RRF Forum Roll Call

[ric480]

A couple more

[rickenbrother]

My first Rick is a 1973 Burgundyglo 480, which is still with me in all original shape. Got it @ Alex's music on 49th St, just down the block from guitar central on 48th street.

Sadly, music row on W. 48th St. is gone.

[henry5]

Hi all! Also still here. I was born in North-East England, grew up in North-West England. My dad was a jazz musician and band leader so grew up with music and musicians. Originally wanted to be a drummer but there was no chance of that as my older brother had already been refused a drum kit. Then wanted to be a guitarist after seeing Thin Lizzy on tv, but when my first band formed the guy who was going to get a bass bailed so I bought a bass instead; the usual story!
The first bass I remember seeing was a Fireglo 4001 hanging in the window of a local shop around 1980. I thought it was gorgeous. My dad’s bassist also had an older Fireglo 4001 with crushed pearl etc. I thought that was gorgeous too. I remember looking at the cover of Magical Mystery Tour as a kid, so that was probably there subliminally, but the first bassists that registered with me visually were Lemmy, Geddy, Gaye Advert, Roger Glover and Glenn Hughes (both Ric-era). My first bass was a Jetglo 4001 bought new in 1980, which was stolen in 1986 (TC915 if it’s out there!). Since then I’ve had maybe 20-odd, with my favourite (and indeed favorite bass of all the thousands I’ve played) being my pre-skunk Feb ‘72 4001.

IMG_6100.png (1.71 MiB) Viewed 2744 times

[admin]

Thanks Shaun. Your post is appreciated. Thanks too for submitted your stolen base to the stolen record. We have located instruments for others in the past. So fingers crossed.

[henry5]

Thanks Shaun. Your post is appreciated. Thanks too for submitted your stolen base to the stolen record. We have located instruments for others in the past. So fingers crossed.

Thanks Peter, and you too!

With regards to the bass, I doubt I’ll see it again. But just in case - and allowing for the fact that it could have changed much since I last saw it - it was the usual with white trim, but I’d replaced the white scratch plate with a black one and I’d had the bridge pickup rewound for more output. I didn’t know about the cap back then! What did hurt about losing it was my dad paid for the bulk of it because he wanted me to have a “quality instrument” to start on. My dad passed in 2020.

There was also a V63 I bought on eBay that disappeared in transit from the USA to the UK, but I’d have to check the serial number of that. I probably already noted it tbh.

[RobRus]

Greetings,
New member here I live near Grand Rapids Michigan, I am a retired Industrial Designer and ran my own consulting business for 21 years.
I started playing guitar when I was about 8 years old. I really wanted a guitar but we didn't have much money so asking for one was out of the question. One day I was walking home from school when I spotted an acoustic guitar neck sticking out of someones trash bin. I pulled it out and the top had lifted on the lower bout. I took it home and fixed it the best I could (a piece of masonite filled the hole and lots of elmers glue). I actually played that guitar until a friend gave me an old guitar that was in better condition than mine so I fixed that one up to be playable.
I have been repairing guitars (off and on) ever since but just recently started building acoustics.
Back in the 60s and 70s I played in a couple of bands, lead/rythem in one and bass in another. I currectly have a collection of 17 guitars (acoustic and electric) and I still play every day.

My introduction to Rickenbackers?
Lets see... I was 11 years old laying on the living room floor watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show (yep I'm that old) and other than the music, Johns Ric stood out to me like nothing else. I have wanted one for most of my life and in "98" finally bought a 360 Jetglow (I really wanted the 325 but didn't like the price tag). A couple of years ago I ended up selling it to buy a 1950 Gibson CF100 (one of the first 300 made)

However, I missed my Ric and decided to sell another guitar to buy a 2017 325c64v. It is in excellent shap with no scrapes or scratches one small ding but otherwise near mint. It had a set of 11's on it and was in need of a setup

Thanks to all the info I found on this site I was able to set it up "correctly" with a set of 12s, it now plays like it should.

This guitar I know will stay with me till the end..

Thanks for keeping up a great site that is actually orginized and easy to find info...

Cheers,
Bob

[rickenbrother]

Greetings,
New member here

Welcome aboard, Bob.

[jps]

Hi Bob,

Wecome the to best (and most organized) Rickenbacker related site on the web!

What kinds of products did you design in your career. And tell us more about your guitar building.

[RobRus]

Hi Bob,

Wecome the to best (and most organized) Rickenbacker related site on the web!

What kinds of products did you design in your career. And tell us more about your guitar building.

A bit more detail of my career:

As I said I started fixing guitars at an early age, so I was pretty handy with tools and figuring out things. I started building scale model cars and had a big interest in custom cars. When I was about 14 years old my best friends dad did body work in his garage and I asked him if he would show me how to do it. My first real job was working in body shops. I ended up specializing in painting and did that till I was 35 years old until I decided on a career change.
I went to Kendall College of Art and Design where I got my degree in Industrial Design. I worked at Steelcase for a couple of years but couldn't do the "corporate" life so I left and started my own design business called Visio Design. I did a wide variety of different types of design projects but basically I would take a clients idea and take it from concept to production. I did products ranging from designing a childs toy for an individual client, to a specialized industrial cleaning machine for a large corporation.

My last 5 years of my business I was in game development. I did 3D models for racing simulators. I am quite proficient in 2D and 3D cad and It was my hobby doing 3D models of old race cars, that is how I got connected to racing simulators (another long story).

12 years ago I decided to retire and that is when I decided to learn how to build acoustic guitars, I had already built a couple of electric guitars and repaired a lot of both electrics and acoustcs so that led me to learning how to build acoustics. I am just starting on my 3rd which is a copy of an 1830 Panormo. It was one of the first guitars that used machine heads as well as a bridge with pegs to hold the strings.

Whew! 73 years in short form...

I am happy I found this forum, Congratulations on whoever set this up and the folks who maintain it. (thumbs up)

Cheers,
Bob

[jps]

Hi Bob,

Wecome the to best (and most organized) Rickenbacker related site on the web!

What kinds of products did you design in your career. And tell us more about your guitar building.

A bit more detail of my career:

As I said I started fixing guitars at an early age, so I was pretty handy with tools and figuring out things. I started building scale model cars and had a big interest in custom cars. When I was about 14 years old my best friends dad did body work in his garage and I asked him if he would show me how to do it. My first real job was working in body shops. I ended up specializing in painting and did that till I was 35 years old until I decided on a career change.
I went to Kendall College of Art and Design where I got my degree in Industrial Design. I worked at Steelcase for a couple of years but couldn't do the "corporate" life so I left and started my own design business called Visio Design. I did a wide variety of different types of design projects but basically I would take a clients idea and take it from concept to production. I did products ranging from designing a childs toy for an individual client, to a specialized industrial cleaning machine for a large corporation.

My last 5 years of my business I was in game development. I did 3D models for racing simulators. I am quite proficient in 2D and 3D cad and It was my hobby doing 3D models of old race cars, that is how I got connected to racing simulators (another long story).

12 years ago I decided to retire and that is when I decided to learn how to build acoustic guitars, I had already built a couple of electric guitars and repaired a lot of both electrics and acoustcs so that led me to learning how to build acoustics. I am just starting on my 3rd which is a copy of an 1830 Panormo. It was one of the first guitars that used machine heads as well as a bridge with pegs to hold the strings.

Whew! 73 years in short form...

I am happy I found this forum, Congratulations on whoever set this up and the folks who maintain it. (thumbs up)

Cheers,
Bob

We have a longstanding (he might be sitting these days) member who is big into scale models, Paul Boyer. He could tell you about his long career in that industry (he was an editor of a major scale model magazine).

Did you ever do car simulators for Formula 1?

Interesting that you are doing Panormo copies; seems that most do copies of Martins, especially OM/000s and dread-nots®.

[RobRus]

@jps said:
"Interesting that you are doing Panormo copies; seems that most do copies of Martins, especially OM/000s and dread-nots®."

I have a big interest in history and how current design ideas evolve. Panormo (in my mind) was the originator of the concepts we take for granted in guitars. He was one of the first to have machine heads instead of pegs to tune the strings, he also was one of the first to use bridge pins instead of tying the strings (classical guitars). He also managed to design a guitar that was louder than the French guitars of the day. The other reason I decided is because there are not many blueprints of this guitar. I spent almost 2 years researching Panormo and creating accurate detail drawings. It seems most drawing of this guitar are very inaccurate. And finally I chose this guitar because he used very unusual joints. He attached his neck to the "spanish slipper" with a long scarph joint that no one had ever used and also he attaches his headstock with a blind V joint. He was a master of wood conservation and these 2 changes allowed him to build a neck with minimal materials and it is a thing of beauty...

1c 1830 Panormo Headstock Side.jpg (38.28 KiB) Viewed 2256 times

@jps said:
Did you ever do car simulators for Formula 1?

Yes, that is my main interes.
I had a team of guys (3 of us) that were part of Team Players Virtual Garage. That was a subset of my main design business. I did all 3D modeling and most texture work, another one did all the physics for the cars. The sim engine we used could take actual telemetry data from a real car so we could make very accurate representations of the cars we simulated. We did real race car drivers personal cars for out business but did early F1 cars for fun. We started out doing free cars for anyone to download. You just needed to buy the sim engine. As we did more free work I started getting inquiries from real race car drivers wanting us to do their cars. It was actually a lot of fun and I got to meet a number of famous real drivers.

D50_002.jpg (147.82 KiB) Viewed 2256 times

This is a sim we did for the 1955 F1 it included 7 cars all with accurate individule physics.

Gurney Eagle Tribute Main Screen.jpg (95.9 KiB) Viewed 2256 times

This was a tribute to Dan Gurney's 1967 Eagle F1

Gurney003.jpg (127.05 KiB) Viewed 2256 times

We also did a TOC (Turn of the Century) sim that included cars from the early 1900's to 1925.

So yea out main interest was in vintage F1 cars (pre wings).

Sorry for going off topic but as you can see I am passionate about it...

Cheers,
Bob

[admin]

Welcome Robert!. Thanks for the information on the 1830 Panormo Headstock. The cars are too shabby, either.

[jps]

@jps said:
"Interesting that you are doing Panormo copies; seems that most do copies of Martins, especially OM/000s and dread-nots®."

I have a big interest in history and how current design ideas evolve. Panormo (in my mind) was the originator of the concepts we take for granted in guitars. He was one of the first to have machine heads instead of pegs to tune the strings, he also was one of the first to use bridge pins instead of tying the strings (classical guitars). He also managed to design a guitar that was louder than the French guitars of the day. The other reason I decided is because there are not many blueprints of this guitar. I spent almost 2 years researching Panormo and creating accurate detail drawings. It seems most drawing of this guitar are very inaccurate. And finally I chose this guitar because he used very unusual joints. He attached his neck to the "spanish slipper" with a long scarph joint that no one had ever used and also he attaches his headstock with a blind V joint. He was a master of wood conservation and these 2 changes allowed him to build a neck with minimal materials and it is a thing of beauty...

1c 1830 Panormo Headstock Side.jpg


@jps said:
Did you ever do car simulators for Formula 1?

Yes, that is my main interes.
I had a team of guys (3 of us) that were part of Team Players Virtual Garage. That was a subset of my main design business. I did all 3D modeling and most texture work, another one did all the physics for the cars. The sim engine we used could take actual telemetry data from a real car so we could make very accurate representations of the cars we simulated. We did real race car drivers personal cars for out business but did early F1 cars for fun. We started out doing free cars for anyone to download. You just needed to buy the sim engine. As we did more free work I started getting inquiries from real race car drivers wanting us to do their cars. It was actually a lot of fun and I got to meet a number of famous real drivers.

D50_002.jpg

This is a sim we did for the 1955 F1 it included 7 cars all with accurate individule physics.


Gurney Eagle Tribute Main Screen.jpg
This was a tribute to Dan Gurney's 1967 Eagle F1



Gurney003.jpg

We also did a TOC (Turn of the Century) sim that included cars from the early 1900's to 1925.

So yea out main interest was in vintage F1 cars (pre wings).

Sorry for going off topic but as you can see I am passionate about it...

Cheers,
Bob

Great stuff!

Martin used that type of headstock attachment in their early years; they most certainly must have gotten that idea from Panormo. These days they don't do that but they do mimic it, as shown on this custom OM-18 I have.

Martin_Custom_DC_OM-18-800_1789.jpg (132.54 KiB) Viewed 2241 times

I love the story and images of your simulator work. Must be very satisfying.

[doctorwho]

I enjoyed reading the background material, thanks for sharing!