs 1 1/4" horseshoe pickups makes a lot of sense. I suspect that the main difference might be in the value assigned by collectors not players. The Rickenbacker book has pictures of David Lindley holding his two favorite B6's- one with the wider magnet and one with the narrower magnet.

And yes, for many of my lap steels I start with the tone set to 0 and then turn it up until I get a sweet sound; starting at 10 could tear your ears out! Having the signal from the pickup very bright and then turning the tone control down- way down- is an early form of noise reduction to eliminate the hum and static from single coil pickup.

Steve Ahola

P.S. I ran across this thread looking for information about pre-50's BR-9's.

[Joey Ace]

I have one like that. I use it as a rockin slide guitar, very much unlike like most clean/skillful playing I enjoy listening to from members here.

The sustain is incredible. I don't gig with it, don't want to risk doing it any harm.

The flip-top identifies it as a 1949 to 1951 vintage, AFAIK.

$600 is low, $800 would be typical, they should be higher. I suspect they will be in time because nobody's making Bakelite.

Here's mine in the studio:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIlryEdK88c