Rose Morris Rickenbacker Gallery

[collin]

Looking good, Dan

That one on the left be a 1993!

[Danotron]

Noted and edited

[scotty]

Very Nice Dan

[godber]

Sweet guitars Dan.

There's a lot of love for the Rose Morris series here, so please post your pics.

[frickengruvin]

Here's a group shot of mine with some other guitars I own...My RM is a single family guitar. My cousin bought it new in '64, and I inherited it along with his Rickenbacker b16 combo amp...

[scotty]

Very cool that it's stayed on your family for all those years.Congrats

[8mileshigher]

Very Nice Dan

+1

[Danotron]

Thanks Guys!

Interesting changes going on in the collection these days..(that's all I have to say about that)

[jwilli]

Eddie, I believe that a small number of early '64 Rose Morris instruments had the square heels. I do think the bound f-hole is factory.

That's interesting - I don't recall seeing any pics of full bodied export models (1997, 1998, 1993) with a square heel but I do recall reading that they used NOS older bodies (with square heels?) for some early shipments of the model 1996. I think the bound f-hole looks good...I wonder why the factory decided to ditch that feature on the standard series production deluxe/bound body guitars. I recall Collin's old modded 1993 also had the f-hole bound when he first got it from Canada and I thought that looked great too..

Eddie, you are correct. I had thought that a '64 1997 DA 17 had the square neck heel. I went back and checked my pics. It was a regular rounded heel.

My mind is going.......

[redamber]

Old is not necessarily best!

Here's my 2008 re-issue Rose Morris model 1996 in Amber Fireglo - one of the last batch of about 30 1996s which were manufactured in 2008 and generally accepted as being amongst the best of this run. Still in mint, factory-condition.

[johna]

Here is my 64 RM1999.

[godber]

Here is my 64 RM1999.

Wow! Gorgeous flame.

[glen_l]

I thought there were some early full scale Rose Morris models with square heels too, but looks like they were all rounded. There were certainly square heels on full scale models in '63, so it must have been another changeover feature of the era.

The first 1996's did come with square heels, and a few of them even had no neck volute. The idea that the first 1996's were made with NOS bodies was unsubstantiated folklore. Originally it was an attempt to explain the appearance of 1996's with 2 o'clock soundholes, and perhaps tie these ones to the '58-'60 models. There were also claims that only approx 20 '64 models were made with 2 o'oclock soundhole. Such turned out to be untrue as more data came to light. It turned out that at least half of the 200 1996's made in '64 had 2 o'clock soundholes. The heel is on the neck, not the body, and the super slim neck and headstock was certainly a '64 implimentation. I guess they were still playing around with the 1996 neck design on the first batch or two.

[collin]

I could swear that I've seen some very early '64 1997 models with a square heel, maybe only once.

From what I gather, they changed to the round heels sometime in Feb or March '64, maybe?

There are a handful of 360S/12 models made with square neck heels including JWilli's paddle-headstock and Townshend's first 360S/12....both of which are early '64 but not quite Rose Morris models.

[Clifton]

Here's a group shot of mine with some other guitars I own...My RM is a single family guitar. My cousin bought it new in '64, and I inherited it along with his Rickenbacker b16 combo amp...

Wow, you could get just about any guitar tone ever needed from this collection! Very nice!