Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Just a minor point I noticed while comparing two '64 1996's made within a few weeks of each other:

From this view you can see how the jackplate position is quite different:

I wonder whether there was any jig, or was it being done by eye. No big deal really, just another odd thing about early Rics.

"From this view you can see how the jackplate position is quite different:

I wonder whether there was any jig, or was it being done by eye. No big deal really, just another odd thing about early Rics."

While I was in the Rick woodshop in '72, just across the room from my station where I made the bodies for basses, was a kind of horizontal boring machine[read; sideways drill press, well, kind of...]A thing maybe the size of the body of your average router,mounted on something that worked kind of like the way the saw slides on a radial arm saw, if you can picture that.The guitar or bass body was laid on the work table in front of this borer, and I think clamped down
after being eyeball aligned in front of the bit, then the borer slid forward and punched the hole in the edge of the body, 2 holes if for Rick o Sound.The location of the hole was penciled on, and there was probably a marking jig to tell where the hole was to go.Depending on who was doing the operation, I'd say there was latitude for variation in where you see the hole. Not rocket science, for sure.

Glen: For the sake of completeness, you are now going to have to see if the same variability is noted in the Model 1996s with two-o'clock f-holes.

I wish.....