The Rickenbacker Moment That Brought You Onboard

[indianation65]

I had heard and love plenty of music from the 60s and 70s that had Rickenbackers in it.

Most of my guitar heroes played Gibson Les Pauls, and I'm still crazy about all of them, and the Les Paul.

However, it was Peter Buck and early REM that sent me over the top for Rickenbackers. I have never heard Ricks sound like this, or the overall "atmosphere" of the sound of their album "Murmur" before.
I was hooked!

...wisdom

[seabass]

I'm a huge Squire, McCartney and Rutherford fan but it was the intro to Smoke On The Water that got me first. Had no idea what the bass was but boy it sounded good. Then it was Yes and buying my own and now I'm hooked (like all of us here I presume......)

[tcsmit29]

For me it was the Beatles, or Lennon, more specifically. I was learning guitar in the mid 80's on a Harmony Les Paul copy from the Sears catalog. I was big into Beatle music and other 60's groups. I fell in love with John's second 325 that I saw in pictures. My parents got me a 325v63 in 1988. I was a sophomore in high school. I was struggling to play on the Harmony because of the chunky neck and high action. As soon as I got my 325, my bar chord game really took off and my playing improved dramatically. For that reason, I think the 325 is a great beginner's guitar, other than the cost. Funny how life works, now I struggle to play the 325 and chunky necked Les Pauls are my thing! I still love the Ricks though. I've owned quite a few through the years.

[ch willie]

Just after the Red Rose Speedway, Wings over Europe tour, when I bought a poster of Paul playing his Ric.

I kept that poster on my wall from the time I was 14 until I got my 4001 3 years later. It is tattered, but I keep it on my wall, and it gives me fond memories out how I wanted a Ric so bad that I actually hurt.

I think the photo was a freelance pic: I have searched the web on and off for a long time, and it does not exist. I'd love to have it developed into a poster that I could have matted and framed.

[Sugarcane]

I’ll be the odd one here.

The moment I actually was dragged into the Rickenbacker love wasn’t when I first listened to the Beatles or anything.

It was when I saw a picture of Johnny Ramone playing what appeared to be a modified Fireglo 450 somewhere around the late 70s, early 80s. I didn’t even have to hear anything, that photo in a magazine cover got me craving for a Ric and made me associate Ric guitars with punk and indie rock in my mind.

[RicUpNorth]

Not a musical moment, but the cover of Damn the Torpedoes. I first bought a blue with black hardware 610 for $800 when I could finally afford it. I now have my Fireglow 620 that is such an amazing and beautiful instrument. It just cuts through like nothing else in recordings while fitting in its own sonic space, feels amazing and looks damn cool.

[scott_s]

However, it was Peter Buck and early REM that sent me over the top for Rickenbackers. I have never heard Ricks sound like this, or the overall "atmosphere" of the sound of their album "Murmur" before.
I was hooked!

...wisdom

Same for me. In early-mid 1995, when I was seriously starting to get into music, R.E.M.'s "Monster" was getting a lot of play and I decided to check out their back catalog starting with a copy of "Chronic Town" I found in the local record store.

It blew my mind because it sounded nothing like "Monster"! Punk rock with clean arpeggiated guitars? With mumbled vocals? Can you do that?

Their willingness to do everything their own way really made an impression on me, and knowing how dedicated Peter Buck was to his Rickenbackers, I had to have one, too. I spent a lot of time trying to get his sound with other guitars and the wrong types of amps, I'm finally getting closer these days.

[RicUpNorth]

However, it was Peter Buck and early REM that sent me over the top for Rickenbackers. I have never heard Ricks sound like this, or the overall "atmosphere" of the sound of their album "Murmur" before.
I was hooked!

...wisdom

Same for me. In early-mid 1995, when I was seriously starting to get into music, R.E.M.'s "Monster" was getting a lot of play and I decided to check out their back catalog starting with a copy of "Chronic Town" I found in the local record store.

It blew my mind because it sounded nothing like "Monster"! Punk rock with clean arpeggiated guitars? With mumbled vocals? Can you do that?

Their willingness to do everything their own way really made an impression on me, and knowing how dedicated Peter Buck was to his Rickenbackers, I had to have one, too. I spent a lot of time trying to get his sound with other guitars and the wrong types of amps, I'm finally getting closer these days.

Have to ask, what amps are getting you close? I know he left bed AC30s...

[bigbajo60]

For me, it was seeing a particular picture of McCartney wielding the Rick in a poster that was the reverse side of a thin little magazine that I ran across in a grocery store on my way home from high school one day.
I'd started getting into the bass a couple of years before because of the Band On The Run LP, but the only bass pictured in the poster with that album was Macca's Jazz.
The poster pictured below was the first time I became aware of the 4001, and I was "hooked".

[scott_s]

...I spent a lot of time trying to get his sound with other guitars and the wrong types of amps, I'm finally getting closer these days.

Have to ask, what amps are getting you close? I know he left bed AC30s...

Sure, I'll tell the story chronologically if you don't mind.

From the beginning, I've played on amps that my dad and/or I built. The first tube amp made probably 10W and didn't have a tone control. I read a bunch of hype online about tweed amps and built myself a 5E7 Bandmaster and 5F2A Princeton clone from Weber kits. After that, I went really primitive and built a 5B5 Pro completely from scratch, forming my own chassis from bent aluminum sheet and cutting a speaker baffle from 3/8" plywood to use in the Bandmaster cabinet. All great-sounding amps, with warm cleans that transition smoothly into a great grinding overdrive when you crank them. But that midrange warmth also obscures the fast arpeggios, and I kept cranking up the treble to try to get more definition out of the low strings, to no one's pleasure.

Recently, it dawned on me that most of the amps Buck is known for using (BF/SF Fender Twins, Mesa/Boogies, Vox AC30s) have a tone stack that scoops out some amount of midrange. I used the Duncan Tone Stack Calculator to model a Blackface tone circuit with the midrange control all the way up for minimal scoop but the bass and treble controls set fairly neutral:

I set my Boss EQ pedal for that shape and put it in front of my tweed clones -- it was a revelation! There was the clarity and definition (without ear-piercing brightness) I'd been looking for all this time! And it only took me 20 years or so to put it together.

So I wasted very little time in hacking both my 5F2A and 5B5 clones to include a bass/treble tone stack modeled on the BF Champ. The 15k mid resistor allows plenty of scoop without eating too much gain. These mutts have me jazzed to play guitar again, now that the sound I'm hearing is so much closer to the sound I've been wanting to make!

As I understand it, the earliest Peter Buck rig was just his Rickenbacker or Telecaster into a Fender Twin Reverb with nothing but a cord in between. (You can see the Twin behind Peter in wisdom's picture above.) That would give you the ultimate squeaky-clean scooped Fender sound. Don't forget the 0.013 gauge flatwounds!

[Dcbowling]

I'm a bit late to this party but it's a good topic. I'm not sure if they were used in the recordings or not but Courtney Love with her 425, Kat Bjelland played a 425 and obviously George Harrison with his 425 were a major factor in my first Ric. Those guitars just looked so good to me, my first Ric had to be a 620.

[sloop_john_b]

It was Cliff Burton for me.

With Metallica, you weren't hearing a whole lot of bass on those records, so I really didn't have much reference as it pertained to tone. Even on "Anesthesia" (Cliff's bass solo on their first album), while I loved the playing, I didn't hear that and say "I need that tone". It was purely visual - there was all that early bootleg footage of the band on the "Cliff 'em All" home video, and for a 14 year old kid, they sure cut a profile that I wanted to emulate.

To that end, there was always something so exotic and elusive about Rickenbacker basses - the shape of the body and headstock, all that chrome, the fact that none of the catalogues or websites at the time posted prices, heck even the name itself.

I have a somewhat fuzzy recollection of walking into a shop on 48th Street around 2000 (maybe Manny's, not sure) and seeing an array of Rickenbacker basses behind a velvet rope. I think that was the first time I ever saw one in person. I just remember how much they gleamed.

[Ratwax]

For me, there's the first time I saw a Rickenbacker ín the flesh' and then the first time I heard one knowing what it was.

Like many on this forum I was a Beatles fan, in my case from a very young age which is a story for another time. However, the first time I saw a Rickenbacker guitar is was a 480 (possibly a 481 as my memory is a bit hazy on that) in glorious Azureglo (that I remember as I loved blue at the time) that was on sale in Palings music store on Pitt St in Sydney. I was in there to buy my first electric guitar, after saving my pennies for several months. It was 1978, I was 16 and the Rickenbacker was $2,000! I only had $200, so I bought an Aria LP instead. The 480 (or 481) was on a stand on a plinth in the middle of the store. Think Éxcalibur' from Wayne's World but waaaay cooler.

Fast forward around 8 years and some friends took me to The Rest Hotel at Milsons Point (over the Bridge from Sydney) to see a covers band they thought I'd like as 'they play all that weird 60's xxxx'. The band was called The Beagles and they did play all that 60's music which I loved, The Who, The Turtles, The Monkees (Hey, Hey we're The Beagles - they sang), The Kinks and The Beatles (of course). The singer/rhythm guy played a Mapleglo 330 and I loved the sound he got. It took me 32 years to get a 330 and it was worth the wait.

[SixtyFour]

Rickenbacker... for myself, and all that is attached to its name.

The Beatles primarily, George’s first 12 string in the movie AHDN... the Revolver album ~ Paul’s 4001s and its many incarnations.

“Rickenbacker: The History of the Rickenbacker Guitars” ~ Richard Smith / (apologies ~ Paul Boyer) read cover to cover many times over.

Chris Squire ~ Rickenbacker/RM 1999*
Roger Waters*
Pete Quaife *
John Entwistle*
Donovan*
Mike Rutherford*

The RM 1999 has a certain mystique attached to it... is it because of the players who had them or its scarcity? I cannot define it in words.

In conclusion... Rickenbacker and all that is attached to its name.

[bvstudios]

A band that played at the spring dance when I was in Grade 10 featured the first Rickenbacker I'd seen or heard. That would have been in March or April of 1969. The sound of an electric 12 was magic to my young ears, probably because it was a natural extension to the guitar I had recently upgraded to- a jumbo-bodied Aria 12str acoustic. At the time, I was wearing out my first copy of "The Astounding 12-string Guitar of Glen Campbell" as I tried hard to emulate the guy who had become my musical idol at the time.

Within a matter of weeks of the dance, I'd found McGuinn, "Mister Tambourine Man", and "Turn Turn Turn Turn". Now the Rick was my Holy Grail and I was determined that "some day..." I'd be able to justify having one.

It only took another 39 years, but that was the moment.