Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I'm guessing you wouldn't get much jangle out of this.....

Nice choice of classic **** music on that one...

One of my instructions to my first-semester Product Design students as part of their first assignment is:

Do NOT design a product with two functions. Its only positive quality will be "novelty" which is way down on the list of desirables. It will only confuse the consumer, and virtually never does both things well.

This is prevent such gaffes as radio/toasters and fishing reel/dog leashes. And laptop guitars with Batmobile red edge trim.

Although the guitar/color organ thing seems to work...

I think a porn movie on his screen would've been more fitting, given the musical choice (and more entertaining).

jingle_jangle wrote:One of my instructions to my first-semester Product Design students as part of their first assignment is:

Do NOT design a product with two functions. Its only positive quality will be "novelty" which is way down on the list of desirables. It will only confuse the consumer, and virtually never does both things well.

This is prevent such gaffes as radio/toasters and fishing reel/dog leashes. And laptop guitars with Batmobile red edge trim.

Although the guitar/color organ thing seems to work...

I was glad to see you somewhat retract that, Paul!

Does this apply to the Voxmobile as well?
http://www.gbase.com/Stores/Gear/GearDe ... em=2090243

You know, I saw this a few months ago, and thought it was kinda neat.

The screen idea is pretty cool, I can see that having some novel uses, especially if you can load whatever images/video you want onto it. As I said, it's neat, but that wouldn't make me drop a couple thou on it, ya know?

But could he have designed a better guitar around it?

That has to be, without a scrap of doubt, one of the most ghastly, hideous guitar designs ever made. BAH! Can't even look at it.

I'll stick to my Lightshow for now.

kennyhowes wrote:
Does this apply to the Voxmobile as well?

The VOXmobile is a car with a weird styling treatment and doesn't pretend to be anything else, although I understand the electronics do work.

Another axiom: "Never build a good model of a bad idea." Broken here, and on many promotional vehicles. Money, time and talent wasted IMO. BTW, the restoration of this car far exceeds in quality the original build.

This is actually closer in concept to the Tweety Pie pencil sharpener.

Car Craft Magazine, back in the early '60s, cranked up their circulation by creating a fake battle over who was King of the Kustomizers by putting Barris (who created the VOXmobile, Batmobile, Munster Coach, and other monstrosities) against "Big Daddy" Ed Roth.

I don't recall, and don't care who won. Roth was my personal hero, because he had true sculptural talent coupled with an unreal work ethic and sense of craft. His stuff was pure form on wheels and filled with surprises. He truly loved what he did.

Barris never loved anything but making a buck. The real talent with the Barris name was George's older brother, Sam, who passed away before ever hitting his peak. I was an occasional visitor to "Barris Kustom City" on Lankershim in the '70s and '80s. I remember sitting in the Batmobile and being grossed out by all of the Day-Glo painted Fisher-Price preschool toys that were hot-melt-glued to the dashboard to give the effect of a bust cockpit filled with electronics. I thought, yecchhhh.

One glance at Roth's chain of '60s show winners shows him to be an original thinker with a sweeping vision. Look at the Surfite, the Beatnik Bandit, the Mysterion, and the Road agent, if you want to see mind-boggling automotive surrealism.

My favorite custom of the '60s? Darryl Starbird's Forcasta, hands down.

Roth wins HANDS DOWN.

HIm and Barris were quite different. George/Sam Barris were car guys who happened to dig customizing and "car art"

Ed Roth was an artist, who often happened to choose cars as his medium. ......and man, did he do it well.

Case in point :

Absolutely, Collin...but it goes deeper than the surface look of the cars each built (and Barris did very little of his own work after Sam passed on). There was a feeling of phony Hollywood cynicism around Barris. Roth, OTOH, always came off as a real person, and a likeable Everyman type of guy. Barris was canny and an "operator". Roth was a family man, and deeply religious to boot--really grounded in life. In his later days, he actually worked at Knotts Berry Farm, as their staff painter/sign artist/pinstriper. A really nice, humble craftsman.

One of my favorite Roth creations is the li'l Surfite, a one-passenger surfboard carrier built around a Mini-Cooper drivetrain.

http://www.denslow.com/edroth/roth_surfite.html

I own one of the original kits shown on the above page. It's on display in my office, along with boxed models of every one of Roth's cars.

Note that Roth made his body bucks from hand-shaped plaster of paris--a filthy, nasty way to do a car, but cheap and flexible--you can add and subtract as you see fit. He would lay up fiberglas over this buck, and then chip away the plaster from inside the shell.

jingle_jangle wrote:And laptop guitars with Batmobile red edge trim.

Shoot, I better get rid of mine, then. And it's a Rickenbacher.

jingle_jangle wrote: I own one of the original kits shown on the above page. It's on display in my office, along with boxed models of every one of Roth's cars.

I'm with ya there, I don't collect toys per se, but I do love my Roth car collection. (Never got too into the monsters, and I'm sure I'm missing a car or two.. BB #1 is hiding somewhere too...) One of those odd fascinations that grabbed me as a ten year old, I guess.
Roth also worked at Movieland Wax Museum, just down Beach Blvd. from Knotts Berry Farm, along with Kenneth "Von Dutch" Howard during the "dark years" of the 1970s.