Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Stills, Crosby and Young with their white Gretsch guitars on stage at the same time.

Peter, As I am a Huge CSNY fan, and follow their gear closely, I must tell you that it's Stills and Young that have the Gretsch White Falcons
[single cutaway w/ Bigsbys]. Crosby[this pic is ca. '69-'70] is holding a custom modified guitar owned by Stills, which began it's life as a Guild Duane Eddy 6 string, but for whatever reason, Stills had it "modified" removing the stock neck and putting a custom made 12 string neck on it.I think he also stuck a Gibson Varitone in it.

Update on the pic of Hillman with the Hofner
Beatle bass; I emailed Chris a couple weeks back about this, and he said that "I never owned or played a Hofner in the Byrds, and I'd be surprised if there Were pics of me with one".So I gave him the Rick Forum URL and told him to check it out if he's interested. Haven't heard back from him.My theory is that Chris Borrowed it from someone else the Byrds shared a bill with.From
my visual perspective based on this little pic Tomcat posted, Chris' hair is an indicator that this was likely in '67. I Do know that the Byrds shared the bill with Buffalo Springfield on different occasions, and one of their bassists
who filled in for an often-absent Bruce Palmer was
Jim Fielder[later of Blood, Sweat and Tears fame]
I have seen more than one pic of Fielder with Springfield, and the pics have Always showed him playing a Hofner.So perhaps Chris broke a string on his Fender, and borrowed Fielders Hofner.All
speculation,but likely as true as not.I don't recall any other of the Byrds American band friends up and down the West Coast using Hofners,
save for Fielder.I read years later Fielder said he dug the Hofner, but pried the frets out of it to get a fretless, but he may have messed it up after that.My 2 cents here, folks. Thanks to Chris Hillman for the [short] reply.

i would guess that when the Byrds went to get the Beatle gear, that a Hofner Beatle bass was pretty hard to come by, it being the spring of 1964, so he went with a Guild 335 style bass, keeping with the hollowbody sound...Gild necks warp for some reason so he soon switched to a P-bass didnt he???? its weird that Crosby went with a Tennesean instead of a Country gent...Im
this would be a full six months to a year before George Got his....I guess the Store only had the other.... surprised he didnt go for a Gibson J-160e instead, since he was more a rhythm guitar player.what would have happened if they didnt have a Rick 360-12???
maybe someone knows this, was Rogers first Rick 12 a dbl. bound model, I read that he had one somewhere???
FATRAT

2 things here Fatrat; 1] McGuinn's 1st 12 was Not doublebound, and 2], Guilds do Not have neck problems. None I've Ever seen. The Starfire bass Hillman had[actually he had 2; 1 single PU sunburst model, and a 2 PU, probably cherry finish; I can't tell, all pics I've seen of him with the 2 PU have been in B&W].Crosby had the Tennesean Before he got a Gent.

Thanks for posting that color pic of Chris with the Guild.I have one like it that is black.

Just a bit more info on Crosby's Tennessean. It is, I believe, a '62 because of the plain black painted f-holes as opposed to later years, in particular '65 with the white outlined black f-holes. My guess is it was either a used instrument or something that had been lying around the store for a few years (not terribly unlikely in 1964), or as was frequently the case, one of the now legendary anomalies common to the spontaneously creative Necessity Is the Mother of Invention Gretsch "assembly line".
This freaked me out for a long time because I never noticed this variation, and even once I did, I didn't see any others until much later. In fact in the Gretsch book there is no mention of this detail. The only way I know is by seeing one in store and from those great guys at the Gretsch Pages. If you want a good look at one, check out the Tom Petty/Mike Campbell cover of Guitar Player which was out some time in the last few years. Alas , even the GP article makes no mention of this guitar. Just that Campbell has a greatly modified Tennessean that he uses for slide work. I have found other examples scanning through old album covers.
Anyone know for sure about the model year?

While we are on the subject here is a great photo of a Stills White Falcon reissue. Perhaps grsnovi would comment.

My baby!!

Baby pictures were taken the afternoon it came home. I'm most pleased with the "sparkle" effect I added to the rhinestone chip on the knob.

The guitar was new. I paid 27 for it. It sounds really nice. The finish is flawless and the neck is like liquid silk.

I was worried about the signature inlay on the neck - but it turned out not to be obtrusive (I like Stills/Young anyway). Pickups sound smoother than the RI Filtertrons in my 6122 RI.

Two gripes: the switches are a little noisey, but I pretty much leave it set and the fret ends on the treble side need dressing (which I plan to deal with in the next week or so - right after I get my Ric off the bench).

G

grsnovi,
Thanks for posting the pic of your Stills Falcon. I've been wanting to see one in person, but no one in Mpls/ St. Paul has had one yet. I think Stephen used this on the CSNY2K tour last year.Very cool!!BTW, Gretsch put larger than stock frets in this, right? A real plus, for Gretsches...

Dr.

I actually didn't post the image here, Peter must have snagged it from VoxTalks or The Gretsch Pages (I figured putting a Gretsch up here would kinda be sacrilegous Also, my original (small) *.jpg was 34K so Peter must have scrunched on color or size a little to make the 15K limit around these parts (course, as its his board, he can probably circumvent the rules I guess).

The frets measure 0.085 x 0.034 which is a medium in StewMac's catalog (if you allow for leveling) however since I'm sure the Japanese are making their own fret wire... maybe they didn't lose .007 in leveling?

G

grsnovi: As it was in the public domain I thought that you probably wouldn't mind it being posted here. This is a Byrds forum and so it is completely relevant from my point of view. I reduced the photo to under 15K. This size limit was chosen to conserve space and allow for faster downloading. It is a beautiful guitar and you have done an excellent job with the photo.

Peter - no problem. I was delighted to see my baby pictures here

You're absolutely right - I posted this image to two other sites without posting any copyright information.

I have no problem with anyone using any of my photographs or composited images as long as they don't somehow get rich off of my efforts leaving me in abject poverty...

I had always thought it was a 335 that was the CSN&Y signature lead solo sound such as in Carry On. Are my ears decieving me and this is a Gretsch? If so which one?