Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

If you don't already know about this:

RickySounds is a guitar seller in the UK that is currently selling a nut for Rickenbacker 12-string guitars that brings the paired strings closer together, and increases the gap between each pair, making the guitar much easier to play. I currently have 3, and just sent for my 4th last week, for a McGuinn-ish 370/12 that I just acquired.

If I had known about them more than a year ago, I wouldn't have sold a few Rick 12's that I found difficult to play - the nut makes a huge difference.

They're available through eBay - just search RickySounds.

Caveat ---


The RickySounds nut can work as a direct replacement on many Rickenbacker 12-strings, but it's not a guaranteed fit on older instruments (certainly anything pre-1980). Often the replacement nut is too wide for the older necks, and the strings end up too close to the edge of the frets.

To that point, I've rarely encountered an off-the-shelf nut of any kind (for any brand guitar) that fit without any adjustment. And if you need a tech to make these adjustments, they might as well make a nut from scratch.

From their pictures, and from my experience, they are pushing the strings too close to the edge of the fretboard. Either they will slip off, or the top of your palm will end up muting the treble E string while holding an E chord. I am all for optimizing the string spacing on any 12-string, but this is not the answer, in my opinion.

I’ve got the brass version on my 360/12. It needed a tech to get it to right height but I’m pleased I got it. The old nut can easily go back in but the RickySounds nut makes it much easier to play up around the nut end. The outer E strings are a bit too close to the edge really but you just need to be careful. Pros of being able to play open chords less clumsily outweigh cons of taking care about pushing strings off board to me.

It is also worth noting that there is less fret width on a bound neck, like a 360/12 has, than there is on an unbound neck, like that of a 330/12.The frets stop short of the binding on the bound necks and extend all the way to the neck's edges on the unbound necks. When I had Mark Arnquist modify and set up my 360/12WB he actually re-fretted it with the frets running all the way out over the binding, as well as tightening up the pairs. It made a huge difference in playability for my big old fingers.

Before and after:

Mark Arnquist cut a new nut for my Ric 360-12 15 years ago. He did not place the treble E string as close to the edge as he did for you. Maybe because of the new frets you have. But this has been pretty comfortable for me. Ric was doing a particularly bad job on the nuts in 2005. Man, the original nut was just impossible.

I have a RickySounds wide nut on my 370/12 and I must admit that I was concerned about the spread being too wide. It turns out that was not much of a problem although I'm not sure why. As you can see from the photo, the high E string is *very* close to the edge. However, playing the guitar, the string sounds quite normal so it turned out not to be an issue. More of a problem for me was that the nut was *way* too high for my instrument. I had to install, string, measure and file down several times before getting to the proper height.Otherwise, all is ok.