Rickenbacker 4003 pickup cover

[Skybone]

TBH, I'm not sure you can get them anywhere, unless you want to buy the pickups & retro fit them to your 4003.

You could maybe buy a metal bridge pickup cover & cut a section out of it, but you'd need to mount it onto the pickup base plate to stop it wobbling around (with the height adjustment spring between it and the mounting ring).

 

[Coolhandjjl]

Neither of those pickups look like Hi-Gains. The neck pickup is a 'Toaster' and the bridge pickup has a Horseshoe cover, though it might be a dressed up Hi-Gain pickup (possibly an early one with green flatwork?). The 'shoes' of the Horseshoe pickup are an integral part of the design; the pickup needs them to function. I understand that Rickenbacker made some pseudo-Horseshoe (HS) pickups for the '60s reissue basses of the '90s, but that these only looked like HS pickups. Somebody might have removed one and replaced it with a true HS pickup, like the one Jason Lollar made for a while.

The large pickup in that pic is an original Horseshoe pickup. Those curved pieces of chrome metal are not covers, they are the actual magnets, and extend in mirror image under the pole pieces.

RIC's new version of that is called the RIHS (Re-Issue Horse Shoe) but the curved pieces of metal are no longer the magnets. The poles themselves are magnetized alnico slugs. Even though the 'shoes' are no longer the primary magnets, they do extent the magnetic field above the strings because they are in intimate contact with the magnetic pole pieces, and according to some, affect the tone somewhat.

On the 4003 modern bridge pickup, the plastic cover is merely cosmetic. Since it is chromed plastic, it does have a layer of copper and/or other conductive material material over the plastic as per the chrome plating process. Does it act as a shield? I do not believe I have read of anyone experiencing added noise when it was removed.

You can buy a RIHS, or a plastic pickup cover from the RIC Boutique or on ebay.

 

[GIBrat51]

ok, cool, i may be totally misinformed on the exact type of pickup in the pic. my question is where can i get a pickup cover that looks like the one in that pic?
tnx!

As far as I know, the answer is: you can't. As has been said, that isn't a cover; that's a real Horseshoe pick up, and what you're looking at are the actual magnets. As Ric5 said, they were rather weak - especially by today's standards - and had a tendency to just die as they got old. Rickenbacker does make a modern copy of the original, and I suppose you could consider that horseshoe a sort of "cover", since there's a normal Hi-gain pick up inside it. But, that pickup isn't at all cheap (I know; I have one), and they're almost always sold out... As for the plastic cover? Yes, it's kind of fiddly to take off (and put back on, too), but not hard - if you take your time. As for being a shield? Well, if you're willing to consider the difference between nothing and 'just barely something" to be a shield, then, yeah, I guess it's a shield. I have them on both of my Ricks (had to replace it on the 4003; the 4001's original); I like the look, and they don't interfere with how I play them. I've been toying with the idea of sanding a 1/4" strip across the top of them, and painting it flat black. Just to mimic the original horseshoe a little better. Probably ruin the shielding, but what the hell... it'll look good...

 

[Jeff Scott]

...I've been toying with the idea of sanding a 1/4" strip across the top of them, and painting it flat black. Just to mimic the original horseshoe a little better. Probably ruin the shielding, but what the hell... it'll look good...

If you don't sand the bottom side you're good to go as to shielding.

 

[mihayloff]

They serve as more than pickup covers. They're part of the shielding mechanism and the "horseshoe" in Horseshoe Pickup. Otherwise they wouldn't be so integrally connected to the pickup and require all the disassembly where the strings must be removed and the pickup must be removed from the cavity. If they weren't, they'd only require the top screws to be removed like a Fender pickup cover.

 

[da old guy]

The bridge pickup cover was removed from my 4003 when it was converted to 5-string. I'd always had noise problems in noisy environments and re-installed it a few months back. No improvement. Installed copper shielding and then dedicated ground wires in a two-step process and that made a big improvement. Not dead quiet but acceptable.

 

[mikeswals]

Shouldn't your multimeter probes be on either lug, as opposed to practically next to each other (only the screw hole separating them)?

No, conductivity is conductivity doesn't matter where you place your probes wether it's 1 mm apart or 1 foot apart as long at the material completes the signal.

 

[mikeswals]

Ric says their plastic covers are real chrome. So it will contain nickel.
Here's a description from one company that does plating:

Plastic Chrome Plating Process
Unfortunately, plastic chrome plating is not as simple as applying a coat of chrome to the part. Typically, we will first coat the part with a layer of copper of nickel through a process called electro-less plating. This means that we do not use an electric current to apply the plating. Applying this coating makes the part conducive, which makes it possible to apply the chrome plating later on.
Think of this like the base coat that you’d apply to wall before painting it. This base coat prepares the part for the electro plating techniques that we use to apply the chrome plating. Without it, we can’t bind the chrome plating to the plastic part.
Typically, the entire process follows the following six steps.