Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hi everyone,

What do you usually do with the upper pickguards on your guitars? I know a lot of players leave them on, but I've seen examples of Rics without the upper guard or screwed down onto the lower guard with the grommets on top, and with varying heights above the lower guard - .

Might not be a significant feature but somehow it fascinates me

Screenshots are from some YouTube videos and Google because I don't have examples to illustrate.

Until I see some reason to remove them (which isn't likely) I leave them alone. I do, however, round or bevel and then polish the edges of both guards and often the TRC as well. No more sharp edges, and on the back-painted ones it gives their edges a cool glow.

Wow, cool effect! Not sure how the effect looks on solid-color acrylic guards, though.

On solid colored plexi they don't light up, but rounding them does eliminate any sharp edges and gives them a more finished look. The same on solid colored black ones. On back-painted black ones the polishing glows a little bit, but not very much. The coolest thing I found when making black back-painted guards was sanding the edges smooth and square and then painting the edges white, which could also be done on solid colored black guards.

Back-painted black with rounded polished edges, followed by square edges painted white.

My 1981 360-12 WB FG ckbd is somewhat of a transitional instrument, in that it has the 24 fret neck, but the upper pickguard was still made to the pickup spacing on 21 fret necks. So there was space around the notch on the bridge pickup side, but the neck pickup side was right against the pickup instead of having clearance as well. So I took my Dremel and pictures of 21 fret neck instruments and carefully trimmed the neck pickup notch on the upper pickguard to match. It looks much better now.