ricky

Hi Rick,

I think you are talking about what’s in the photo.

This is a pick up switch – nearly all electric guitars have one, and what they do is they quickly switch the pickups on a guitar on and off. My Ricky has three positions: Top position = bridge pickup, Middle position = both pickups, Bottom position = neck pickup.

The pickups are the transducers underneath the guitar strings that pick up the sound of a guitar (with magnets and coils) which can then get amplified and recorded. 🙂 They sound different depending on where they are positioned on the guitar which is why there is a switch to control them, to change the tone of your guitar.

With the way I play I would often flick my pickup switch by accident when I touch it with my right hand. Usually that’s not a big problem – you just flick it back – but when we were recording the final set we wanted to make sure that it didn’t happen by mistake because it would be noticeable on the recording.

So dad took a thin black carbon plate and screwed two holes into it, one for the switch and one was fixed on the screw that holds the pickguard. It’s a bit hard to explain but hopefully it’s easier to see in the photo. It basically prevents me from flicking the switch so that it would always be in the middle position. I can still change the sound by using the knobs but I usually only move those when I actually mean to 😉

My red Ricky does not have that carbon plate installed so it might be that I just explained something completely irrelevant to you and you actually meant to ask about something else but please just let me know haha.

Have a groovy day,
Mona

I can see Mona hitting that switch, she gets pretty animated as you know during their live shows! Papa Rudi to the rescue!