370/12 VP Montezuma Brown

[bluewave]

I'm a long time player that finally got around to buying a Ric - I bought a 620 JG in mint condition, liked it so much I splurged for a 2004 370/12 Montezuma Brown. Some of you may have seen it on eBay recently...

After playing the 620 for a few days it occurred to me how many recordings I have heard that "sound". Now I know why Tom Petty plays one...

Anyway,the 370 is a drop dead gorgeous guitar, but what I did not expect is how narrow the neck is at the nut. I have "fat' fingers and its hard for me to make a standard "C" chord in the root position without the E and D string touching my index finger... It's hard to make other chords as well...

Any suggestions on how to deal with this, is there any mods that can be made ??

[admin]

You may wish to try making some modifications to the nut or ordering a 330/12 precut nut which should give you a little more space. I had my 2003 twelve string nut replaced with wider spacing. It does move the E string pairs closer to the edge of the fretboard which takes a little getting used to but at the end of the day works fine.

[Folkie]

Randy,

I've never had this problem, as my hands are pretty small. Before you modify the nut you may want to check out Roger McGuinn's DVD "The 12-String Guitar of Roger McGuinn." There's a whole section on alternate chord fingerings to compensate for the narrowness of the 370/12 neck.

Robert

[Clint]

Practice. Honestly, just practice. In a short time you won't even notice the tight spacing. Work on using a lighter touch. That is the main problem most guitarists have with Rickenbackers, they squeeze too hard. That makes their fingers squish into the adjacent strings.

Many players opt for the nut modifications. Personally, I find that having the strings so close to the edge of the fretboard makes the guitar harder to play.

[bluewave]

Thanks for the replies everyone,...

I have not spent a whole lot of time playing my 370, but I sure intend to ... ,Before I go with the nut mod, I'll see if I can get used to the neck as it is.

Right before I bought this, I was bidding a a Montezuma Brown 660/12 with toasters in mint condition the width at the nut is 1.75, certainly if I had known, that would have made my decision easier...but I was overtaken by the look and vibe of the 370...., dang, I should have bought BOTH!!

From a designers point of view, if you you at acoustic 12 string guitars and other fingerpick stlye guitars - they have wider necks. And I imagine the the folks at Rickenbacker have received requests for wider neck...

[jps]

dang, I should have bought BOTH!!

Excellent !.jpg

Welcome, Randy!

[1a12]

Welcome Randy! You just bought one of my dreams! best of luck with getting to know her!

[teb]

Practice. Honestly, just practice. In a short time you won't even notice the tight spacing. Work on using a lighter touch. That is the main problem most guitarists have with Rickenbackers, they squeeze too hard. That makes their fingers squish into the adjacent strings.

I always get a kick out of posts like this, because it's quite obvious that the folks making them don't really have the problem. For those of us who actually do, you can practice until your fingers fall off and you'll still be damping strings - and a C chord is one of the worst. I "practiced" on my first 360/12 for an hour or two just about every day for a couple of years (after playing guitar and bass for about 35 years and having owned half a dozen 12-strings, so I certainly wasn't a beginner) and the problem didn't improve. I got to the point where I was about ready to start dumping my Rickenbackers for guitars that I didn't want, but could play without a problem. At that point, I had my 37012/WB re-fretted with frets that extend over the binding and all the way out to the sides of the neck, along with a new nut with tighter pairs and the widest possible string spacing. Though I wouldn't call it roomy, the problem was instantly and drastically reduced to the point where careful fingering yields clean notes and no damping. On my 340/12 I cut a new nut myself with similar spacing and though not quite as roomy as the 370, it's a lot better. These days, I immediately re-cut the nut on any Rickenbacker that I get, which makes them tolerable as long as you're careful not to push the E strings off of the fingerboard, as Peter mentioned above.

For some of us, this is a very real problem and it is not one that you solve with technique. The McGuinn-style chords (one-finger Em, two-finger E, Am, etc.) do help a lot, but if you have broad, flat fingertips, they don't do it all and you will probably eventually want to at least modify the nut. The good news is that your playing instantly improves dramatically. You can relax and concentrate more on what you're playing, rather than how you're doing the left hand fingering.

Sound clips of the 370/12 after the nut and fingerboard mods:
http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/M ... string.mp3

[bluewave]

Todd,

First , awesome playing on the sound clip you posted, really nice groove/vibe you're into especially the outro at the end... loved it... keep doing what your doing man, it's beautiful...

Thanks for you wisdom here, that was excatly the kind of info I was hoping to find, I think you just saved me eons of frustration...

Play on brothers...Aloha from Maui

[teb]

It's one of those things where some people are going to have problems, no matter how much they practice, but there are some things that can be done to improve the situation a lot. At 59 with some arthritis in my fingers, I'm never going to be a guitar virtuoso with lightning fast fingers, but I can hold my own pretty well on a twelve, thanks to the string spacing mods. On a stock 360/12, it's a frustrating experience for me and it sounds lousy, so it was well worth the effort to make the changes. These days, I actually have more trouble playing my Martin twelve than my Rickenbackers. Even though I bought one with the thinnest neck Martin has made, I have to keep reminding myself to spread my fingers out, where the Rickenbackers have pretty much gravitated into the "think it - play it" mode.

[Clint]

Sure, there will always be players that can not adjust to a Rickenbacker 12 string's narrow neck. I believe that percentage though, is fairly small. The fact that RIC still uses the narrow spacing, 49 years into production, is evidence of this. So, advising someone to give it a little time and work with their new guitar, before making a few hundred dollars worth of modifications, still seems pretty reasonable to me.

[teb]

Absolutely, but there are certainly people that this will not be the solution for, and rather than getting frustrated, selling it and buying some other brand it's nice to know that there are mods that can help greatly.

[xpitt]

Absolutely, but there are certainly people that this will not be the solution for, and rather than getting frustrated, selling it and buying some other brand it's nice to know that there are mods that can help greatly.

...yep ! Thank you Todd, you hit the problem exactly. Had the same problem, did the nut mod on my 360/12V64 which has a different nice neck anyway than the 360/12, and the nut mod isn't that big thing to do; now it's perfect !

[Folkie]

First of all, welcome aboard, Randy. Your 370/12 in Montezuma Brown is a very rare bird, and I'm sure it will give you years of pleasure.

Having your nut modded is always a viable option. But, with all due respect, I think what Todd has said about Rickenbacker 12-string models in general may be slightly misleading. The fact is, so many players were doing the Arnquist nut mod, that in 2005 Rickenbacker started tightening up the octave pairs on their 300 series 12-strings to allow more finger room BETWEEN pairs for folks with larger hands. John Hall has said on this forum that it was a tough decision, but that so many people were spending insane amounts of money to do this mod, that Rickenbacker decided to tighten the pairs themselves.

When I first played my 2010 360/12, the tighter pairs took me a while to adjust to, and I'm still adjusting. In fact, each low course and high octave are so close together that I couldn't imagine them being any tighter, and it's even a trick to get my very thin picks in between the string pairs to tune up. I made a frantic phone call to Chris Clayton at Pick of the Ricks, where I bought the guitar, only to have him explain to me that the string-spacing was factory stock.

If anything, the individual strings on the 300 series models now are TOO close together for my taste, so much so that they tend to converge when you do solos up and down the G-pair and this dampens the sound. In some ways I prefer my 1991 330/12 with its wider string spacing, even though that cuts down on the space BETWEEN pairs. I find I get a fuller sound when playing single note lines along the G-pair.

Your guitar is a 2004, so it was made a year before Rick changed their string-spacing on some models. And Todd may be right that a new nut might be the best option for you. But I would certainly try some of Roger McGuinn's alternate chord fingerings before making that investment. And I wanted to correct a misconception about the Rick 12's being made now. The new ones should be easier for those of us with larger hands than they were in the past.

Robert

[teb]

Misleading? I don't think so Folkie. I'm just speaking from personal experience. Since 1969, I've owned A Framus twelve, a Guild twelve, two Martin twelves, two Takamine twelves and four Rickenbacker twelves, so I'm fairly used to playing twelve string guitars. I'm also 6'4", 210 lbs. with pretty blunt fingertips and can palm a basketball, so I have pretty good-sized hands. When I say that the only way that I can play a RIC twelve other than a 660/12 without damping strings is by moving the strings out to the edges of the fingerboard and tightening up the pairs, I'm not kidding. I'm not saying that everybody needs to do it or that it should be their first move. The McGuinn-style chords help, but the real problem is not one of covering two string pairs right next to each other, it's individual string pairs where there is no McGuinn-style chord possible, like a C chord, a D chord, Dm, etc. Even with full Arnquist mods, I still have to remember to concentrate on playing those chords cleanly, but I can now do it.

Most of the advice in this thread seems to be coming from folks who don't really have the problem. All I'm saying is that if someone actually does have it, and they have played and practiced enough that they are sure it is a problem and it's affecting the quality of their playing, there are things that can be done to help fix it - and they don't necessarily cost all that much. It's your guitar. What good is it if you can't play it or don't like the string spacing or feel like it's holding you back from being a better player? Some people might find it very beneficial to know that these procedures are available if needed. Had somebody given me the same advice a few years ago, I'd probably still own my original 360/12, 250/6 and 360/6 - all of which I eventually sold out of frustration. I was on the verge of unloading my 370/12WB and was looking at a Gretsch twelve as a replacement (that I really didn't want) when Arnquist e-mailed me that he could give me more finger room on the WB and I took the chance. What came back was a very different guitar from an ergonomics standpoint and my playing instantly improved the minute I opened the case.

As for your G strings, that's a strange one. Mine are tight pairs on both the 370/12 and 340/12 and no matter how hard I pick them, they don't even come close to "converging" (TI Jazz Flats). I'd be tempted to look elsewhere to see what else might be causing damping.