Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Calling all super-techs:

I need some help with a 360F. This is the large-body guitar with the 5 control knobs adorning the bottom of the guitar in a nice crescent row down by the endpin.

I bought this guitar after someone had messed around with the electronics. There is a multitude of thick cables inside and the neck pickup wires are unattached to anything. There is really thick cable that appears to come up from the input jack to the 3-way switch.

The complicating factor is that it appears to be either virtually or, perhaps, physically impossible to get at the control pots/input jack with out dismantling the guitar or doing some pretty vicious cutting and pulling of wires.

If you take a look at Tony Blair's website [tblair.com] I am talking about the refin blue boy 360F. See those two little holes? Can everthing come out of there? Can it go back in? [PS Tony warned me it would not be pretty].

This is a long way of asking: Is there someone out there who has successfully worked on the electronics/wiring for this particular type of guitar? If so, you have a potential customer.

Regards,

Ron O'Keefe

Little holes are 1/2" in diameter - those two holes are big enough to drive a truck through! lol Fishing new pots in is easily accomplished by securely attaching fishing line (or fine wire - a high e string would work) to the threaded necks of the old ones as you remove them. Upon re-installing you'll need a rocker arm which can be inserted and rocked against the back to "cam" pressure upwards - holding the pot in place while you tighten the nuts on the pot neck.

I use surgical tubing for this .

Slip the piece of tubing over the shaft of the pot after running the tubing thru the hole ... thern just pull the pot thru .

Great tip, Mark.

Another trick I use is to make temporary jigs from MDF (medium density fiber board ) .
A Sheet is fairly cheap / inexpensive and is easy to tool .

For your guitar , I would make a tracing of the hole layout .... apply it with spray adhesive to the MDF and then drill out the hole pattern .The poots can be dropped into the template and wired .
Then remove the stock ground wire and replace it with a stiffer material .

Paper clips of the heavy gauge are perfect for this .This is the same gauged wire as Gibson used in their instruments from WWII till the 1980's .

National/Valco/ Supro used a similar method as did KAY/Harmony .

This will keep things 'rigid' (sort of Viagra for soldering) and the jig allows you to use the hole pattern , to align the controls .

Then slip it in , and everything will swing into place .

The tubing can do it job more easily .

Hey Mark- Great tips. Especially the last one. Very creative. I think even I can figure out how to follow the steps on that one. Great idea with the paper clips. Need a little Viagra to pull along with that tubing.

Many thanks for your valuable insights.

Regards,

Ron