Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I think I know what the vintage "entry" is.. and I don't want it.

There is zero fretting with this model and the truss rod cover doubles as a pick. It looks as if it may have been designed by a committee. Ah yes, the Orbiting Retrievable Far and Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrometer.

Oefeus - HAHAHAHAHA.

Orfeus, we're relying on you to go into the ebay Matrix to destroy the world of machines, Orfeus. BAM BAM BAAAAM.

Peter...you took the words right out of my mouth....

That headstock....is that something like a cresting boot-wave?

Actually that headstock looks sort of like a reverse Warwick Buzzard, and the upper horn of the body sort of reminds me of a bird head too.

However the sound is probably more like something out of the other end of the bird. Or maybe something that a buzzard might eat. Roadkill Tone.

It is kind of a cool Cold War relic though. It is a the guitar equivalent of a Trabant.

Now we're gettin' it narrowed down!!....I've got it! THAT's a Woody Woodpeckers profile if I've ever seen one!

Hi guys, long time listener, first time poster...

I have to chime in here. I just noticed how much that string tee looks like the handle on the gate to my back yard. Maybe I could paint mine black for a BT 4001 I'm expecting to arrive next week.

Haha! Welcome Dan...

Sometimes you just can't stand to lurk any longer and you HAVE to jump in there....

So Dan....have any RIC's to show us??

Welcome to the forum Dan. Chris has just summed this place up....no matter how many Rics we own/played/tried/seen, we always want more.
You can never see too many Rickenbackers!

I obtained a Polish trumpet in the mid-late 70's. If the "quality" of this Iron Curtain guitar is in the same ballpark, it's a case of "unsafe at any price".

The pictures (or was there only the one-looked at the listing yesterday or the day before) gave me the impression that it was built like that horn. Poorly. And yes, that string tree on the headstock is a great example of communist era design concepts-unimaginative.

I will agree that those designs were more pragmatic than pretty but I would not call them unimaginative. On the contrary really. The underground builders had to use what was available. Manufacturing of some parts was just not an option. Often, things like this were made secretly and sold through the black market. Depending on the country of origin and which regime was in power, it was simply not legal to produce non-essential items like guitars. Anyone caught "wasting" limited resources faced imprisonment or death.

I don't know if it was illegal to produce that guitar...and there's a lot of truth to the pragmatic aspect of that time/place...

But I got that trumpet in Poland in 1976. It was an officially produced item. SO there was some sanctioned production of things like that. I hadn't considered that that guitar might have been a homebrew of sorts, especially in the 60's.

My whole beef is just the design of communist era things of all types lacked imagination and flair. Again, not saying that I favor style over substance, but that string tree was funny.

For a while, american culture (including Rock and Roll) was officially banned in much of communist Europe. The level of enforcement varied by country and over time. The Eastern Bloc was more strict than say, Hungary. Trumpets would probably have been ok because they are not decidedly american. I meet some jazz players in Krakow last year who told me that they could not openly play jazz in communist Poland without fear of reprisals from the police. The local cops applied the law as they saw fit, apparently. I stopped in a guitar shop in Prague a while back and the owner told me that some of the guitars produced under communist rule have become quite collectable. He told me about one brand whose metal hardware was made almost entirely of discarded spoons, forks, and knives. If you ever get a chance to travel to eastern Europe, do it. It is an eye-opening experience. As screwed up as our political system seems at times, it is nothing compared with what went on over there for 70 years.

BUMP.

The original auction is now invalid but Peter's pic of the "Orfeus" headstock is still with us. In another connection (a thread at the Dudepit about a fake "Gibson") I found this site: http://www.meatexz.com/cheesyguitars/guitars.html . Turns out the Orfeus brand was made in Bulgaria.

No pic of the one in this auction but I thought some of you might be interested the site about Cold War guitars and basses.