Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Now I'm confused, Howard, "schmuck?". That is not an Eyetalian word!

Actually, Paul, It's Greek for 'We won the Eurovision Song Contest with the crappiest piece of junk ever written and performed!!".

In comparison it puts Bucks Fizz up with the Beatles!!

'Dumb schmuck' is commonly used in programming, Paul. Consider:

if not(num(var1)) and not(num(var2)) then
dumb_schmuck = 1
end else
dumb_schmuck = 0
end
if dumb_schmuck then
stop "YOU ARE A DUMB SCHMUCK"
end else
var3 = (var1 / var2) "2"
end

I called Truetone Music and inquired about the unusual blue 330 and the sales person said it was midnight blue however, he said it looked different than the other midnight blue (620). To me it looked like a completely different color.

Hmmmmm..... a 'different' midnight blue. Novel, to say the least. Is it new, Dan?

Dan: What was the year of the Model 330 blue that you saw?

I do not know the year of the Model 330 in the strange blue color. I'm sure it was a new and not a used guitar. The sales person on the phone said the different color was due to paint batch variation and wood absorbtion but when I was at the store a different sales person said it was a limited edition or custom color (or something like that).

It is really amazing to see how hypotheses get generated to explain differences between the colour of instruments. Perhaps John Hall can comment on this.

There have been slight variations over the course of time, some of the most notable being Burgundyglo, and Midnight Blue.

Was the blue you saw a solid colour or a burst?

It was a solid color.

"Wood absorption"

This salesman knows zero about guitar finishing. The bodies are sealed thoroughly and the paint sits on top of the sealer/barrier coat. The wood does NOT absorb one iota of the color in any way.

I have seen very little variation in Mid Blue. This one is puzzling.

To me the color was light gun metal blue and maybe slightly metallic. Like a pewter blue.

There actually are two different versions of Midnight Blue out there.... I have a late-80's 330 in Midnight that is so dark in color that it is almost black in low light, and I have a 220 that is a very bright, metallic electric blue color.... I was confused about the color myself and posted about it over a year ago, and Mr. Hall explained that for a while they used a silver base coat on Midnight Blue, which explains the brighter metallic shade; he also said that the silver paint was a real nuisance to work with.

Here's the pic of the two Midnights side by side....

Melissa, I think you solved the mystery. The color on the 330 I saw looked like your 330.

Melissa's 330 is hardly a "light gunmetal blue"!

Describing colors with words is dodgy at best. A photo works better, and of course paint chips are the final confusion-stopper.

Rick no longer uses metallics in their paints and undercoats, because the metallic particles (actually very, very tiny sneezy aluminum bits) migrate for hours once released into the spray booth area from a spray gun. These particles were settling onto the fresh Jetglo guitars and necessitating repaints. So they switched to a formulation that does not use aluminum bits any more.

I think Melissa's 330 is a closer representation of the midnight blue color than the 220. Interpretation of color is highly subjective.

I saw the guitar at Truetone a couple of weeks ago. It's MID.