Guitar Info

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Just over a year ago we looked at another Rickenbacker 366 featuring this cunning mechanism to switch between 6-string and 12-string playing. I've seen similarly equipped Rickenbackers before, but never before have I seen the same mechanism on this model of guitar, the above-pictured Rickenbacker 456 6/12 Convertible. I don't think the mechanism looks quite as awful on this model as it does on the 366, but still I can't help being reminded of a very pretty girl who has to wear corrective braces to allow her teeth to grow straight.

Looks aside, you have to wonder why a contraption such as this wasn't more successful and why it didn't spawn much imitation. It must surely be a much more convenient way of switching between 12-string and 6-string guitar than using an unwieldy and back-breaking doubleneck guitar. Maybe I have just answered my own implied question, as the Rickenbacker Convertible lacks the visual impact and sheer stage presence of a doubleneck. I guess that rock'n'roll isn't all about the most sensible way of doing something.

This particular Rickenbacker 456 6/12 Convertible is from 1968, is finished in "Mapleglo", and is currently available for sale via Vintage and Rare with a price of €2800.

G L Wilson

© 2012, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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I'm going to be really lazy today (hey, it IS the holidays) and copy extensively from the eBay listing for this Tele/Rickenbacker hybrid:

This is a guitar which was constructed using:

Fender MIM neck Serial Number MZ4013361 (hard rock maple)
Non-Fender Tele style Mahogany body
Rickenbacker horseshoe pickup from a Rickenbacker (old spelling is Rickenbacher) Model 100 lap steel
Lipstick pickup (4.9K) GFS from Guitar Fetish
Brass nut

Other misc parts from Guitar Fetish, staggered tuners and string tree, 3 way switch, tele jack cup, Tele dome knobs, cloth wiring.

This guitar was born in a Hamtramck second hand store where I found the Rickenbacker lap steel. At the time I could not even tell what brand it was because there were no tags, markings, or serial numbers on it. Also the body had been crudely modified, some wood cut away, strap buttons put on so it could be played slung around your neck more like a regular guitar. The store owner told me it had been owned by a friend of hers that had passed away. who was from the coal mining fields of Tennessee. He had also painted numbers on the metal fretboard. That genesis gave me the idea of putting this pickup on a telecaster style body.

Since the Rickenbacker is an old pickup with usage marks, I bought a Fender neck which showed a little natural wear. I then yellowed the face of the neck over the logo to make the neck looka little further aged. It is a very subtle effect. (I used gunstock oil infused with a little walnut dye.)

I picked up a mahogany body and modified it so the Rickenbacker pickup fit on it. At first I used a Gibson style wraparound bridge behind the rickbacker pickup. But it seems like some of that lap steel singing quality was missing. So I filled those holes, cut a little more wood and used the bridge integrated into the pickup. I also more tightly attached the neck to the body by using threaded steel neck inserts instead of the standard wood screws. You can search on ebay to see what inserts are are like.

The end result is that this thing sings like a woman! I took the guitar to my sister's house in Michigan's UP and played with her old-timey, bluegrass band. With the bluegrass band, I had to use the lipstick pickup because the Rickenbacker was too powerful, too bluesy. We were just playing an instrumental, but after the end of one song, someone asked "Who is singing?" No one was singing. It was the TeleRick. I was playing on the next song, and I thought I heard a woman singing vowels, I looked up from the fretboard and no, my sister (the only female musician present) was not singing. It WAS the guitar.

I had configured the guitar with a brass nut at first. It sounded great. I then switched to a solid plastic nut, and the open notes sounded more muffled than the notes held with the slide did. So, I put the brass nut back on. Also, when you play I think the brass affects the tone even more than just the open notes. I mean, the string does vibrate from the slide back to the nut unless you dampen it. The lipstick pickup loves the brass nut. I think the singing woman tone is a combination of the brass nut, lipstick pickup, mahogany body, threaded steel inserts, and the very solid Rickenbacker bridge. As I mentioned, the bluegrass people were not into the powerful Rickenbacker sound.

I put a 3 way switch on the guitar so you get the raw lipstick pickup, lipstick and Rickenbacker combined, and Rickbenbacker by itself. The tone and volume knobs only affect the Rickenbacker pickup. I did it this way for a couple reasons. If you wanted you could physically move the Rickenbacker pickup from the tele body to the Rickenbacker body, by only by snipping two wires. If I had integrated the tone and volume with the lipstick pickup, then more wires would have to be cut. Tonewise, the guitar rocks this way. The lipstick is a kind of a hollowed out singing acoustic sort of sound, you can play 4 strings together and they blend like a gospel choir. The Rickenbacker pickup has twice the output of the lipstick and is more raucous so you would only want to play 2 notes together (unless you are going for the heavy distortion). So you can do this multiple string sliding with the lipstick, and then flip the switch and go into a real heavier tone on the Rickenbacker pickup. You can tone down the Rickenbacker pickup with its controls to more closely match the lipstick if you want. The one pickup sounds like a logical extension of the other.

This guitar sounds so good, it could be the basis for a whole new unique style of playing. You can get lost flipping back and forth between them for hours..

The string height (action) is such that you can play the classic boogie woogie on the low strings from open to the 7th fret, and if you are sliding at the 5th fret, you can press down the strings behind the slide to get the missing notes in the scale, but when you are at the 12th fret you will be all slide all the time. Now, the action could be lowered a little. The bottom of the brass nut could be filed, maybe the neck truss rod could be used, but the Rickenbacker bridge is a little higher than the tele bridge, so the action will always favor the slide player. But that is not a loss on this guitar, because this is a slide players guitar.

In my heart of hearts, I believe that is a guitar born for slide and it will need a slide guitarist to properly appreciate it. That is why I am putting it on a month long listing. This special guitar requires a special person...

Likely this guitar is as amazing as the seller claims, but it's sure not going to win any beauty contests. Personally I think the placement of the volume and tone controls is a mistake - and I appreciate this was dicatated by the plate used from the Rickenbacker lapsteel. Nevertheless, I think he should have put the controls in the usual position for a Tele, and maybe plugged the holes in the lapsteel plate - else not used the plate at all if it is detachable from the pickup. I'm not just talking aesthetics here, those controls would get in the way where they are.

Currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $1,000.

Thanks to Andrew who saw this listed on eBay.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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This instrument is unmistakably a Rickenbacker with its gently contoured upper body edges, the back's checkered binding, the varnished rosewood neck with distinctive triangular inlays, the fireglo finish... but it's a banjo!

Indeed it's a Rickenbacker 6000 bantar, a hybrid between a solid electric guiar and a 5-string banjo, as played be legendary banjoist Bela Fleck. It doesn't feature the skin as found on a traditional banjo so is not going to have the same percussive tone, so soundwise its classid Rickenbacker all the way, just utilising banjo stringing and tuning.

Another weird Rickenbacker hybrid instrument of the time was the Banjitar, which according to the promotional literature:

"...combines the sounds of the plectrum banjo, mandolin, Hawaiian guitar and Spanish guitar. Two harmony string pairs and two single strings plus a vibrato unit create this incredible range of tones."

To look at the Banjitar you might think at first glance that it was a standard Rickenbacker guitar, but the very narrow long neck might cause you to do a double take.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

OK, it's the 11th November 2011, that is 11/11/11, and as such today has been designated Nigel Tufnel Day. To celebrate this day of Maximum Elevenness, we here at Guitarz - for this day only - will be posting an unprecedented ELEVEN blog posts! So, keep tuned throughout the day for eleven weird and wonderful guitars!

Bertram


© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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The ebay auction for this Barth guitar from 1959 ends in just a few minutes, although I suspect it may be re-listed. It currently has a Buy It Now price of $899; maybe it'll be a little less with the next listing.

If you think the design looks familiar, bear in mind that Paul Barth, besides designing for Magnatone and Mosrite, was also a designer at Rickenbacker. It does look very Rickenbacker-like, doesn't it?

G L Wilson

EDIT: Sure enough it's been re-listed, although the price remains unchanged.

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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Ever vigilant on the lookout for interesting guitars for our left-handed friends, I spied this left-handed 1998 Rickenbacker 340 Rose Morris model in Fireglo finish on eBay. Alas, it does have a rather hefty Buy It Now price tag of $4,100, which is way over what a brand new Rickenbacker 330 (i.e. right-handed and non-Rose Morris) would cost.

So, what makes this example so special? Rarity-value, I guess. It is left-handed, for starters, and being a Rose Morris model it sports an f-hole as opposed to Rickenbacker's more usual "cat's eye" soundhole. These guitars were originally created by Rickenbacker for import into the UK by Rose Morris Co, Ltd, of London, back in the 1960s. For a while Rose Morris Rickenbackers were the guitar of choice for Pete Townshend of The Who, before he figured out that if he used and abused Fender guitars with bolt on necks, for every four guitars smashed he could mix and match parts and build another three. Which was more economical than smashing a hollow-bodied set-neck Rickenbacker and being left with firewood.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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Paul Weller of The Jam famously had a Rickenbacker 330 with a pop art design based on Roy Lichenstein's painting "Whaam!" from 1963 as displayed in the Tate Modern in London (which in turn adapted a comic-book panel by artist Russ Heath from a 1962 issue of DC Comics' All-American Men of War). Apparently that particular guitar had issues and wasn't very playable so Weller reserved it for TV appearances where the band was asked to mime along to their own records. Even though the guitar didn't make live appearances, it is still well remembered and will forever be associated with The Jam.

The Jam's bass player, Bruce Foxton, favoured Fender Precisions and Rickenbacker 4001 basses. Here we see a Rickenbacker 4001 bass finished with the same pop-art design by way of tribute to The Jam. It'd be perfect for a Jam covers band, being in the spirit of that band, even though Foxton never had such an instrument. This bass is apparently over 30 years old and has had the top binding removed and the top edges contoured for comfort. I've heard from several Rickenbacker bass players about how their right forearms suffer because of the sharp top edge of the instrument, so this contouring does seem a perfect reasonable customization.

Currently being auctioned on eBay UK with bidding currently at £2000 as I type this.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Bertram

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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Here's a rare Rickenbacker 366/12 Convertible from 1967 in "Mapleglo" finish. Perhaps I should have included this last month in our look at electric 12-string guitars, although this one is a particular oddity and also it's only just come up on eBay - with a Buy It Now price of $5999 (for those that are interested).

Yes, it may be a rarity, but I'm afraid for me it's a beautiful guitar with a very ugly contraption bolted to the front. And if you haven't guessed from the name, the contraption isolates the second strings in each course so that you can switch from 12-string to 6-string. It's got to be a lot less cumbersome than having a doubleneck guitar slung around your shoulders at a gig. I just wish they could have somehow concealed the contraption inside the body so that it didn't look quite so awful.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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This 1960 vintage Rickenbacker 100 Consolette steel guitar is one of a species that could be described as a "missing link". Console guitars - essentially lap steels with legs - evolved from the more usual kind of lap steels that you actually play with the guitar on your lap, and would later evolve further with the addition of pitch bending levers and pedals into the pedal steel guitar.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

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The Rickenbacker Model B lapsteel from the 1930s is one of the guitars I listed in the "500 Guitars" book; alas there was no accompanying photo published. The guitar was typified by its bakelite body inset with five chrome plates. In 1935 a "Spanish" version was introduced with a regular round-backed detachable neck.

The example pictured above is even more of a rarity, for this is the 4-string tenor guitar version. This well-played example is currently for sale on eBay with a starting price of $2,000.

G L Wilson
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

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Neal Davies writes:

Hey there,

Just saw your post about Paul Weller's "Whaam!" Rickenbacker 330 and thought you'd like to see my copy of it.

I came across it (literally stumbled across it) a couple of years ago on eBay. The artist who created it is called David Arcadian. He runs a company called Rockstar Interiors who do high-end interior design (rockstarinteriors.net) for clients including Evander Holyfield!

Like me, he's a Brit and a fan of The Jam. He's also a collector of Rickenbacker guitars. I asked him why he decided to copy Weller's legendary 330 and he said: "I had to. I couldnt find one to buy for love or money. That one you have I believe was number 3. Completely unique on red. Loved the result. Natural flow, instead of rudely abbreviated when everything ran to black, like on Weller's." (This alludes to the point that the original was Jetglo and the Lichtenstein ended up with a stark black frame. This one was originally red). Its so beautiful even my wife didnt complain when I brought it home!

Thought you'd like to see it.

Best,

Neal

Thanks Neal. You are correct in thinking we'd want to see your guitar. In fact we NEED to see guitars like these. It's what the blog is all about.

I'd heard that Weller's original was just about unplayable. I hope that yours functions as it should. Anyway, thanks for sharing.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

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Here's another 1970s vintage fretless bass that the collectors wouldn't want me to "spoil" with roundwound strings (see previous post).

It's a Rickenbacker 4001FL in "autumnglo" finish and is on eBay right now with a Buy It Now price of $3200, so all Rickenbacker collectors can breathe a sigh of relief - I'm not going to be buying it any time soon.

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

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Rickenbacker are known to be particularly zealous when it comes to copyright infringements based on their brand name, designs and trademarks. They are known to trawl the eBay listings looking for cheaper copy guitars listed in conjunction with the Rickenbacker brand being mentioned. The best a seller of a Ricky rip-off can do is to display good clear photos so the buyer can see what they are getting, and avoid mentioning the R-word anywhere in the text. Even derivatives of the name, e.g. Ricky, aren't advised, as these will get pounced on too.

With a feedback score approaching 1000, you wouldn't have suspected the seller of this Greco of being that green in this respect, but he or she is really asking for it when listing this guitar thusly: "1984 Greco Rickenbacker Vintage and Rare COOL!"

They are only making matters worse for themselves when they say:

If you have been craving a Rickenbacker but don't have the funds then this might just be for you, it's a made in Japan 1984 Greco Ricky copy with 3 toaster pick ups and the all important blend knob which helps give it it's (sic) distinctive sound, it plays nice and looks the part, in fact you only need change the tail piece and truss cover to rickenbacker ones and nobody will know it's not the real thing.

Shooting yourself in the foot or what?

Anyone want to bet how long it is before this listing gets pulled?

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

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Another "bass-shaped" Rickenbacker guitar has turned up on eBay, this time it's a Rickenbacker 481.

The differences between this and the Rickenbacker 480 we looked at the other day are subtle. The 481 does not have the contoured edges of the 480, instead it has a bound body. You'll also observe that it has different pickups (humbuckers) mounted on a larger pickguard.

The pickups, in fact, are set at an angle. Look closer and you'll see that the bridge, nut and the frets themselves are also angled, but not like on a modern "fanned fret" guitar (such as the Novax system); these frets are angled whilst remaining parallel with each other. (In other words, the scale-length is contant for each string, unlike on fanned-fret instruments).

I believe (at least I'm pretty sure I read somewhere) that this was an early attempt a left-hand ergonomics. In reality, it didn't play any better or worse than regular "straight" frets, and so the idea was abandoned. At least, that's how I remember the story. If you know differently, then - as ever - please let us know with a note in the comments below.

G L Wilson

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There's a very nice example of a Rickenbacker 480 on eBay right now. Yes, this is the guitar that looks like a diminutive bass, for it was modelled after the Rickenbacker 4000 series. It's funny, but whenever I see one of these I can't get it out of my head that there's something wrong about it, despite the guitar's obvious coolness. It's just that in my mind I immediately associate that shape with the bass guitar.

Considering they were in production for 10 years (1973-1983), these guitars are relatively rare and this particular example is rarer than most in that it has black pickguard and Rickenbacker nameplate as opposed to white.

G L Wilson

NB: There are a lot of blogs STEALING content and bandwidth. If you read this anywhere else but on guitarz.blogspot.com then you are reading a blog that STEALS content. Please support original bloggers!