New 360/12 String-Spacing

Folkie · Post by **Folkie** » Sun Sep 16, 2012 2:03 pm

I decided to change the title of this thread to be more accurate and to attract more responses. If I'm correct that the guitar I played wasn't an aberration, this is huge news for Rickenbacker forumites:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=406962

Rickissippi · Post by **Rickissippi** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 11:24 am

Following along at home. Just to be perfectly clear, the suspicion here is only about 12-strings, right?

8mileshigher · Post by **8mileshigher** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 1:36 pm

Robert, did you post pictures before of the old nut right up against the new nut you installed, to detail the string spacing between each string within the pair of strings (regular and octave) as well as the overall spacing between each course of two-string pairs ? ? It would be helpful to see the differences on yours, that you speak of.

I know I have seen pictures of Todd's (TEB) before and after conversion ... as I had Mark Arnquist do my 360-12 nut about two weeks after Todd had his work done by him.

Folkie · Post by **Folkie** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 3:27 pm

Rickissippi wrote:Following along at home. Just to be perfectly clear, the suspicion here is only about 12-strings, right?

Yes, John, I was just talking about 12-strings, specifically the current 360/12. The issue of string-spacing doesn't come up as much with 6-strings, since even folks with larger hands seem to handle them okay.

Folkie · Post by **Folkie** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 3:43 pm

8mileshigher wrote:Robert, did you post pictures before of the old nut right up against the new nut you installed, to detail the string spacing between each string within the pair of strings (regular and octave) as well as the overall spacing between each course of two-string pairs ? ? It would be helpful to see the differences on yours, that you speak of.

I know I have seen pictures of Todd's (TEB) before and after conversion ... as I had Mark Arnquist do my 360-12 nut about two weeks after Todd had his work done by him.

Rich,

There's no question that Mark Arnquist does nice work, and that he has a stellar reputation here. The spacing between the strings of each pair on my modded 360/12 is substantially wider than was stock in 2010, and is more comfortable for me than it was. But the brand new one I just played is much wider than mine, particularly on the three highest pairs.

My apologies for not posting before and after pictures. My reasons were: 1) I have no camera, 2) My cell phone has very poor resolution, and 3) I have never tried to post photos on this forum.

At this point I no longer have my guitar's original nut. But I would love to take a few pictures of that new 360, so everyone could see how dramatic the change is.

Robert

Folkie · Post by **Folkie** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 4:36 pm

I just spoke to Chris Clayton at POTR, and he compared a 2010 360/12 and a new 360/12 from off his wall. He said that, although there is a difference in the string-spacing, it's not too dramatic, certainly not as dramatic as the difference I observed. He said he has not experienced much variation in the width of the string-courses on the 360 models. He did say, however, that he's noticed a substantial variation in string-spacing among different 660/12 models. At any rate, it looks like the guitar I played at Sam Ash was not representative of the 360/12's that are currently leaving the factory. My next step will be to try to contact Richard Cannata at the Ric factory. I just called and he was out of the office. I'll post again after I speak to him.

Robert

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