Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

My appologies if this has been previously covered.

Have any previously butchered guitars shown back up after a trip to the New Jersey Butcher with a second lease on life?

As far as the registry is concerned is it still butchered? Even with its "presumed" original Jack plate in place?

For the record I'm not a fan of anyone parting out perfectly good guitars to make a few extra bucks but as a tinkerer I do like getting ahold of something that needs work and building it up to my liking. I've never done this with a Ric before but have really enjoyed doing up partscasters/kits/scratch builds in the past and I'm looking for a project to keep me busy over the winter.

Anyone out there saved a guitar from the wood chipper and helped it find its way back onto the registry ?

Yes, more than a few have been *mostly* pieced back together and saved.

Personally, I consider the two main pieces to be the body and the jackplate. I wouldn't sell a body without its original identity, but the other parts are fair game if it's a modified guitar already.

It's easy to hate on the guitar butchers out there - but if we (the collective buyers market) valued certain Rickenbacker models more, this wouldn't happen. It's especially annoying for vintage guitars that have managed to stay in one piece for a half-century, just parted-out like that. But it happens, over-and-over-and-over, especially for the less loved models like the 425 or 450/12.

Gotta price that practice out of existence!

I can't say it was necessarily wood-chipper-fare, but the 430 I rebuilt came in pretty cheap and pretty bad. My intent was never really to return it to original condition, as I'm not fond of those original 230, 430, 2030, etc. body shapes so I built a new body to my liking and refinished everything. Then the original body got stripped, had its horns reshaped. It was top-bound and got a red metal flake paint job. I eventually sold it to another owner of a 430 here on the forum and it turned out looking like this.

My 2030 bass had also gone through a body switch a couple years earlier. Its electronics all stayed the same, just a new body to hang them on. I'm sure there are those purists out there who consider these changes butcher jobs as well, but I certainly like them far more than what came in the boxes when they were delivered. There are certainly collectable guitars out there which should not be messed with, but especially considering the shape they were in, these aren't among them.

Teb those look awesome! Well done!