Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

On page 139 of the Rittor book is a photo of an Electro factory worker installing frets on a neck with full width inlays, '60s shape headstock (not potatohead) with walnut wings and eight holes for tuning keys. What bass did this end up on?

Is there a year associated with the picture?

Maybe, but it is in Kanji!

Can you scan it? I can read Japanese.

Pic?? I dont have the Rittor book

I'll try to do that today, I don't have a scanner so I will copy it just like I copy old, rare photographs at work.

www.labwork-bw.com

(c) Rittor

Who is that in the photo?

I can't remember his name, he left in 1973 after I started. This is the fret bench that we used. A claw hammer was standard for fretting, I used a ball peen hammer to set frets. I'll make a phone call or 2 and see if someone else may remember. What a happy face.

Gotta be somebody else, Dale.

The Rittor mook is February 1995...that picture could not have been over 23 years old at the time.

I was under the impression that the "factory tour" portion of the mook (pp.137-146) was from '94. The rest of the photos in the tour section look like '90s pics, not '70s.

Just because we can't identify him by name is no reason to refer to him as a "mook"...

Well I started in late 72, this looks like the same bench I worked at. We had some long hair guys that looked like this fellow. One in mind was Paul Bennett. That's the same kind of claw hammer we used for frets. I don't know anything about the Rittor book except it was printed in Nippon. A lot of Walnut Wings on those peg heads, looks like pre 1973, but aren't those Maple fingerboards on some of those necks? Those weren't made when I worked there. I couldn't say for sure, I parted ways in 1976.

Also that headstock tilts back ... that is a modern feature ...

Yeah Dane, he could be a Mick or a Mac for all we know....

That does look like a more modern photo...

It doesn't have that "70's" look to it, if you know what I mean...no plaid, no paisley, no thick-rimmed glasses, etc.

Definitely '90's-era. That's how I looked then...and now!

So did Rickenbacker have a custom shop in the '90's?

The closest thing to a Custom Shop was in the60's/70's when a Dealer could order a special instrument with say a Bass and 12 string (4080) in a special color or Ebony Fingerboard. Most everything had to be picked from what the sales catalog offered. Some of the employees were allowed to make a custom instrument for ones self. As for plaid and paisley, the way this fellow is dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans is the way most all of the wood shop crew dressed. Working with all the machinery in the shop, tight fitting clothes with tucked in shirts was a safety standard.