Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

There were several of these intended to be made and auctioned off for charity. Unfortunately there was some dispute between Chris and the guy who did the paint and final assembly. I don't recall how many were actually completed properly but a few ended up with oddball paint schemes instead of the &q...

Martin and Paul Kelly's book is spectacular. They have really done their homework and I can't tell you how many things they've uncovered that I knew nothing about. Rickenbacker aficionados (Fender historians too . . .) are in for a real treat. It's not a nuts and bolts or oddities book, with every s...

Regarding compressed wood, check at the heel end of the neck to see if the two acorns nuts on the body end of the rods are the same distance in from the end of the fingerboard. You may need to strengthen the wood there by saturating it with superglue to harden the surfaces the nuts bear on. You too...

Heaven forbid if we showed something new and exciting at NAMM- our backlog would increase from the current 18 months to 24 or 36! The problem right now is that with essentially zero unemployment, nobody wants to work in a factory these days. If consumers would actually buy products that were entirel...

These are not Rickenbacker (or more correctly, Electro String) products. These were produced in the UK by Premier Vox or whatever their corporate entity was. I don't recall the details but it was done under a license agreement pursuant to some patent matter. Perhaps Martin and Paul Kelly's forthcomi...

The actual story is that George Cole, the Chief Engineer at that time (and great bass player) used a stroboscope to locate and map nodes for various harmonics along the strings as they were fretted. We then used that data to select locations where the most useful ones would fall within the aperture ...

As it happens, I was reviewing the original Rose Morris contract yesterday with a writer that's doing the "definitive Rickenbacker book". They specifically required that all of their instruments have F-holes, dot inlays, and a few other quirky requirements. Who knows why but as the custome...

We have always recommended lithium batteries for this guitar. Roger has also always been an advocate of these as well. Originally Ultra was the only brand easily obtainable but now there's many makers, including Eveready. On the surface they seem terribly expensive but in the end they are not, as th...

The first CNC-made bodies were done in July, 1995, the Model 330 being the first model. Sticking with you literally, CAD usage began earlier in January 1995, when I did the first programming as a student at the CNC maker's factory in Coburg, Germany.

We never asked them to change their name but only to refrain from offering gray market goods as legitimate imports.

Another one in the Birmingham area would be good as I live less than an hour from there.

Being back in California for a few days and with some time on my hands, I thought it would be interesting to do some research and followup on this story. Ms. Tandle was hired on 8/9/65, according to the payroll logs, so it would have been impossible for her to have been involved in the production of...

Didn't the old Rickenbackers use crushed abalone? I remember reading that the abalone were harvested from the Southern California coast, mainly for use in furniture, and that the population decreased enough that it was stopped. bluewhale No. The original material was sourced from Japan in sheet for...

GEM was a line of private label amps we produced for someone else. These were variations of the TR Series amp line, according to the specs of the customer.

collin wrote:. . . .and it's the Ryder student line and not a Rickenbacker). . . . .

No such thing. Ryder's were Electros, just rebranded with the music school's logo. They were sold by the school as as kit- guitar, amp, music lessons.

To restate and confirm what has been said, these switches were hand-made by us, from a combination of two different Switchcraft switches. I have no knowledge which exact models were used nor am I aware of any records that would show this. But it really doesn't matter; the Switchcraft components are ...