nuke

I’ve got a 2001 535 with the HRW’s in it. Like it very much. I put a Faber bridge and tailpiece on it, mostly for feel since I’m used to a tune-o-matic under my muting hand. I later put in the Faber bushings and was amazed at how much the tailpiece bushing inserts changed the tone. Made really good even better. They go much deeper and firmer into the maple center block, seem to acoustically couple to the wood much better than the much shorter and looser Schaller hardware. The HRW pickups are very amenable to tone shaping with the amp or pedals and EQ. Can dial in a variety of tones from them very easily. Some say they are “hi fi” but I’d say smooth frequency response curve. Which is ideal for dialing the amp/effects to get a sound. I’d say exhaust all the external tone shaping options before you change parts. A 7 or 10-band EQ can be very helpful to figure out what to do to get where you want to go.

Yeah, I'm a big fan. I have a USA Geddy Lee signature model. I really love it too! And a Rick 4003. Black, of course. (couldn't live with the old Rick bridge - neither did Geddy, as he put a BaddAss bridge on it.

A very young bass player once bought a Rickenbacker bass, in the footsteps of his hero, Chris Squire. He was most disappointed to find that he didn't sound at all like Chris Squire. The young bass player eventually became quite famous on his own and associated closely with the Rickenbacker bass. Thing is changing parts will make little tweaks in the sound, but you might be chasing a ghost. We don't really know what instrument might have been played in a studio, even when a musician is strongly associated with a particular instrument. Sometimes, maybe there was just something random in the place and he picked it up and played it. Then there's the amp, and the micing and the room, and the engineer's technique to take the track, that particular session or maybe many sessions and so on and so forth. Find the guitar that works for you and your hands, and play the song(s) you want as well as possible. Then, record it. Compare overlayed on the track you want to sound like. See what you can do with various studio/DAW plugins, especially ones that represent the things that might have been in use at the time it was originally recorded. Then do some deducing what is and isn't close to your ghost. In many cases you can get "there" with some EQ, compression and creative dialing in of those.

Just got to figure out the ship in the bottle approach specific to any particular semi-hollow. They're all a little different, think it through, make some tools. I have a 1/4" plug soldered onto a pretty stiff #8 wire with teflon insulation for pulling the jacks through on guitars like 535's where the jack is in the side, and a different one for 335 types with the jack on the face of the top. Switches on the 535 are more trouble-some, since they're thinner than the typical 335. And a roll of nylon floss, to tie to the pots, a few cuss words and a hell of a lot of patience.

I have a 2001 H535, with HRW's. The switch tip has a black dot (and black tips have a white or cream dot). The pickups have the double height adjust screws, as do the regular Schaller humbuckers. (HRW's are made with the same hardware from Schaller). They are also marked on the back of the pickups as HRW in ink.

I went with Farber, including the insert bushings. Super happy with the results, especially my 2001 H535 which came with the same Schaller roller bridge and top-load tail piece. I had to wait on getting the inserts for the H535, so I played for a while with just the Farber bridge. Once I pressed the much longer steel Farber bushings into the guitar, I was amazed at how much better it sounded. The go will into the maple center block, where as the original tailpiece bushing from Schaller was very short and just mostly contacted the upper shell. My 1998 H150, came with Gibson style zinc tailpiece and a "Nashville" bridge. The Farber hardware didn't make as much sound difference, but the lighter stop bar helped my goal of reducing weight of the guitar to under 9lbs, along with replacing the Grover tuners. I find the ABR-1 style bridge more comfortable to play.