Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hello:

I just got a Limited Edition Lennon 355. It is in fine shape, but it is curious; the upper pickguard, where the Lennon face / signature is, is an aged "creme" / "yellow", whereas the lower pickguard is white.

What do you think? Is this normal?

Evidently the guitar has been verified to be a Ltd. Ed. by Rickenbacker (I don't have a COA).

Thoughts?

thanks

Richard

Well, the upper guard is silk-screened with JL's signature and then back-painted in white urethane, so chances are that the urethane has yellowed. OTOH, the lower guard is white acrylic and this does not yellow. Hence the different shades.

I can confirm that. My 355JL's upper pickguard was also more yellow than the lower guard.

The same is true of the Susanna Hoffs models that I've seen.

jingle_jangle wrote:Well, the upper guard is silk-screened with JL's signature and then back-painted in white urethane, so chances are that the urethane has yellowed. OTOH, the lower guard is white acrylic and this does not yellow. Hence the different shades.

Thanks Paul!

Interestingly, the few Hoffs I've seen and worked on have not had any yellowing; pretty much the same for the Chris Squires, too. Out of 6 Chris Squire basses that I've had me mitts on, only one showed and yellowing of the guard, excluding he halos around the toaster mounting washers, which they pretty much all have by now. My CW has no yellowing, either. All of these guards are printed using the same process.

When I say yellow, I mean that the color of the upper pickguard is clearly another shade of white than the lower, usually more towards cream or yellow while the lower pickguard is a clean white. They're definitely not the same color.

Paul: what about the Limited Editions that used gold or silver paint on the back of the clear pickguards, like the Tom Petty and John Kay? Did they also use polyurethane paint for the top guard and acrylic paint for the lower?

I think that I've answered my own question.

On the Hoffs, the lower pickguard is not painted - it's solid acrylic plastic, while the upper is clear plastic that is backpainted with polyurethane paint.

On the Petty and the Kay, both upper and lower pickguards are clear plastic that is backpainted with the same paint.

Is that right?

Yep. Acrylic=methyl methacrylate=plexiglass, perspex, lucite, etc...

Here's a nice picture of the yellowed top pickguard from the Register:

Oops, forgot to post a note that I was cleaning up my 370/12RM FG and 1998PT about a week ago and could see that both of those have the same thing, the signature pick guard is slightly yellowed compared with the lower all-acrylic one.

jingle_jangle wrote:...excluding he halos around the toaster mounting washers, which they pretty much all have by now.

My 355JL had the halos. I'd guess all of the painted guards that have the grommets are affected by them.