It Happened Again

[Tommy]

Four years ago the R tailpiece on my 1992 360/12 exploded. Went through the hoops with Rickenbacker to obtain another. Well, that one exploded after just four years.

I do not use anything but Rickenbacker strings on my guitar. In fact they are the lighter gauge with the .42 on the low E, yet my tailpiece has exploded twice!

I have three Rickenbackers…a 360/12, a 330, and the Lennon C64 model. I want to buy one more…a solid body 620….but this maddening frustration over a part that is defective is making me seriously reconsider another Ric purchase. To say I am angry is an understatement. Three R tailpieces I have to put on my Ric? I have to pay for another? Something is wrong. Wrong with the part, wrong with the redress of this situation.

[teb]

The R tailpiece is the poorest bit of casting or metal work that you will find on any guitar on the planet - from anywhere on the planet. RIC obviously does not care. I was a sculpture major in college, often working with bronze, aluminum and other lost wax casting metals (never cheap pot metal though as it is undependable garbage. It is also amazing that the company plating the cast pieces doesn't send them back with a note saying "try again, because this casting sucks." This was one they sold to me as a replacement. I sent it back and got one slightly better- until it broke. I replaced that one with a trapeze, but didn't like the two sharp prongs hanging off the back end of the guitar, so I eventually ended up with a flat stainless steel harp version from a seller on Reverb. It is well done and hooks to the original bracket. The R on my 370/12 is also bound to blow out at some point, and when it does, it will be replaced similarly. In the meantime, Rickenbacker should be ashamed of sending out such poor,7th grade workmanship.

[Tommy]

And to top it off….Ric are not answering their customer service phone number.

I keep calling and calling…no answer.
714 545 5574. No answer.

Is it possible the company is on some Summer break?

[Ratwax]

I feel your pain. My 12-string tailpiece blew apart in the early 00s, but it took me 5 years to replace it - lack of money & no local distributor in OZ. RIC wouldn't deal direct & I had to go through Japan. They were helpful, but it took over a year to get the replacement part.

My recommendation is to replace your tailpiece bracket at the same time, as they're similar metal and subject to similar failures. Do both and dodge the double-tap.

[drpievann]

+1 on replacing the tailpiece anchor bracket - I am on to my third replacement R part for my 360/12 (I've had the guitar 26 years) and only just thought to look at the bracket that anchors it - which has a chip out of the bass string side and fracture cracks around that I now see. After the second failure I always used RIC strings and tuned the heavy gauge strings up first from the middle out and then the octave/pair strings middle out but this didn't save the tailpiece that just died. My suspicion is that the failures are fatigue fractures and perhaps on the 12 string tuning in pairs from the bottom up (which I think I may have originally done) takes the tailpiece too close to its yield stress limit, weakening the piece and triggering a fatigue failure over time. Stress concentration due to damage to the anchor bracket would exacerbate this I would guess. I suspect the damage to the bracket on mine happened when the first tailpiece failed but have no way of knowing. This would explain why John Hall says the tailpieces have an infinitesimal failure rate but some of us have it happen multiple times.

The manual that came with my guitar does recommend tuning the six string equivalent strings first and then the pair strings - but it doesn't say the tailpiece might fail if you don't. I'm not sure the metal or the workmanship is as bad as tab suggests but I think the design may be sailing closer to the wind than one would expect given there are clearly a number of people who have suffered breakages without having obviously abused their guitars. When I have done a bit of googling on previous occasions, I could never see anything but astonishment from RIC that tailpieces fail so I didn't get the impression they understood the failure mechanism. I have not been recommended to replace the anchor piece by RIC - I just thought I should check it - hadn't seen the previous post here from Ratwax at the time but it's a good tip for sure.

It also took me more than a year to get a replacement to Australia via Japan last time but RIC put me on to a US supplier this time so fingers crossed. They have advised that the anchor bracket is blessedly cheap compared to the R piece.

I have put a third party trapeze tailpiece on for now - I was using one of the harp-shaped ones, but wasn't keen to test the limits of the damaged anchor bracket and didn't particularly like the look of it anyhow.