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Unlike most basses the recommended relief is zero, or as close to it as you can get without a backbow, so a relief of about .001" is ideal - just enough to tell that there is a gap! They do really seem to play best like this.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
They have their idiosyncrasies but when set up properly they play and sound fantastic
Perhaps @ICBM can help me here - I have an imbalance in pu volumes. The bridge is louder than the neck. The neck pu is set quite low so the obvious thing would be to raise it but it doesn't allow it to be raised hardly at all. It feels as though the screws are tight up against the floor of the pu cavity (a guess as I haven't yet removed the pick guard). The only other option then seems to be lowering the bridge pu - this necessitates taking off the horseshoe. Is this the only way or should the neck pu be raisable? Perhaps the imbalance is a Ric thing? Although noticeable it still allows for 3 quite separate sounds - neck / bridge + neck / bridge.
If you look under the pickguard you should find height springs for the neck pickup, or rubber sleeving depending on the age of it. You can cut these down if the pickup needs to go higher, but make absolutely sure the four screws on the corners of the pickup don't press any harder than just touching the guard, at the very most - or you will crack the guard.
You can lower the bridge pickup without lowering the cover if you take it apart and add a couple of spacers between the two, if you want to keep the cover on. I used some rubber grommets about 1/4" thick on mine, since I prefer greater string clearance to allow for my hamfisted thrashing .
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
In stereo, you can run the neck pickup through a big clean amp, and the bridge through a lower-powered valve one. The best sound I ever got with mine was the neck through an Ampeg B2R and the bridge through a Hiwatt DR103 - it sounded like double-tracked bass, even though obviously the timing was identical!
You can still split the signal even with a mono output, but it doesn't quite sound the same.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
To be honest I almost never use them either, it's just too much of a faff to set up for live use. I actually use it more on guitar, the bridge pickup through dirt/modulation and the neck pickup clean through delay/reverb is amazing - even more like two guitars playing at once.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein