Further adventures in shielding - Ric 4003

[fergs40]

Been meaning to do this for ages having read @Jean-Luc Pickguard‘s thread on his new 4003, and finally got round to it yesterday.

All very straightforward. My biggest concern was whether the copper would show through the pickguard from the front, but I can’t see any sign that it has. Maybe the bass being fireglo helps with that?

 

As per @Hellzero’s advice in my first shielding thread, I made sure to connect the shielding in the bridge pickup cavity to the main control cavity.

 

The only problem I ran into was that when I initially replaced the pickguard and output jacks and then checked for a signal, I didn’t get one. Turned out that the cutouts for the jack sockets are so tight that some little ends of copper tape that I thought I’d tucked safely out of the way were grounding the output signal. Removing any tape in the cutouts solved things.

 

Results? Much quieter. Not as silent as the Westone became, but I wasn’t expecting that (I believe the Westone is effectively a P pickup, so cancels its own noise to some extent?). Overall, very pleased.

 

While I had the thing apart, and in what some will no doubt consider a retrograde step, I replaced the Hipshot bridge I’ve had on there for the past few years with the original - call it nostalgia. I was also interested to experiment with the mute system again, and having given it a subtle bend before replacing it, it now mutes all four strings much more evenly than before I removed it.

 

New set of Thomastik IN345 strings and all is good!

 

Some pics below of the shielding and the finished article. I forgot to take a picture of the bridge pickup cavity, but it’s the same as the rest of it - I brought the tape slightly over the top of the cavity to make contact with the pickup surround.

 

 

PS I was a little bit sad to be covering up the serial written in the control cavity. But, hey, the price of progress…

Edited Tuesday at 10:15 by fergs40
Stupid spellcheck. Rix indeed!

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

Good job! I made a flap over the serial number on mine so that it is still fully shielded, but the copper tape could be lifted up if it is ever necessary to view the serial.

 

I think I can detect a very slight copper tint on your pickguard, but it looks fine against FireGlo. It would have bugged me on mine, being JetGlo though.

 

I don't know why RIC swapped from the style of knobs on yours to Jazz bass-style knobs for the current model. I had to buy a set of the silver topped ones from Rickysounds to ensure I remember which knob does what.

[fergs40]

With your copper flap you are the artisan sourdough to my sliced white pan of modding! 
 

And yes, it’s confusing enough (though logical in its own way) trying to work out what the controls are, especially if you’ve ever played a Les Paul or similar, so the labels are very useful. Plus the new (though old!) style knobs don’t look quite right - not substantial enough or something.

[Hellzero]

Really nice work and nice bass too.

 

I always love to see a Ric, but their ergonomics is absolutely not for me: hey, that's life. 😉