Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Just arrived today

That looks like a really nice one, congrats!

Thanks Gary! It's a nice guitar and really sounds great through my Kustom amp. You don't see Kustom guitars too often these days but last week, when Vampire Weekend was on Saturday Night Live,the bass player had a Kustom bass.

octagon wrote: You don't see Kustom guitars too often these days but last week, when Vampire Weekend was on Saturday Night Live,the bass player had a Kustom bass.

Yeah, I was quite impressed when VW came out a few years ago.....after seeing them live I had to figure out what the heck he was playing! Pretty Rickenbackerish, at least the soundhole etc..

Nice one, Mitch. I remember these from back in the day. That Bigsby come installed at the factory? It's a nice touch.

And what's a hizzie?

kiramdear wrote:Nice one, Mitch. I remember these from back in the day. That Bigsby come installed at the factory? It's a nice touch.

And what's a hizzie?

Thanks Kira! Yes this model came with the Bigsby installed.



Merriam Webster's Doggy Dictionary definition of hizzie:

hizzie
meaning house or place to hang out
"Lets all go to the hizzie"

Thanks, I think ...

Hey did you notice the blue one has its bridge pickup reversed in position from the others in that picture?

They look like the love-child of a 360 and a Mosrite, in a good way...

octagon wrote:

kiramdear wrote:Nice one, Mitch. I remember these from back in the day. That Bigsby come installed at the factory? It's a nice touch.

And what's a hizzie?

Thanks Kira! Yes this model came with the Bigsby installed.



Merriam Webster's Doggy Dictionary definition of hizzie:

hizzie
meaning house or place to hang out
"Lets all go to the hizzie"

So I guess finding a house just the right size is having a hizzy fit.
JimK

jimk wrote: So I guess finding a house just the right size is having a hizzy fit.
JimK

Fo shizzle ma nizzle.

kiramdear wrote:Thanks, I think ...

Hey did you notice the blue one has its bridge pickup reversed in position from the others in that picture?

There was talked about on the Kustom Amp weblog in posting by "pleat"

"I talked about the facing of the pickups when we were in Chanute. Here is what I know about them. Kustom guitars used DeArmond pickups. The three model guitars were the, K200A which had mother of pearl 4 dot inlays at the first fret and eventually went down to 2 and 1 after the 12th fret. Bigsby B5 vibrato and the two DeArmond Special Design Anti-hum Adjustable pole piece pickups.

The K200C model used the same dot pattern of the K200A, DeArmond Special Design sustaining adjustable pickups, (basic single coil) which I don't know about adjustable other than shimming up the whole pickup from the top of the guitar. I never saw the back side of that pickup so maybe there was some kind of adjustment, but you'd have to remove the pickup to do it. It has a hanger type tailpiece Kustom called Non-slip tailpiece. The K200A guitar has screws that will actually raise or lower the magnet pole piece of what I would call the better pickup of the two offered on the guitars. The K200D bass guitar had single pole piece that was not adjustable from the top of the pickup.

The K200B was pretty much the same as the K200C except it had 2 dots at the first fret and body and electronics were the same as the K200C.

Here is where it get's a bit strange and interesting. The 67/68 catalog that first introduced the Kustom guitar is the K200A shown with the rectangle case. It was billed as two-piece neck with adjustable truss rod. The head stock shape was less pointed or horned.

In the 69/70 catalog the less pronounced headstock was billed as Short horned semi-professional head on the K200C guitar. The K200A & K200B models had headstocks that were more horned but no mention of it. So my guess is they had more necks made up in the old style head stock design with the 4 dot necks they used as the C model. Another interesting fact is the K200C had a retail price of 195.00 and it had more mother of pearl dot inlays. The K200B retailed for 245.00 less dots and had the pointed headstock. The K200A retailed for 395.00 in 67/68 with the smaller headstock and by 69/70 they dropped the price to 295.00 so it was apparent that they weren't selling by that time.

Here is another oddity, Bryan asked me about the facing of the pickups. The black area that the adjusting screws and pole pieces have a chrome cover piece over the pickup that mounts the pickup to the body. The chrome piece is slanted at each end of the pickup The red guitar in the 67/68 catalog the slants go opposite. Same catalog showing the black guitar the pickups look like they are same as the red.

The sunburst and blue guitar shows the same direction on the pickups but the bridge pickup is closer to the neck pickup. So it appears that who ever installed the bridge pickups, it depended on how much training they had. The Better of the DeArmond pickups that were on the K200A guitars had a rectangle slot through the body for the adjustment screws and pole piece to go into the body. The pickup would fit in either direction, but once the mounting screws were drilled, it couldn't be turned the other direction. So depending on who installed the pickups you might have a guitar with the pickups set closer together than the next guitar. By the 69/70 catalog they did mention that they were two-piece neck, two-piece top and two piece back. So there is a lot of mystery as to why some pickups face the same direction and other guitars with the same pickups faced the opposite direction. You will also notice that the direction of the back pickup determines the distance from the the edge of the pickup to the bridge. Some are really close and other guitars there is a big gap between the edge of the pickup and the bridge. So some guitars will sound brighter on the back pickup if it was installed closer to the bridge."

antipodean wrote:They look like the love-child of a 360 and a Mosrite, in a good way...

Read my mind!

This is a nice Sunburst one on ebay




This is from Mike Wright's Guitar Stories Vol 1:

""The idea for a Kustom guitar began in 1966, when Ross and some other local guitarists got
together a design for an electric guitar.At that time there was a guitar manufacturing factory just starting up in Neodesha Kansas.
According to Ross, he approached the Neodesha factory with the Kustom design and they agreed
to produce them, with Kustom marketing the guitars under the Kustom name.

According to Ross,this plant did indeed produce some of the guitars he'd designed, but instead of delivering them to
Kustom, the guitars were sold to Wurlitzer and bore the Wurlitzer logo. Wurlitzer did, in fact,
market solid-body electric guitars manufactured by the Neodesha factory, although whether or not
the styles most frequently found are the ones designed by Bud Ross and friends is uncertain.
Needless to say, Ross was bummed out and he forgot about guitars. Until, that is, one day in
1967 when one Doyle Reeding came knocking at his door.

Reeding had been a local woodworking teacher who quit teaching to work over in Neodesha at the guitar factory. for one
reason or another, Reeding and the guitar factory had parted company. reeding had some ideas
for a guitar and wanted to make them for Ross. At about this time the Neodesha facotry went out
of business, but the chronology here has become a little fuzzy with the passing of time.

In any case, Reeding moved to Chanute in the fall of '67 and he and Ross set up the guitar making
factory. Another woodworking teacher was hired, Wesley Valorie, and the three (well, mostly
Reeding and Valorie) set about designing and making Kustom guitars.

Kustom guitars, with a design completely different from the Wurlitzer model, debuted in the summer of 1968. they were
semi-hollow bodies made of four pieces of wood. Two were glued together and hollowed out,
making a front, another two a back, and then glued together to complete the guitar. the thin fast
necks were bolted on and had a curved truss rod design. Pickups were DeArmonds, vibratos by
Bigsby. Input for the design was provided by none other than country guitar wizard Roy Clark,
who several years previously had listened to Ross' amplifiers and who later became a Kustom
amp endorser.

It's easy to see why someone would think that either Rickenbacker or Moseley had
something to do with these guitars. The body, with its single cats-eye sound hole, has a very Rick
look to it, and the neck, skinny two piece maple with zero fret, could easily seem like a Mosrite.
Even the knobs look Ricky. However, these were the original (wherever they got their inspiration)
and hail from Kansas."