Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

What is the finish on the current, German produced models, such as the 500/1V63?

I believe it's laquer. That's what it looks like on mine. It just doesn't seem to have the same look as most of the newer poly-whatever finishes.

Haven't they always used lacquer?

I have seen and handled perhaps a half-dozen '60s and '70s Hofner basses. These were all lacquer.

The Hofners I've seen and played (with) at NAMM were lacquer.

The Chinese Icons are polyurethane-clear coated.

Thanks!

Jeff,

I own a 2005 500/1 V62 and it's all real lacquer. Loudest darned acoustic sound I've ever heard from a bass. I've heard many people say the finish makes a difference in the acoustics. I've compared this to a knock off from China and ther's no comparison with poly finish versus lacquer. (Of course the German violin maker experience probably has a lot to with this!)

John

I agree, the 500/1 has a very nice acoustic tone, and is a bit louder than my 4005WB.

Hey, Jeff - How the hell did you get those Lowenbrau dots over the o?

It's easy if you have a Mac. Use the Keyboard Viewer.

johnthebassist wrote:Jeff,

I own a 2005 500/1 V62 and it's all real lacquer. Loudest darned acoustic sound I've ever heard from a bass. I've heard many people say the finish makes a difference in the acoustics. I've compared this to a knock off from China and ther's no comparison with poly finish versus lacquer. (Of course the German violin maker experience probably has a lot to with this!)

John

Chinese guitars are built like engineering projects, because that's how the Chinese factories see them. They are heavier, covered with heavy finishes (polyester is used because it covers a multitude of sins while giving a smooth finish, so it looks good on the wall). The Chinese and Germans are polar opposites when it comes to making things in large quantity.

They just don't see guitars as instruments, oddly, although they could--they build some pretty nice double basses and violins!

When I build an acoustic guitar, I string it up and play it before it receives its finish, and again after. In nearly every case, the "poly" (actually polyurethane finish helps to focus and crispen the sound. In cases where it does not, the focus was already pretty good to begin with.

Mike, the umlaut (on the Mac, at least) can be created this way:

Just before you type the desired letter, hold down the "option/alt" key and strike "u." This preloads the text with the umlaut, and the next letter you strike (o in Höfner's case) will magically appear with the ümläüt övër ït! Don't know if it works that way on PCs, though. Other accent marks are ávâilable, too.

mgauction wrote:Hey, Jeff - How the hell did you get those Lowenbrau dots over the o?

On a standard Windows-based PC, there is an accessory program called Character Map (left-click Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Character Map):
To copy a character, click on it to highlight it, click Select, click Copy (it goes to the Clipboard), then place the cursor where you want the character to appear and Paste (Control-V). Ìţ´š êåŝý!

A different kind of Accent!

jps wrote:A different kind of Accent!

I forgot to mention that it is preferable to use Courier as the font because the character will wind up being the same in a different font, but often vice-versa doesn't work.

Apple is cool...in OSX, under the EDIT pull-down, go to > Special Characters, and it gives you a Character Palette, with literally thousands of special letter forms including math, Greek and Coptic, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Devanagari, etc.

Highlight the letter, press "Insert", and there it is, at your cursor position, in the correct font (at least for Western fonts).

औनछ

Anybody know what I just said?

How about:

ਕਚਮ

or>

ઓબ

இ ஞ(This is Tamil)

⼤⼝(Kangxi)

ﭛﭫ(Arabic)

Well, it was fun for me, anyway...