Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hmmm, 43 years old this month. Only Dec. guitar I've owned IIRC...

Wow John, I was a little kid then! Sweet!

Gorgeous guitar, John! For the 6&12-string illiterate like myself, what model is that?

Allgaier - thanks for the tailpiece link.

admin wrote:Mark: Thanks for introducing this thread. Just in passing, it is possible to look at the birthdays of a few thousand Rickenbackers by visiting the Rickenbacker Register.

A suggestion - round it out by making it possible to link one picture to the registry entry.

admin wrote:Mark: Thanks for introducing this thread. Just in passing, it is possible to look at the birthdays of a few thousand Rickenbackers by visiting the Rickenbacker Register.

No problem, Peter. Thanks for bringing the Forum forward so we can all geek out over this stuff!

walker wrote:Gorgeous guitar, John! For the 6&12-string illiterate like myself, what model is that?

Hi Mark, it's a 360/12 from Dec. 1964, pretty early production in the grand scheme of things....the earliest I have seen that's known to us Rick-O-philes is from October '64. I bought this not long after MARF II. The Fireglow is really brown-ish in color, and it just has a different feel from other 60's 12-strings that I've owned. It is a one-owner guitar too....I'm really pleased with it.

John: Your idea of linking a photo to the Register is a good one and has been on our to do list of things to do for a while now.

admin wrote:John: Your idea of linking a photo to the Register is a good one and has been on our to do list of things to do for a while now.

WOW, what a cool idea!

admin wrote:John: Your idea of linking a photo to the Register is a good one and has been on our to do list of things to do for a while now.

That's great, Peter. I was just thinking it would be cool to see every instrument, especially the rare ones, and then I thought of stolen ones and how John found out his lefty was stolen using the registry, and how pictures could aid in identifying them. Maybe those listed as stolen can have more then one pic allowed to better show unique markings or alterations to help to identify them.

This is a great idea. Peter, please post a heads-up for us when this is realized.

Brilliant idea

My pcitures are not that good, but I'm in! Maybe I can get my borther-in-law to shoot some for me....

And brilliant segue, while I was checking the pots on my '76 4001FL tonight for the registry, I discovered that it's a December creation.

Back in 1982, I had just bought my first Rick bass, a '79 4001 JG with a chrome pickguard. I was 16 at the time, and really dug the look of chrome on guitars as well as cars. If chrome were an actual ethnicity, women of said skin color would have been my #1 pursuit as well. So I was all stoked about my JG with the chrome, when I saw THIS bass pop up in the same music store about 6 months later:



It seems a little silly now, but back then my sophomoric perspective on what qualified things as being cool made this bass look like the golden head thingy that Indiana Jones procurred in the first 10 minutes of Raider Of The Lost Ark. I couldn't believe the size of this huge chrome pickguard! It also had a gold-plated TRC that was smaller and differently shaped than a standard RIC nameplate, and the lettering was in a completely different font style, in a straight line, and not curved or underlined. But alas, I had made my purchase on the JG, and liked it enough that I wasn't about to consider selling it just to nab this other bass. I kept an eye on it for awhile in case I made enough money to buy it also, but it disappeared quickly.

Fast forward to 1985 - I see it at the same music store again! I picked it up, trying my best to keep my poker face on and act merely semi-interested as I played around on it. It was tagged at $375. I managed to talk the clerk down to $325, and out I walked with it. Now I was a double-fisted chrome weilding GOD. (Or so I imagined.) One thing, however, someone had switched the gold TRC I had first seen with a black & white lettered one. Years later I learned that the serial number which started with 'ZZ' designated the jackplate as a replacement. Considering this, the switched TRC, the non-stock PG, and the ease in which I haggled the guy down to $325 makes me wonder if the bass could have been stolen.

This bass was originally fretted, but since I already had the fretted '79 JG, I decided to have the frets yanked and add variety to my tonal capabilities. And thus began the 8 month oddessy in which the fretjob was committed. I'm not going to name names - not the guy who did the work, not the music store, not even the city in which this took place - the job was that bad. And it took him 8 months to do it badly! Major chunks of the fretboard left the building - the strips of ebony fret-markers were cut hap-hazardly and big slice marks marred the Rosewood - the refin on the neck was instantly yellowed and not even sanded down around the edges where it met the original neck finish. Subsequently it chipped a lot as I played it.

Backing up to the wait... when time began to lapse to an unreasonable degree, I got into the habit of calling the guy about every three weeks to give a "friendly inquiry" as to what the hell was going on with my bass. The excuses... always the excuses. One night about 6 months into this thing, the guy called me up completely hammered and basically had some kind of break-down about the bass. He stumbled around the issue of what was going on with the job, never quite able to bring himself to admit anything factual, nor come clean about what the hell was eating him up. Towards the end of his diatribe, he said that he felt like he didn't know me very well, and felt like he wished he knew me better, which sounds like a lurid come-on on the surface, but deep-down, I knew that it was the bass job that had him in turmoil. At this point, I was afraid to know what had happened to it.

Anyway, the glorious day finally arrived when I picked up my bass. (see description in paragraph four.) All I can say is, I was very understanding and gave him the courtesy of an even temperament when I saw what he had done to the bass. Even though it was the worst luthier work I had even seen, I knew that he felt terrible about how it turned out, and I didn't feel up for making a bad scene even worse. He charged me 50 bucks, which I paid. Were this to happen today, I would have sued him & the music store for the entire cost of the bass. But I wasn't very assertive back then, so there it ended. One of the clerks asked what I thought of it, and I told him that I didn't think it turned out very well. He said: "Hey man - you got a fret job for 50 bucks! That's a good deal!" Fortunately for both of us, I managed to refrain from thrusting my headstock through his skull at that moment.

Over the years, I got past the butchered aesthetic of the job, and realized that you can't really see the damage from the audience anyway. Plus, it's the sound that matters the most, and it sounds great. I still use it on recordings frequently. Another brilliant segue (and conclusion as well,) you can hear this bass on the upcoming RRF CD Vol.1 on a song I submitted called 'The Gift.' (Oh, the irony there.)

It's also in 'Twisting In Heaven' on my Myspace sight.

http://s191.photobucket.com/albums/z195 ... 1front.jpg

My 79 4001FG with a toaster pickup. I got it in 1996 from a Pawn Shoppe in Fayetteville, NC (where I grew up). It had been sitting there for 2 months with a price tag of $600. I don't know if it was a good deal at the time or not, but the guy gave us 10% off if paid in cash, which my father did for my Christmas present. Mike Parks (ricpage) adjusted the neck on it a couple of years ago and I haven't had to do anything to it since. The neck is amazing, which is why I ordered a 4004. I figured it has to have a great neck, too, though it'll probably be a little bit thicker.

79 turned out to be a pretty good year for me, though I didn't know it at the time since turned two that October. My wife, with a date of September, and my bass were born that year

cheyenne wrote:WOW! thats a green pickguard isnt it??????

Har! Yes, it was. In fact it was a thick green enamel paint that was applied with something like a 4 inch paintbrush over a black pickguard.

Then there is this issue which still remains until I become solvent enough to pay for such repairs (and when I do, I'm thinking walnut wings):