The wood of john's first rickenbacker

roadrunners · Post by **roadrunners** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 6:42 am

hmm interesting.....Well Im sure it has to have some truth if your Dad told you.....but what degree of truth........like fully replaced....or just repaired. I wish their were some pictures of the back of the guitar from the early days until now

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 6:49 am

"You'd think this was the Shroud of Turin..."

...which was debunked a decade or more ago.

roadrunners · Post by **roadrunners** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 6:52 am

ah, so we only have 10 years to wait

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 1:57 pm

This is why there are enough pieces of the True Cross in European cathedrals to build a full-scale model of Noah's Ark...

Let the debunking continue...

larrywassgren · Post by **larrywassgren** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 4:43 pm

This is tabloid stuff. Next we'll see a 1200 pound fatman strumming it on the cover of The National Enquirer. Of course V81 is all original except for the parts Ron DeMarino changed out. How could a violin maker in Germany make a whole new body out of alder with an exact wood-grain match back in 1962? Take a good look at all those photos of V81 over the years. The grain has always matched on the front of the body and headstock and I've seen plenty of vintage guitars in my time and the back is original in my eyes.

qmoder · Post by **qmoder** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 6:51 pm

This is very interesting and I certainly don't know the answer.
I have a nephew who has a very nice acoustic martin. One day his girl friend in a fit of rage smashed in the back.
You'd have thought scratch one martin. But no. He had a friend who put in a piece of plywood. Sound familiar.

karl_teten · Post by **karl_teten** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 8:39 pm

With all the stories told by the Beatles about painting and stripping their guitars, giving away guitars, buying and trying guitars, you would have heard a story by now about how V81 got damaged.

There are no stories from the Beatles about V81 every being damaged outside of what mods we all know has already been done to it.

leftybass · Post by **leftybass** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 12:14 am

Larry, we're only talking about the back, not the rest of the body.

I too think it's odd that the 'back' story has never got even a smidgen of print in any account about V81 and the knocks it took over the years, but is it impossible that it happened? I won't go that far. We'll probably never know unless we take V81 apart and look inside...

JoeB's 1963 lefty Hofner 500/1 just had a new top put on it, and it's a first class job and the bass looks fabulous. My point is there were/are people out there that could have put a back on V81 and made it look factory. My own Hofner 500/1 from 1957 has a single-piece flat plywood back.

jwilli · Post by **jwilli** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 1:17 am

I remember JH bringing this up during C Team discussions. I think that it very well could have happened. DeMarino didn't know anything about a '58 325 until he had JL's in his shop. If a new back was put on previously in the early 60's, he might not have known.

roadrunners · Post by **roadrunners** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 3:07 am

Considering the "Butcher Job" that Demarino did to the 325 1958.....I dont think he knew much about rickenbackers. He had to send for a Schematic and didnt know what finish to do it in....he made his own WAY off pickgaurd....I dont think he would have noticed a different back....he probably thought that was just how rickenbacker assembled it. If you remember, he thought that the Rick was originally black

larrywassgren · Post by **larrywassgren** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 5:31 am

Good points everybody. Yes, the back could be replaced but looking at it I don't think so. The tabloid stuff I'm getting at is there are claims the whole body was destroyed and replaced by a guy in Germany. Also I've heard that there is a clone on display in Tokyo and not the real V81. All B.S.

johnhall · Post by **johnhall** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 5:59 am

The story I remember hearing was that it happened either the same day or very shortly after Astrid Kirscher took the famous photos against the army trucks or whatever they were. I've also heard that there are more unpublished photos from that day which show the back rather more clearly but I've certainly not seen them. Anyone?

As I said before, I was told the guitar was run over but it's a bit hard to believe there wouldn't have been greater damage. But supposedly the refinish to black was to hide some of the previous repair work.

Actually, the back is quite easy to pop off and replace: anyone with some basic woodworking tools could do this and a guy named Becker from Hamburg, as I recall, either claimed to have done the work or knew who did the work.

At least I'm keeping an open mind about all of this and don't favor any particular viewpoint. In any case, eventually everything always comes out.

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 6:03 am

Like Jagger and Bowie...

leftybass · Post by **leftybass** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 6:40 am

JH: "..The story I remember hearing was that it happened either the same day or very shortly after Astrid Kirscher took the famous photos against the army trucks or whatever they were...."

That would put the damage happening fairly early in the timeline of Lennon owning the guitar, it was totally unaltered at that point..The Kauffman was still on the guitar, and Paul was playing John's old Hofner Club 40 upside-down..

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 7:16 am

A replaced back, painted black and subsequently, years later, stripped back to "natural", would be difficult to detect unless the replacement work was done very poorly to begin with. The black paint left in the grain of the wood and plywood--so obvious in the photos of V81 that I've seen--does a lot to make everything look of the same vintage.