Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Mr. Hall,

I asked this question in another thread, and it may have been lost all the excitement.

How many hours of work does it take your craftsmen(people) to complete one 360-12c63 if you have all the materials on hand?

I know quite a bit of research went into the project, as well as coming up with materials, etc. I think this is one beautiful guitar!!!

Quite a few, especially in the area of finishing. Including the dry time, the process from beginning to end is about 6 weeks.

Wow!!! That's a lot of work, but the end looks like it's worth it. Just a beautiful guitar. Thanks, and tell your workers we love what they do for us.

It seems to me that finishing is the bottleneck in the completion of any modern mass-produced guitar. You can jig and streamline most operations, but you can't do anything about drying times if you expect quality with no bad surprises.

IMO this is why Leo Fender used nitrocellulose to begin with and instituted a change from furniture nitrocellulose to automotive paints in the mid-'50s.

Prior to this, guitars were finished using entirely furniture technology and materials.

Now, with the cure times on conversion varnishes being in the several hours-to-overnight range (as opposed to nitrocellulose and acrylic lacquer's minutes), the trade-off is more finishing and drying time to yield superior durability.

All worth it, IMO, but must be a logistical boondoggle for the factory.

Mr. Hall,

Is it true that California does not allow the use of nitro-laquer?

Mr Hall, Kudos to you for putting quality over speedy quantity. How many boat,auto,motorcycle,RV manufacturers would take 6 weeks to build their product? I used to refinish cars many moons ago, started when lacquer was king and when I got out of that business after 12 years finishes had evolved into 2 and sometimes 3 stage paint systems using quick dry poly eurethane clears, you could get a car in the booth and out and delivered to it's owner in a day. But whether it looked it's best or just good depended on the prep work. Thanks for taking the time to it right. Mine is on order and it's worth the wait.

Well, a number of makers, including Taylor, Deering, and Anderson, are using UV-cured polyester in production and the cure time is a matter of seconds. I would say that the results are not all that bad but it's still polyester.

Nitro itself isn't banned- it's any material with a high Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) content. The federal government has established a timetable to reduce VOC's, beginning in certain areas first and we happen to be so lucky to be in one of these areas.

The great old fashioned nitrocellulose was up near 1000 grams/liter VOC; the current legal limit in production is 550 g/l for any material, as I recall. However, on 1 July 2005, this limit drops even further to 275 g/l.

The nitrocellulose sold and applied elesewhere in the country is not the same as years ago for the simple reason that it's not legal. However, in some areas there's an exemption for less than 1 gallon per day which some small makers take advantage of; also, one can illegally add solvent to raise the VOC, and unfortunately many of the small makers are just scofflaws or unaware of the law.

At this point in time, there are many legal coatings that are vastly superior to nitrocellulose in appearance and durability but old habits die hard among guitar makers and their customers.

Not to hijack the thread, as someone once said to me, but it's not just the prep, although prep is crucial to a great job, but also: When Rick gets done spraying the conversion varnish and it's had suffucient time to cure, every square millimeter of every guitar is wet-sanded. This must be done carefully by hand. Then the guitars are machine-and hand-polished. That's why you see no dust on the guitars.

In the car biz, only show and prototype cars receive this sort of treatment, because it's soooo expensive and time-consuming. Older Rolls-Royces and Bentleys used to get hand-smoothed finishes; today even the Maybach has orange peel! (Don't buy a Maybach in a dark color if you've been thinking of it!)

It's not the banning of nitro that's the issue here, it's also the amount of VOC (volatile organic compounds) that is released into the atmosphere that's important to note.

Nitro and some other formulations have been illegal to use in Southern California for some time now (20 years?). It was about eight years ago that some urethanes were banned, too. Nitro is still available for furniture use, but not by mass manufacturers--they just would not meet their allotted emissions standards.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) sets the standards for air quality in the LA basin and polices these things pretty aggressively. Manufacturers who use materials that exceed their allowable limits are just putting themselves out of business in that geographic area. And these standards are reviewed and reset on a regular basis.

Perhaps John Hall has more detail or correction to add on this...

That does it! If I can't get a Maybach in nitrocellulose FireGlo, then I'm cancelling my order!

Dan, actually you can. They will paint it to match your Rick. But you wouldn't be happy with the quality, the paint job on a Rick is much better quality.

A couple of Maybach's were being parked in the lot at a show in town this weekend. They are one ugly car...

Yeah, I saw one at the Auto show a couple of years back, and then last August at the Palo Alto Concours they had test drives. Silly car. Appeals, I guess, to classless, tasteless over-the-top media stars. Rod Stewart? Mariah Carey? The Donald, of course!

Ms. Carey reportedly sent hers back after having it made, because the vanity mirrors were "too small".

And--just think--there are Rickenbacker owners starving out there...

The one at PAC was black. Bad, bad choice of color. A Toyota Corolla has a better paint job! Literally.

They were parked next to a Murcielago roadster which was also black Phil. Just about the worst colour for a car of this standing as it made it look, well, far less than it actually is...
It should be compulsory for Lamborghini to offer cars that are such design statements only in colours that make one's jaw drop. There is no place for old man conservatism here!

General consensus around here (I am a faculty member at a car design college...for what it's worth) is that the Murcielago is pretty passé and everybody's bux are on the Gallardo. Exquisite.
Exotics should NEVER be painted black (except maybe a Porsche Turbo--but is it a real exotic, since there are so many around?). The Gallardos at the dealer down the street are pearl yellow, charcoal metallic, and pearl orange. Looks great in all three!

Shoot, there goes my Maybach. Guess I'll have to check out Bentley's paint!