12-String Battle Royale

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Sun May 28, 2006 10:40 am

Todd, you've given me an idea on guards which I'm going to try out on one of my FGs.

This place remains inspirational in its creativity!

winston · Post by **winston** » Sun May 28, 2006 10:54 am

"for those who are symmetrically inclined" Yep that's me Todd. Great job on the guards. Wow! I love the TRC too.

Overall your guitar is an absolute beauty. I'll bet you are a happy man.

teb · Post by **teb** » Sun May 28, 2006 12:56 pm

Yep, everything worked out well. I didn't have to do any kind of damage control and managed to complete the whole process without doing anything typical, like accidentally dropping the vice-grips on the top. I REALLY like these guards and can't see ever owning another white-guarded Ric with the solid white plexiglass. These are much more elegant and only cost me $8 to build. A fair amount of labor though - it makes Tony's Pickguardian price of $60 or so per set look like a pretty decent deal. I tried to shoot a couple photos that would show how much visual depth the polished edges give and these are about as good as I could manage.

http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/jg%20002.jpg
http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/jg%20004.jpg

Naturally, this raises the question "OK, that's pretty cool, what other interesting variations can you come up with?" I went back and forth about whether or not to put guards on my Jetglo 2030 bass replacement body at all, since it looked pretty cool without them. I finally did add white plexi guards in the end but might try building a set of black back-painted guards with polished edges to see how they look.

I started playing guitars in about 1965 and all my life if someone had asked me "If you could only own one guitar, what would it be?" the answer has always been a Rickenbacker 12-String. This one seems to be getting pretty close to what I've always had in mind.

rick12dr · Post by **rick12dr** » Sun May 28, 2006 1:33 pm

Todd; cool what ya did. I did the polish- the- edge thing on white nameplates years ago; it Does look cool. As to the idea of clear plexi with black sprayed back; well, one persons' experience[mine]; I did it as an experiment to see if it would look better than stock solid black Plexi; IMO, it did Not. But it Does work with white. YMMV.FWIW...Now, get your 12 to Arnquist and be prepared to get your 12 Maxed out...

ted_williams · Post by **ted_williams** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 8:09 am

If you go with a 620/12, I would recommend switching to a trapeze tailpiece. The R tailpiece seems harder to work with when it's time to change strings (at least for me) when it's that close to the bridge.

By the way, Teb, where in Madison are you? I'm in Middleton. Maybe we should have a mini-confluence sometime.

teb · Post by **teb** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 2:33 pm

Near west side, close to the Whitney and Old Middleton intersection, so we must be pretty close. If I plug in my 360-12 and crank my 200 watt Trayner up you can probably hear it!...at least you will after my windows blow out... Gee, I wonder why I have Tinnitus?...I can still hear my old Sunn folded horns and I sold them off about 1978...

Speaking of 620-12's, I got a batch of photos from Mark Arnquist yesterday showing a full-blown, max-width treatment that he just finished on a 620-12. They're pretty interesting. He turned the bridge around for access to the intonation screws, since the R tailpiece was in the way, and did a full-neck-width re-fret along with the standard wide nut spacing treatment. The added playing width is pretty amazing and I wondering about having the same thing done on my 360-12WB. I'll stick a copy of the photo folder in my web-closet in case anybody wants to see it. Most are captioned, so it's not too hard to see what's going on.

For some reason, my web closet keeps scrambling the photo order, but I numbered the pictures 1-31. If you open them in order you'll see the process from start to finish. The last two photos are the "before" and "after" shots. Here's the link.
http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/Arnquist%20Mods

ted_williams · Post by **ted_williams** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 6:26 pm

So you're near GoodNLoud. I've given up trying to talk Max into carrying Rickenbackers. I'm a few blocks from the old Regenberg store (now a Papa John's), so we're about 5 minutes away from each other. I'll be listening for your 360-12.

In those Arnquist pictures, it looks like he re-shaped the TRC, although it's not mentioned.

teb · Post by **teb** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 7:47 pm

Yes, he trims the TRC to help it clear the strings as they make their way from the nut to the tuners. It was mentioned in the text he sent, but not included in the photos.

steverok · Post by **steverok** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 3:39 am

I second the vintage trapeze, especially on a toaster-equipped Ric-12, it looks very cool.

teb · Post by **teb** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 5:11 pm

I thought the look of the unvarnished fingerboard and having the frets run all the way out to the edges might bug me, but for the extra width offered, I think I could certainly live with it. My 2030 has an unvarnished fingerboard and it looks quite good.