Why wouldn't you want to spend a little more money to get your guitar set up just right to your tastes? For any guitar--not just a Rick. It just makes more sense to me. I still remember when I bought my Amber Fire-glo 620 six string in 2007. It played and sounded really, really good at the guitar store. Then I took it to my local luthier (who the store I bought it from even uses) and he REALLY brought out all of the subtleties of the instrument, mainly by widening the nut slots slightly as well as the saddle slots. It was absolutely amazing--it really took a great guitar and kicked it up a notch to incredible.Hixy wrote:Doesnt anyone else find it very unusual that after spending thousands on a new Ric you have to spend more money to get it to play properly. I would have thought that it would be part of the quality control process to make sure these playable antiques of the future leave the factory in near to perfect condition.
Reading many of the threads where owners are having to spend many dollars on getting their Ric's to a playable standard makes me think there is some sort of Chinese production line going on where the bulk of the money changing hands is going to the owners and not into the product.
I hope I am wrong.
And to weigh in on the 6 vs. 12-saddle bridge argument--for my 330/12 I have both a six and a twelve-saddle bridge. I swap them out depending on what strings I have on the guitar. Six-saddle for Rick strings, and twelve-saddle for D'Addario strings. Since they're already pre-intonated for a specific brand of strings, it's really easy to change types of strings if I want to and not have to worry about intonation.