Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hey there rickendoodle dandies, can someone help with a 481 question? I bought my jg481 non slant in 87' and living in Australia this was a most unusual guitar here. Since then I have realised that most were slant fretted. Back in those dark times I wrote to ric (on paper,with a stamp) to date my guitar by serial number. They were most helpful (more paper and stamps) but were unable to tell me how many of these were produced. Which leads me to... If we don't know production numbers how do we know that non slant is unusual? I believe someone here may have some info? Thanks.

Typically, there are not detailed manufacturing statistics available for any Ric models. There have been erroneous numbers suggested in the Smith book, years ago, for certain production models, but those statistics Smith used have been discredited.

I'm not sure you are going to find any good data to support the number of slant-fret 481 models vrs "regular" 481 models. But it will be interesting if anyone has any comments on this.

It's "unusual" because there are only a handful of non-slanted 481 guitars that have actaully been confirmed to exist. A non-slanted version was never mentioned in the Rickenbacker catalogue or price book. The rare 483 was a custom order and some have speculated that the non-slant 481 may have been a custom order as well, however, the 483 was still listed on the price sheet while any "special options" for the 481 were not leading me to believe that these are simply rare prototype models possibly made from leftover 4080 necks.

This was all brought up in your other thread, though.

Here's a non-slant 481 that recently sold on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/1976-RARE-Ricke ... 7675.l2557

libratune wrote:Here's a non-slant 481 that recently sold on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/1976-RARE-Ricke ... 7675.l2557

I wonder who got it?

Grey wrote:

libratune wrote:Here's a non-slant 481 that recently sold on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/1976-RARE-Ricke ... 7675.l2557

I wonder who got it?

And what they actually paid...

Sorry Grey,over threading I am guilty of.

Petenbacker wrote:Sorry Grey,over threading I am guilty of.

It's not a big deal, I just wanted to point out that a lot of your questions got answered.

Wasn't me, but I was tempted to call the seller and ask for his bottom line, but it sold really quickly. I bought several others from him a while back (including my avatar photo). I'm the guy who bought that non-slant with the DiMarzios cobbled-in a while back and I've been wanting to hear real 481 pickups in person ever since....