Rickenbacker bass question: Rick o sound parallel passive distortion?

[Archie Macfarlane]

Hey y'all I'm a guitar player who's gotten back into bass recently as my guitars are either out of action or missing strings, I really dig Ric's (4000 4001 4003) which kind of cut through like a guitar, So to you Motorhead and Yes loving Ric players out there:

Since people often track bass guitar parallel clean DI and distortion eg: sansamp pedal.....
I was wondering if anyone tried putting a passive distortion on one of a rics rick o sound outputs to get a similar effect ? I know it's not an ampeg or a superbass obviously but in principle this should generate harmonics to cut through small speakers, and since there will be one clean pickup to go along with it the volume drop/clean dirt Ballance should be ok

Here's an example of passive distortion on a bass
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7aU7gt9e_Aw

 

[amigarobbo]

I don't know about passive distortion, but I have had some great sounds on a 4001 into a single Fender Bassman, with the bridge pickup going into the bright side and the neck into the deep, with suitable tweak of the tone controls and some of the best sounds I could get out of flatwounds, I gave up and put some round wounds on and it wasn't as important, as the roundwounds had more of that Rickenbacker clang™.


Actually, thinking about it, with Rick-o-sound you can fuzz up one pickup and keep the other clean, so the actual note still comes through, a bit. Dependant on how you set it up.

Anyway, it's worth experimenting with the Rick-o-sound output. For nothing is good unless you play with it.

 

[TBurst Std]

That is totally doable and I use my 4003 like that at times. 
Don’t have it right now, bu there’s a excellent video of someone running like this for a Rush cover.