Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

You guys know everything so, I figure I'll throw it out there -

I'm thinking of getting an inexpensive bass and having some carving done. Since the guys who did the LK work were so phenomenal I was wondering, if anyone knew who they are and if any do private work. Wouldn't think they'd be Rickenbacker employees because what else would they be doing?

But, what do I know...

The guy who did / does do the carving on the LK's is a Rickenbacker employee, he was the one who used to work on building Ric acoustics.

We got to meet him on the first SoCal confluence Factory


At that time he;d been working on the carvings for I think it was 18 months continually,

BTW ... they were all carved by only two people, and were all done by hand.

I was looking into getting my ex-Ci carved in an LK-ish style but with skulls, bones, evil and death as a theme.
After some searching on the 'net I found a lady in Colorado that was willing to do the job for $500-ish. Her work looked great and I was willing to commit but she had a decent backlog and wouldn't take a deposit until I would be at a certain place on her waiting list. During the extensive wait my financial priorities shifted. Unfortunately my hard drive crashed and I lost all the info I had on her and have been unable to locate when I searched again recently. There were a few other folks that I contacted but up close carving samples looked "rough" or prices were crazy. It wasn't as easy to find someone as I originally thought it would be (I'm sure I don't have to tell RIC that).

It's amazing to see the huge differences in the carvings on those in the picture.

This is the only place I found on line -

http://www.violinguitarmaker.com/

I e-mailed them but, they never got back to me.

btw Jim, my mistake then, I thought there were a few people who did the carvings, and part of the holdup in the production was finding good folk to do it.

Unfortunately my hard drive crashed...

On your Mac?

Marc....look for wood carvers and don't worry about the guitar aspect. That will open up your search somewhat.

Jeff......Mac or not apparently my PowerBook doesn't like to be dropped on it's corner onto a hardwood floor while actively downloading Battlestar Galactica episodes.

My understanding was that there were three carvers. The original who only did a few. A brief mid-term gentleman and the closer pictured above. I could be wrong though.

...apparently my PowerBook doesn't like to be dropped on it's corner onto a hardwood floor...

Oops!

Brian,
You're right that this gentleman was the final carver, maybe John Hall can clarify this for us.

Brian - I think you're right about there being three carvers in total. I think one of the most interesting things about the carving is that while there was a design template (seen on display at the factory tour last year)...

... the work of the last carver deviated from this template. Here's my 4004LK - you can see it's quite different from the original design.

If you get it done on an inexpensive bass won't the wood be poorer quality and perhaps not the best for carving?

A lot of things are up in the air. The actual design, the bass etc. That's why I figured I'd find a carver first, then ask them about suggested wood quality etc.

A lot of the rather featureless woods used on non-fancy guitar bodies carve pretty well because they tend to be more uniform than something with a lot of cool grain. I keep toying with the idea of buying an old 4001 or 4003 and carving something based on this into the top. The original "Cresting Wave".