Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Continuing from the above, the next pic shows the pots. The lower two pots had numbers. One of them had 1377638 and 31096xx (last 2 digits not readable) and the other pot had xxx763x and 31096 (the "x"s on the second pot meant that they were obscured by the solder. I beleive at least the two bottom ones are CTS pots.



If you have further questions please ask and I appreciate any comments that you may have.

Now to the luthier, Tirta. He operates from the house and the upstairs of house acts as his tiny workshop where the electronics etc are done. He has a small house opposite which act as the woodworking department.

The first pic shows the general workshop area. Note the small little table in the center of the pic (thats the workbench) and the green colored tins on the left. These tins are used to store all the parts of each guitar under repair!



The next pic is a closeup of the workbench. I wonder how anyone can sit like this to do the work?



Next is a closeup of the guitars as seen on the right in the above pic. These are guitars awaiting repair work. You can see a violin shaped guitar (partial view) with a PRS looking neck. The assistant explained that this had previously come in for a new neck.



Did I say new neck? I was curious asking about the guitars in the cases, there was a Yamaha SG-1000 and this Les Paul in the case. You can see the case in the forefront of the first pic. This is a close up of the guitar. It had gone in for a new neck and the original had broke. It was replaced with a locally made neck and fingerboard (peghead veneer, tuners and possibly trapezoid inlays are original). I had a brief look and was quite impressed by the quality. I asked how much was the charge? Approximately USD100 was the reply!!!



Next is the assistant holding what looks like a Ric. No it isn't and he said it was an Ibanez in for a refinish. If you look behind him the door leads to the sraying / finishing area.




Hope that this post has been interesting and if there are any comments with regards to the Fake Ric, I would really appreciate it especially on the construction.

Paul, no I do not have a website that shows my collection. Sorry about that. I collect all sorts but is especially intersted in Ibanez.

I will be able to reply any questions until tomorrow and after that will be travelling for the rest of the week as it is a major holiday here in this region. So after tomoorow I may only reply in a weeks time. Thanks again.


Regards,

Chin Hon

Chin: Thanks for this detailed journey. You have gone above and beyond the call of duty here and the results have certainly been most interesting.

It is hard to imagine that your guitar would be made in such a small operation. I am wondering what the incentive would be for this luthier, had he made it. Given this operation it would seem that it would take him a very long time to produce such a model without the equipment to do the job properly.

Could he make a living at producing copies such as this? It seems that he has more of a repair operation. What would your guitar be worth in Indonesia?

Fascinating stuff. I notice that there are dual truss rods. Does anyone know anything about the pot nos? I think you're right Peter...it does look like a repair shop.
What have we decided here. Is it a reworked original...is the body original with a replacement neck...is the whole thing a fake...are the parts original?

Peter,

The guy also makes a living by making guitars to order. The common ones are the standard ones like Strats, Les Pauls, and lately Ibanez JEM series etc. According to the luthier he has been doing this for 30 years.

His copies about 3 years ago cost USD250 and up. They use Korean parts and you can ask him to make the bodies and neck and provide your own electronics. His solid guitars are not bad but sorry to say I have seen his acoustics and archtops, they just don't make it. Cosmetically they may be nice but not the sound. He has an intersting Les Paul copy which is sort of a demo guitar to convince his customers. This one is not bad and is set neck. For some people here, a set neck copy with the "right" ID marks (with the name etc) will cost less than USD350 compared to the original and is therefore very enticing.

I suppose they do make a living out of this and this guy is well known in the business. The other is not so famous and the so called "custom shop" (which may be where this "Ric" came from is a supplement to the mass manufacturing of the really cheap stuff which I personally have never even seen in the market here. If you think the Kays, Teiscos and Silvertones were the cheapos of the days, let me try to get a pic of some of these and you will be horrified. Like I said I have never ever seen these in the market in Indonesia and they told me they were sold in the rural areas of Indonesia as they are really cheap and selling at less than USD50 each.

I have never had any guitars done by any luthiers here except some repair work. I am planning to have a couple made by them once I have the time to think of something more original.

As to the Ric, that is why I am so intrigued as to why someone would to all this trouble to produce something like this. I just cannot understand it at all.


Regards,

Chin Hon

Now it looks to me like this guitar was copied using some original parts. The builder seems to have had a real Rick in front of him in order to get the double truss rod correct, and the truss rod cavity looks pretty good, too. Perhaps the original owner (the guy who had it built for him) had other Ricks and Rick parts, but not a 480. So the body was copied from photos and the neck and some other details from another model Rick. The owner provided the gennie Rick parts to use: pickups, pots, tailpiece. But then why get a simple thing like the pickguard wrong?

Captain Hastings...the little grey cells...they are hurting and need a rest!