John Hall was a “computer guy”, and had the presence of mind to register rickenbacker.com in 1996. By the following year he had a pretty good—by 1997 standards—site up and running. It even included a way to order parts and accessories directly from the factory via the “Boutique”.

Well, kinda. It provided a link to a PDF you could print, fill out, and then fax or mail to them. It was, as I say, the early days of e-commerce.

To be fair, terms like “B2B” and “B2C” were still relatively new to the lexicon at the time, and the idea of a “B2B” business—like Rickenbacker—selling directly to end users…well, it was both novel and more than a little controversial.

But a brick-and-mortar Rickenbacker dealer selling guitars, parts, and accessories taking that business online, making it easy for people without a local dealer to get the same or even better access? And then making those online sales an integral part of their business model? That was a pretty solid—and still fresh—idea.

Enter Pick of the Ricks. They saw the opportunity and grabbed it—and thanks to proactive outreach and excellent word of mouth, became a go-to online source for Rickenbacker enthusiasts for roughly two decades, from around 2000 to 2020.

And Rickenbacker themselves appreciated Pick of the Ricks enough that, in 2011, they offered them a dealer-exclusive run—at a time when dealer-specific runs were still quite rare. So what did they get?

Rickenbacker had announced the discontinuation of the 4001C64 (click to learn more) in 2009, with production finally winding down in late 2010 after the backlog had been filled. Pick of the Ricks requested one more run of just 15 instruments, in three custom colors: White, TV Yellow, and Special Green.

As a quick reminder, the 4001C64 was an homage to Paul McCartney’s 1964 4001S, used extensively in the studio during The Beatles’ later years and on stage and in the studio with Wings.

The 4001C64 emulated the “as-new” version of McCartney’s guitar, including a “backwards” headstock and truss rod cover, reflecting how the original 1964 right-hand-only headstock appeared “upside down” when played left-handed. There was also a second version, the 4001C64S, based on the modified Wings-era guitar, with stripped paint and sanded-over body wings.

“Special Green” was a pale mint green—not as blue as 2004’s Color of the Year (click to learn more) Blue Boy, and not as bright as 2000’s Sea Green.

“TV Yellow” tends to photograph more vividly than it appears in person, but it’s also not at all the same as Gibson’s more translucent, lime-washed color of the same name

For my money, the stark bright White version is the best looking of the bunch, but it also best highlights a problem all three share.

The semi-translucent “Sign White” Plexiglass Rickenbacker uses for the pickguard was originally designed to be backlit for use in applications like exit signs. On guitars with a lighter finish—including Mapleglo, but especially on this particular finish—you can clearly see the body routs right through the pickguard.

On the plus side, these guitars were built shortly after Rickenbacker changed to a UV-cured conversion varnish finish (click to learn more), meaning they’re far less prone to yellowing over time than White guitars from the 1970s–1990s.

Five were produced in each color, and they sold out almost immediately. They would be the last 4001C64s ever produced.

Pick of the Ricks closed its doors in early 2020—pre-COVID—and whether it was competition from larger online retailers like Sweetwater or simply time for owners Chris and Shelby Clayton to move on, a little piece of the early days of the internet was lost.

But those fifteen guitars are still out there, and one pops up every so often as a reminder of those days and of Pick of the Ricks itself.

-John Hall

Strong words indeed from Mr. Hall—and not exactly subtle ones, either—regarding Rickenbacker’s first foray into the “vintage reissue” category.

But do the B-Series guitars really deserve that kind of hate? Let’s take a closer look and decide for ourselves.

First things first: just what exactly were the B-Series guitars? In simple terms, they were a short-lived run of three models produced from 1982 to 1984: the 320B, 360/12WBB, and the 4003SB.

Each was loosely inspired—and that looseness seems to have been a big part of what bothered John Hall—by Rickenbacker models famously associated with John Lennon, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney, respectively. Thus the “B” in B-Series.

Fun fact: there were originally supposed to be four B-Series models. Two versions of Lennon’s guitar were on the original price list addendum: the 320B we got, and a 325B with “vintage vibrato”. Given that John Hall later ran into some difficulty sourcing an Accent vibrato (click to learn more) replica for the V-Series, that same issue is likely what kept the 325B from making it to the market.

In essence, all three of the B-Series guitars were contemporary production models—the 320, 360/12WB (click to learn more), and 4003S (click to learn more)—given a few cosmetic tweaks to evoke the originals they were inspired by. That said, there were a handful of details that went beyond surface level changes and genuinely deserve credit for laying the foundation for the more accurate reissues that would follow.

The most important of these by far was the pickups. By early 1974, Higains (click to learn more) had completely replaced toasters across the entire Rickenbacker line. From that point on, toaster pickups—a defining part of the brand’s earlier identity—simply didn’t exist. The B-Series guitars changed that.

At the time, though, Rickenbacker didn’t quite know what to call these new old pickups. While the toaster name may be trademarked today (click to learn more), Rickenbacker actually borrowed that name from the collector community later. Period literature for the B-Series models referred to the pickups as both “chrome bar” and “vintage”, but not “toasters”.

These were not exact recreations of the toasters from the vintage era. The basic construction was the same, but they got wound a lot hotter—around 12k ohms versus roughly 7.5k ohms for most examples from the 1960s. Whether this was through intent or ignorance is hard to say. As a result, these first toaster reissues are often referred to as “hot” or “12k” toasters today—and many have since been unwound to a lower output.

A few other details were also “off” when compared to the originals. The screws that held the pickups together were Phillips head instead of the flathead screws found on vintage examples, and rather than the original rubber grommets the pickups were mounted on the same foam rubber pads used by Higains. Even so, they were close enough that these “12k” toasters ended up outliving the B-Series guitars themselves—going on to be used on reissue models until the introduction of the much more authentic “scatterwound” toasters in 1999.

Another nice detail showed up at the other end of the guitar: the return of back-painted Plexiglass truss rod covers (click to learn more), making their first appearance since being replaced in 1976 by the injection-molded, raised-letter version.

Once again, though, while the idea was solid, the execution didn’t quite hit the mark. This particular truss rod cover stuck with the design template that had been in place back in 1976, with “MADE IN U.S.A.” printed perpendicular to the Rickenbacker logo, just above the nut.

That’s not how the original instruments handled it. Both Lennon’s 1958 325 and Harrison’s 1963 360/12 had no “MADE IN U.S.A.” marking at all, while Lennon’s 1964 325 and McCartney’s 1964 4001S placed it below and parallel to the logo.

The final historical detail to make a return was the gold back-painted Plexiglass pickguards on the 320B. While gold plastics have become a common sight on special run guitars and production models like the 660 today, the 320B marked their first appearance on any production Rickenbacker guitar since 1963.

So what we’re looking at here is a series of good intentions, slightly let down by imperfect execution. But are those minor details really what inspired such distaste in John Hall?

They’re not. The real problem was that these were the only meaningful concessions made in the name of originality. Beyond that, the guitars largely stuck to stock period specifications. Calling it “lipstick on a pig” is probably too harsh—there was nothing inherently “wrong” with the contemporary donor models. They simply bore more meaningful differences from their inspirations than those tweaks could overcome.

Nowhere is this more obvious than with the 360/12WBB. Let’s count how many differences we can spot between the guitar above and Harrison’s 1963 360/12:

Frets: 24 instead of 21.

Inlays: inset triangle inlays (click to learn more) instead of full-width.

Neck binding: bound bottom instead of unbound.

Soundhole: bound instead of unbound.

Knobs: silver-top knobs (click to learn more) instead of black Kurz-Kasch.

Tailpiece: “R” tailpiece instead of trapeze.

And those are just the most obvious differences. Things get even murkier with the 320B, which had two different 325s to draw from, and somehow ended up not really resembling either one.

We have the gold plastics of Lennon’s 1958 325 paired with the thinner body of his 1964 version. And instead of the Bigsby found on the 1958 for most of its life—or the Accent found on the 1964—we get a period “R” tailpiece…which didn’t even exist when either of the original guitars were built. And silver-top knobs.

Interestingly, the 4003S was still under development when the B-Series prototypes were built. That meant those early guitars—one of which you can see in the B-Series ad shown earlier above—actually used a 4001S (click to learn more) as a foundation. It’s hard not to wonder how much John Hall would have hated a set-neck, skunk-striped B-Series production model.

Unfortunately, while the 4003S’s neck-through (click to learn more) foundation was a better starting point than the 4001S, the nods to McCartney’s 1964 were just as limited as on the 320B and the 360/12WBB. The instrument featured a toaster neck pickup in an “incorrect” post-1973 position, along with the Plexiglass truss rod cover carrying the same misplaced “MADE IN U.S.A.” imprint. It did get one thing closer to the mark, though, by utilizing a 4001 one-piece pickguard instead of the 4003’s split guard.

Of course, it also had silver-top knobs, black plastic tuner bushings, a button-top Higain bridge pickup, maple headstock wings—in other words, stock 1982 4003S specifications.

So in the end we have three fairly superficial nods to iconic guitars. “Vintage” models, the company declared—but in reality, modern guitars with a handful of vintage-flavored details tacked on. Why did John Hall respond as strongly as he did?

Because, by that point, he was already thinking about how to do it right. The toaster pickups found on the B-Series guitars weren’t specially developed for those guitars—but whoever greenlit the B-Series while the Halls were otherwise occupied with F.C.’s health issues effectively “jumped the line,” putting them into production ahead of their intended debut as the centerpiece of what would become the V-Series guitars.

From that perspective, it’s easy to see how Hall might well have seen the B-Series as stealing his thunder—and maybe even poisoning the well for vintage-style reissues with their halfway execution.

So should you hate them as much as John Hall does? Not at all. Early 1980s Rickenbackers are prized by many in the know for their build quality, and the Fireglo on the 360/12WBB, in particular has aged beautifully. The 12k toasters are not to everyone’s liking—which is why so many have been unwound—but I’ve found if you roll the volume back you can still get the chime you want, with some added oomph available when you open them back up.

In short, they’re still Rickenbackers—and excellent guitars in their own right. I’d take one over a brand new example any day. You just have to appreciate them for what they are—not what they were trying to be.

If you want to understand how the B-Series guitars stack up against all the other Beatles reissue models, this deep dive will tell you all you need to know and more. And if you want to learn more about…everything else, check out our handy site map.

My strong suspicion is that it’s just one of those terms—like “toaster” pickups—that collectors coined and Rickenbacker co-opted. But we’ll come back to this question in a minute.

Before we do, let’s answer an easier one: what do we actually mean when we say “cresting wave”? The answer is simple, and you’ll know it when you see it.

The cresting wave design element—because that’s what it is—first appeared on the 4000 bass (click to learn more) in 1957. Three times. Once on each cutaway, and again on the headstock.

Seen here on a 1959 4000 headstock, the term is pretty self-explanatory. It looks like a wave—on the ocean—that is cresting, and about to break. Whoever actually coined the term couldn’t have done a better job—it’s the perfect description.

The cutaways of the 4000 got the same treatment. Instead of simply rounding them over, like Fender had done with the Stratocaster and Precision Bass, that abrupt break in the curve adds a surprising amount of visual interest.

This may feel more adventurous than the other designs Roger Rossmeisl was producing during this period—arguably his artistic peak—but it actually makes sense in the context of both his design language and the era.

Sharp angles were a key element of Rossmeisl’s design language. Consider the sharp horns of the Capri models or the dramatic German carves (click to learn more) found on many of the solidbody Combo models—swooping lines giving way to sharp transitions everywhere you look.

It also fits the broader futuristic, atomic-age design trends of the day—the 4000’s dynamic headstock looks right at home alongside the tail fins on American cars, which were becoming increasingly exaggerated with each model year in the late 1950s.

And thus was born the “cresting wave” design language. It didn’t take long to spread, appearing shortly thereafter on the upper cutaway of the redesigned 1958 450 (click to learn more) and 425.

The change was more evolutionary on the 450 than it might at first appear. Rossmeisl’s first draft of the solidbody 450 had first appeared on the 1956 tulip-shaped Combo 400 (click to learn more).

The lower cutaway was reshaped in the name of player access in mid-1957, creating the so-called “half-tulip” 450 (click to learn more)—but the upper half of the “tulip” remained unchanged.

And if we look closely at the final outline of the 450, we can see that the upper point of the tulip remains intact while the interior has simply been scooped away to create the cresting wave.

In late 1961 the upper horn of the 4000 was extended slightly to improve the instrument’s overall balance, and its cresting wave became slightly more pronounced.

You can see the circular nature of the design here—the original 4000 design inspired the 450 design, which itself inspired the revised and final 4000 design.

With that change, the cresting wave design language was effectively finalized for both bass and guitar models. While exact outlines would vary over the years as tooling wore and was replaced, those variations all trace directly back to the original 1958 450 and 1961 4000.

These basic silhouettes have been reused and refined across many subsequent models. The 4000’s design has carried forward into most Rickenbacker bass models since its introduction, appearing on the 4001 (click to learn more), 4002 (click to learn more), 4003 (click to learn more), 4004, and short-scale 4030 (click to learn more) models.

The 4000’s cresting wave body has also been used on guitars—including the 1970s-era 480 (click to learn more) and 481 models, as well as the 90th Anniversary 480XC (click to learn more).

It has even been stretched to create the 4080 doubleneck bass/guitar.

Likewise, the 450’s body shape was carried over to the 600 Series guitars when the 625 (click to learn more) launched in 1962, and has since appeared across the line—including the 610 and 610/12, 620 and 620/12, 660 and 660/12, and even the modern 650.

So that’s the cresting wave and its history. But where did the name come from?

I just can’t tell you. The first time I can find the term “cresting wave” used directly by Rickenbacker is in the 1995 600 Series catalog. It appears in the 1987 Richard Smith book Rickenbacker (click to learn more) to describe the 400 Series guitars—and that’s as far back as I’ve been able to trace it.

So the term was clearly in use by the late 1980s, but not adopted by Rickenbacker themselves until the mid-1990s. My guess? It originated with collectors in the early 1980s, as vintage guitar collecting began to take off and a shared vocabulary began to emerge. And honestly, whoever came up with it couldn’t have done much better.

Want to learn more about other Rickenbacker design elements? Check out the “Design Elements” section of our handy site map to see what else we’ve covered!

This is, of course, the famous “pallet of 4002 wings” that has been gathering dust in the back of the Rickenbacker warehouse since John Hall discontinued the 4002 (click to learn more) when he purchased the company from his father in 1984.

Over the years, they have pulled a few wings from the pile. Several were turned into the 4030JFKs (click to learn more) custom-built for Death From Above 1979’s Jesse F. Keeler in 2018.

And a pair was used on the subject of this post: a 2011 481/12—a true one-off.

Under John Hall’s leadership, one-off Rickenbacker models were fairly rare, and those that do exist were primarily built for artists and friends—not the general public. But starting in 2007, as Ben Hall began taking a larger role in the company, Rickenbacker began producing one-offs like this one for sale on a first-come, first-served basis via their website.

Most of these guitars tended to take more or less stock models and give them a custom color, special trim, or unusual electronics. But a handful—like this one—were something else entirely.

We already know it used the leftover 4002 wings, with their figured maple and two-ply black and checkered binding. To this, they added the 660’s wider neck, a black-bound maple fingerboard with triangle inlays, toaster pickups, and blacked-out hardware and plastics. And six extra strings.

In yet another example of “Rickenbacker never throws anything away”, the blacked-out hardware was left over from the Black Hardware/Black Trim (click to learn more) guitars of the 1980s-1990s. I’m not certain, but this guitar may well feature the first instance of “toaster pickups in a Higain case,” as up to this point Rickenbacker had never produced blacked-out toaster pickup cases.

Controls were a simple, back-routed master volume, master tone, and three-way mini-toggle switch, giving the guitar a clean, pickguard-less front that puts the figured wings on full display.

There are a couple of interesting “firsts” with this guitar. It’s the first through-neck (click to learn more) “4000-series body” Rickenbacker guitar—all previous 4000-style body guitars had featured bolt-on necks. It’s also the first—and, to date, only—480-series “stand-alone” 12-string, although the 4080 doubleneck guitar had featured a 12-string option.

This guitar marked the first time Rickenbacker had revisited the 480-series models since their discontinuation in the early 1980s. The original 480 (click to learn more) featured Higain pickups and standard appointments, while the 481 featured humbuckers and deluxe (click to learn more) appointments. Given this guitar’s fancy binding and triangle inlays—but not stereo wiring—the 481 model number got the nod for this one-off.

For the most part, I don’t get very excited about the Rickenbacker Outlet/Boutique one-off guitars because, frankly, they’re usually just not that exciting. But when they do something truly new and truly unique, well, that’s worth sharing. This guitar certainly qualifies.

If this one-of-a-kind guitar speaks to you, as of this writing (April 5, 2026), it is up for sale. Check out the Rickenbacker Market Watch group on Facebook for more information. And if you want to learn more about…everything else? Check out our handy site map and see what’s already been covered!

Don’t get me wrong—Joe Edwards was a real person, and he did have at least one guitar made for him. And it was a quite…distinctive instrument. But a “Joe Edwards model”? I don’t believe it actually existed as an instrument that you could order.

“But the internet is full of references to the ‘Joe Edwards model’”, you protest. Sure it is. Just like it’s full of references to the “Polynesian”, the “Vagabonds 4000”, the “Suzi Arden 360/12”, and the “John Paul Jones 4001”—real instruments associated with real (if not necessarily famous today—or even in their own period) people—but not “official” models. Association is not the same as designation.

So here’s what muddies the waters around this particular guitar: unlike all the guitars I just listed above, more than one guitar with “Joe Edwards” features exists. So let’s talk about them—and why I don’t think the facts add up to a “signature model”. Probably.

First: Joe Edwards. Later in life, Edwards would go on to play fiddle and guitar in the Grand Ole Opry house band from 1968 to 1999, but at the time he received his 1958 365 Capri from Rickenbacker, he was a Rickenbacker endorsee and mostly known as a sideman for a number of minor Nashville stars like Martha Carson and Wilma Lee.

So a real person—a working musician—but far from a household name. Exactly the kind of musician F.C. Hall liked to give a free guitar to in order to build brand recognition—remember, Rickenbacker was still a new player in the electric guitar market and something of an also-ran. But was he a big enough name to have been given an official signature model? I doubt it.

But let’s zoom in on that pickguard…

To bolster the case that it’s a signature model, people point to that pickguard. You’ll have to forgive the quality of the photo, but you can still clearly see it right there, “Joe Edwards”. And that’s how it came from the factory.

But here’s the pickguard on another so-called “Joe Edwards model” guitar from 1958:

No “Joe Edwards” here. But…at least one other guitar exists that does have the “Joe Edwards” imprint. So what gives?

First, let’s acknowledge that putting your name on a custom-built guitar was not a new idea. Here’s Merle Travis with his 1948 Bigsby:

Now Paul Bigsby made lots of custom guitars for people with their names on them—and they were truly custom-built instruments. But it wasn’t just Bigsby. Here’s Travis with a custom-built 1952 Gibson Super 400.

That’s just one guy. More broadly, the point is you could custom-order a guitar with your name on it then—just as you can today—if you were willing to pay for it. Travis probably didn’t have to pay Gibson for his, though.

The point is this: a name alone doesn’t make a guitar a “signature model”—it makes it a custom-ordered guitar with a name on it. Which brings us back to the “Joe Edwards model”.

What really sets the Joe Edwards guitar apart isn’t the signature, it’s the finish.

It’s a reverse sunburst! Instead of the normal dark-to-light burst pattern, it’s light-to-dark. It’s not something you see every day.

But if we look closely at this guitar—which is not Edwards’s personal guitar, but one that most people still call a “Joe Edwards model”—we can learn some interesting things about it.

First, all of the so-called “Joe Edwards model” guitars are very early Capris. The “off-the-shelf” tailpiece (rather than the more familiar trapeze-style), single level pickguard, and medium-length slash soundhole tell us these were made before October/November of 1958.

Second, this was indeed a custom finish. Standard Capri finishes at this time were limited to two: Two Tone Brown and Light Natural Grain—the grandfather of today’s Mapleglo.

So while the existence of a number of guitars made at roughly the same time, all sharing this unique finish, may suggest some sort of “special” model, there’s a much more obvious fact that argues against it: Joe Edwards’s personal guitar was a Deluxe 365, but all other known “Joe Edwards models” are 330s.

Interestingly—and tellingly, I think—just after these guitars were built, the first Autumnglo guitars (which would replace Two Tone Brown) were produced.

So here’s my theory—and that’s all it is, a theory, but it fits the facts pretty well. Rickenbacker was testing new finishes. They sprayed a few guitars with this unusual reverse sunburst, took a look at the results and said “er, no.” Meanwhile, F.C. Hall was putting guitars in artists’ hands for publicity—and what better to give away than one with a rejected finish? They offer Edwards a guitar, and he says “Great—would you put my name on it like Merle Haggard?” And thus, the singular Joe Edwards 365 Capri was born. Not a model, just a moment.

There is, however, one inconvenient fact I’ve ignored out that pokes a hole in this theory: this guitar.

Or rather, the pickguard on this guitar. Which bears the name “Joe Edwards”.

I don’t have a good answer. It absolutely could be original. It also—having surfaced and gone through Gruhn Guitars in Nashville, where Edwards was a bit of a local fixture—could just as easily be a tribute to the man. We just don’t know.

But we’ve left out the most compelling argument against this being a “signature model”.

Les Paul’s first contract with Gibson netted him $5.00 per guitar sold in return for attaching his name to the headstock. We don’t know the exact amount, but Chet Atkins also received royalties from Gretsch for each guitar sold with his name attached.

That’s the defining feature of a true “signature model”: the artist is compensated for the use of their name as part of a formalized endorsement. Joe Edwards just got a free guitar with his name on it.

So if not “Joe Edwards model”, what do we call these guitars—or more properly, this finish? Well, I’m going to take apart the conventional wisdom on that as well.

The most common term you’ll hear is “Reverse Fireglo”. Which makes sense—Fireglo is a red-to-natural sunburst, and this is a natural-to-red sunburst. There’s just one problem with that: Fireglow (with a “W”, as it was called until 1967) didn’t exist in 1958—it wouldn’t debut until 1959.

And there’s the connecting theme: collectors make up terms that just make sense when an official answer isn’t available. Joe Edwards had a guitar with that unusual finish, so any guitar with that finish becomes a Joe Edwards model. That same finish looks like Fireglo in reverse, so it becomes Reverse Fireglo.

As for me, I’d call Edward’s 365 Capri “the Joe Edwards 365 Capri” and the finish “Reverse Sunburst”—but I’m a bit of a pedant. Thus this article.

Want to learn more about…everything else? Check out our handy site map and see what’s already been covered. Have a suggestion about what we should tackle next? Drop it in the comments and we’ll add it to the queue.

The 4000’s journey took a little bit longer than these examples, but you can still see the basic shape of what it would become from the very beginning—even if that final form has mostly been forgotten in the long shadow cast by its offspring, the 4001 and and 4003.

But without the 4000 there is no 4001 and 4003—and therefore probably no Rickenbacker today—so let’s tell its story.

1957–1959

From 1957 to 1961, Roger Rossmeisl went on an incredibly prolific run, with three of the body shapes he developed in 1957 alone still—after some refinement—in production today. The Combo 850 shape lives on in the 325 and 350, the cresting wave 450 continues in the 620 and 660, and then there’s the 4000 bass.

Clearly sharing design language with the new cresting wave 450 body, the 4000 was Rickenbacker’s attempt to claim a seat at the table in the emerging electric bass market—which was already dominated by Fender’s Precision Bass. But compared to the P-Bass’s utilitarian design, the 4000 leaned into a little atomic-age weirdness: sleek, asymmetrical curves, unexpected angles, and a personality all its own.

We should take a moment to note that while Rossmeisl gets most of the credit for the designs from this period, Paul Barth surely played a role as well—although we’ll likely never know exactly how much. One of the original founders of Rickenbacker and a holdover into the early F.C. Hall era, it was Barth who, in his role as factory manager, actually recommended Rossmeisl to Hall. He worked alongside Rossmeisl on the early Hall-era Combo guitars, but by mid 1957 the quiet, unassuming Barth had largely been sidelined by the gregarious German. He subsequently left to form his own company, which you can read about here, but his fingerprints are quietly all over Rickenbacker’s 1954-1957 guitars.

That said, the 4000’s design was daring and distinctive—yet appealing enough that changes to its basic outline and construction have been minimal over nearly 70 years. The 4000 employed the same neck-through construction (click to learn more) that had first appeared on the Combo 400 (click to learn more) in 1956, although in the 4000’s case the neck was mahogany rather than maple. The body was thicker than on modern instruments, at about 1 5/8” compared to today’s 1 1/4”, and this first draft’s upper horn was about 1” shorter as well.

Today’s industry standard 34” scale length—as set by the P-Bass—wasn’t an industry standard yet. The second bass guitar to market, the Kay K-162, clocked in with a scale length of 30”. Gibson followed Kay at 30 1/2” on the EB-1, and when Rickenbacker joined the fray with the 4000, they chose 33 1/4”—a scale length the company maintains to this day.

And while it may seem ordinary today, it’s worth imagining what it must have been like to see the 4000’s headstock for the first time in 1957. Swooping, asymmetrical, and swept back into a sharp cresting wave, it must have looked almost futuristic—especially next to the blocky, no-nonsense shapes players were used to.

The headstock was about 1/2” wider than it would eventually become, due to the real estate required on the back by the gargantuan Kluson 546 tuners. The front wore a gold back-painted Plexiglas truss rod cover.

While Rossmeisl had experimented with dual hairpin truss rods (click to learn more) on a handful of early Combo 600s and 800s (click to learn more), the 4000 featured them from the start, making it the first Rickenbacker model officially equipped with what would become a signature company specification.

The face of the early 4000 is the most unrecognizable element, thanks to its asymmetrical, unconventional gold back-painted pickguard, which feels less like a simple protective plate and more like a continuation of the instrument’s lines, echoing the same forward-looking, slightly futuristic design language seen throughout.

Electronics and hardware were mostly straight out of the Rickenbacker parts bin. The single pickup was, of course, the venerable horseshoe pickup (click to learn more) that dated back to the early 1930s—albeit modified for four strings. The chrome reeded knobs—one volume, one tone—were borrowed from contemporary console steel guitars. And then there’s the bridge.

Rather than develop and produce a specific bridge and bridgeplate for the 4000, Rickenbacker simply adapted the standard guitar bridge and bridgeplate. And “adapted” is the right word—not modified—because the six-hole bridgeplate was used as-is, and only four of the six holes drilled in the bridge frame were utilized, with two slightly larger saddles in the middle positions compensating for the uneven spacing.

Just as on all guitars that used this bridge/bridgeplate, the entire assembly was recessed slightly into the body to achieve the correct height. A Plexiglas frame surrounded it as an attachment point for the clip-on ashtray cover, which featured a foam mute on the underside.

The mute and the Plexiglas “tug-bar” located below the strings are two period features that can be confounding to modern players. It’s important to remember that the bass guitar was a brand-new instrument in this era. The mute’s purpose was to help duplicate the relatively dull “thump” of a plucked upright bass—what manufacturers assumed players would want. And the tug-bar is based on Leo Fender’s assumption that players would use their thumb to play his new Precision Bass—the tug-bar gave them something to hold onto while they did. Funnily enough, it took longer for these features to disappear than it did for the assumptions to be proven incorrect.

One final detail that would change over time was the location of the output jack plate, which sat much closer to the strap pin and the bottom of the guitar than it is today. You’ll also notice that the 1959 example above does not have a serial number stamped on the jackplate (click to learn more) as you might expect. Instead, the serial number on these early instruments was stamped on the bridgeplate.

Changes between 1957 and 1959 were minimal, although given the largely handbuilt nature of these instruments, minor variances occurred from instrument to instrument. That said, somewhere around late 1958/early 1959 the mahogany through-neck was replaced by walnut, which was itself replaced by maple with walnut headstock wings in late 1959.

A total of only around 50 4000s were produced between 1957-1959—at a time when Fender was making around 100 Precision Basses per month. Rickenbacker may have had an offering, but the market barely noticed.

1960-1962

Production of the 4000 ticked up slightly in 1960 and 1961, although Rickenbacker’s total production dropped sharply in 1962 due to the disruption caused by the factory’s move from Los Angeles to Santa Ana.

1960 and early 1961 4000s were effectively unchanged from late 1959 production, with the transition to maple necks with walnut headstock wings completed by early 1960. But in the middle of 1961, a number of changes brought the early 4000 much closer to the final product.

The first two of these changes were interdependent. First, the body thickness decreased from about 1 5/8” to 1 1/4”.

The loss of mass in the body threw the weight distribution off, making the guitar more prone to neck dive thanks to the large headstock and weighty tuners. To counteract this, the upper horn was extended approximately 1” and given a slightly more exaggerated crest, shifting the center of gravity back toward the body.

While the 4000-series horns’ silhouette has varied over the years—from what we see above, to very chunky starting in the late 1970s, and then to very delicate since the introduction of CNC manufacturing in 1996—the outline is unmistakable: it’s a Rickenbacker bass.

At roughly the same time, as the photo comparing body thickness above demonstrates, the output jack moved to a more familiar location—although the serial number still remained on the bridgeplate.

So why the changes? Because Rickenbacker was working on a new model—the Deluxe 4001 bass. The 4001 took the 4000 shape and added a second pickup at the neck, deluxe checkered binding on the body, and a bound neck with triangle inlays. In fact, what is largely considered to be the “first” 4001 very likely started life as a 4000. Here’s the first 4001:

And here is a period photo of a “Deluxe” 4000 from 1961, referred to today as the “Vagabonds 4000”—a prototype loaned to a local band, “The Vagabonds”, for feedback.

Sure looks like the same guitar to me.

From this point forward, the 4000’s story becomes inextricably linked with the 4001’s—as the 4001 changed, so too did the 4000’s. In just a few years, the 4000 would go from being Rickenbacker’s flagship bass to the less popular little brother, despite bringing the same clank and growl from the bridge pickup that the 4001 would become prized for.

All told, total production of the first generation of the 4000 bass was only slightly over 100 instruments, making them incredibly scarce for what was, in effect, the foundation of everything that followed.

1963

1963 marked the appearance of the 4000 in its most recognizable form. While it’s clearly the descendant of those earlier guitars, almost every detail was different from top to bottom:

The gold of the back-painted Plexiglas truss rod cover was replaced by white. The headstock shrank by about 1/2” in width, made possible by the replacement of the monstrous Kluson 546 tuners with smaller Kluson 538 tuners.

While the 4000’s silhouette may have been the same, the face of the guitar was an entirely different animal.

The swoopy, gold back-painted Plexiglas space-age pickguard was replaced with a much more “function-over-form” design of semi-translucent white Plexiglas known as “sign white”, a material originally intended for backlit signage. The chrome lap steel knobs were replaced by black Kurz-Kach knobs (click to learn more). And—finally!—Rickenbacker got a proper bass bridge instead of a repurposed guitar bridge.

The new chrome-plated, cast aluminum base unit was attached to the body with three screws and topped by a drop-in bridge with four adjustable saddles. The entire bridge assembly’s height could be adjusted via set screws located at each end. Two reeded thumbscrews at the very front raised or lowered a foam rubber mute. Fun fact: these were the same screws used for the strap buttons.

And with that, the 4000’s basic template was set—although continuous minor refinements carried over from the 4001 would become the norm for the rest of its life.

1964-1967

1964-1967 was peak Rickenbacker in terms of both demand and brand exposure, kicked off by four mop-top lads from Liverpool. It was a virtuous cycle for Rickenbacker—exposure made more people want them, which led to more exposure, which in turn made more even more people want them.

It’s hard to say if Rickenbacker’s inability to meet this sudden, staggering demand ultimately helped or hurt—scarcity can certainly increase desirability, but when alternatives are readily available, opportunities are lost.

Rickenbacker responded by ramping up capacity as best they could, and by focusing on core, high-demand products—which the low-volume 4000 was not. Consequently, production from 1964 to 1966 was very low.

The only change of note during this period came in 1964 and impacted all Rickenbacker guitars: at UK distributor Rose Morris’s request: “MADE IN U.S.A.” was added to the truss rod cover, below and parallel to the Rickenbacker logo.

In 1967, as Rickenbacker finally began clearing the backlog of the past several years, 4000 production ticked up—which was actually a bad thing. Capacity for the 4000 was only available because overall demand was declining—the market was beginning to pass Rickenbacker by. It was time for some changes.

1968-1973

While Rickenbacker’s 1970s pivot to basses was driven more by the market itself than anything the company did to create demand, a series of modifications beginning in 1968 helped make bass production more efficient and cost-effective when the good times hit.

One of the most notable changes came at the very heart of the instrument: the horseshoe pickup, a design that had defined Rickenbacker’s sound for decades. In late 1968 it was replaced by the very first Higain pickups, and at roughly the same time, lap steels followed suit. With that quiet shift, the 36-year run of Rickenbacker’s—and indeed the world’s—first electric guitar pickup came to an end.

These first generation Higains had unpainted translucent white/greenish PCB bobbins with dome-topped flat head screw polepieces and an aluminum baseplate. Although they looked adjustable, the polepieces were fixed, and many of these early Higains have been damaged or destroyed by people who simply didn’t know better. Around 1970 the clear bobbins would gain a coat of black paint.

So why the pickup cover on the new Higain pickup? The horseshoe magnets served a purpose, but the cover? I’ll quote the conclusion I came to in our article on the topic you can read here:

“They did it like that because that’s just how they did it. They liked the way it worked, they liked the way it looked, they liked the fact they didn’t have to change the way they made it. They did it because they knew they “needed” a better pickup, and rather than making the design fit the pickup they made the pickup fit the design. They did it because inertia is a bitch.”

While the Higain was 1968’s most consequential change, it wasn’t the only one—but the others were not unique to the 4000. Early in the year, the “MADE IN U.S.A.” marking on all truss rod covers moved from a position below and parallel to the Rickenbacker logo to just above the nut, perpendicular to it. Higher volume models also got their model number stamped above the “MADE IN U.S.A.”, but the 4000 did not qualify—although some guitars from 1970-1971 do have the model stamp. A few months later the black Bakelite nut found on all models was replaced with white Delrin—but black Bakelite would return in 1973.

Around May of 1969, the Kluson 538 tuners in use on all basses since about 1963 were replaced with Grover Slimline bass tuners with “flat” keys. Apart from the flat keys, these tuners are identical to the infamous “wavy” Grovers (click to learn more) that would replace them.

Also starting in 1969 the pickguard went through a gradual shrinking process, finally landing by late 1970/early 1971 with the bottom about 3/4” away from from the pickup surround.

1971 saw the headstock length shrink by about 1/2”. This shorter headstock had first appeared on the short-lived 21-fret 4001 (click to learn more) in 1969—the reduction in headstock length allowed them to fit an extra fret on the same neck blank. But without the extra fret—as was the case here—the shorter headstock was purely a cost-saving measure: 1/2” less wood per neck adds up over time.

But that wasn’t the end of the neck cost-saving measures. You’ll notice two other differences apart from the length in the two headstocks pictured above. First, the new, shorter headstock has maple wings—a less expensive wood—rather than walnut. And secondly, there’s the “skunk stripe”.

In early 1972, the 4000 and 4001’s one-piece maple neck was replaced with a three-piece maple-shedua-maple sandwich. Stronger, yes…but also cheaper.

With the 4000 clearly positioned as Rickenbacker’s entry-level bass, it wouldn’t take the company long to find another way to streamline production and reduce costs. Later that same year, the 4000 and 4001S both moved from their traditional neck-through construction to an easier-to-produce set-neck design with a two-piece body.

You may have also noticed in the headstock photos above that the tuners on the 1972 headstock look a little different than the “flat” Grover Slimlines that had been introduced in 1969. That’s because around June-July of 1972 the infamous “wavy” Grover Slimlines debuted. Put simply, the “ears” of the tuning keys were bent slightly in opposite directions, transforming the keys from flat stamped units into a “wavy” or “S” shape.

Demand for Rickenbacker basses had already begun spiking upward in 1972—thanks to high-profile usage by players like Chris Squire of Yes and Paul McCartney of Wings—and it exploded in 1973, with production tripling year over year. How much of an increase are we talking about? Between 1972 and 1973, Rickenbacker produced more basses than they had in all prior years combined.

While the 4001 went through a number of cost-cutting/production streamlining changes in 1973, most were related to deluxe features the 4000 did not share. Two changes, however, made their way to the 4000.

The first change was relatively minor. Midway through the year, the non-adjustable slotted screw polepieces on the black-painted Higain pickup were changed to button-top drive screws.

The second was more consequential. The chrome-plated cast aluminum tailpiece that had first appeared in 1963 was replaced by a cheaper chrome-plated cast Zamak unit. While visually very similar, it’s nevertheless quite easy to spot the difference between the two: the aluminum unit had a “gap” in the spacer between the A and D strings over the mute, while the Zamak version did not. This is why you often hear early tailpiece assemblies referred to as “gap-tooth” bridges.

While Zamak is a relatively strong material, it’s not as strong as aluminum. Consequently, the tailpiece received two additional screws behind the bridge to provide extra strength. Despite that reinforcement, almost all Zamak tailpieces develop some amount of “tail lift” (click to learn more) over time.

And with those changes, the modern 4000 was complete, well-positioned to meet Rickenbacker’s need for an entry-level bass just as the market was booming. All further changes over its lifespan would be largely cosmetic in nature. 1973 would be the high-water mark for 4000 production, although demand would remain fairly strong for the next several years.

1974-1984

Changes during the last phase of the 4000’s life were minimal, and none were specific to the model. Mid-1974 saw the Grover Slimlines on all basses replaced with the same Kluson 538s the Slimlines had themselves replaced in 1969.

In early 1975 the Klusons’ chrome bushings would be replaced with black plastic.

Starting in 1965, the black Kurz-Kach (KK) knobs found on all models began being phased out and replaced with silver-topped knobs. At first these knobs had no labels, but they quickly gained the now-familiar “Bass/Treble” “Volume/Tone” labeling. But not the two-knob guitars like the 425 and 4000—they retained the KK knobs. That would change in 1975, when the 4000 and 425 both transitioned to plain-topped silver knobs.

“Somewhere” around this time the chromed plastic pickup cover changed from “short legs”…

…to long legs:

On the shorter version, the springs around the screws that adjust pickup height are placed below the mounting ears, keeping the cover at a constant height regardless of pickup height. On the longer version, the screws are placed on top of the mounting ears, causing the cover to raise and lower along with the pickup.

Also somewhere around this time, a lead weight was added to the underside of the fretboard between the fourth and fifth frets. The weights had first appeared on the 3001 bass in 1974 to eliminate dead spots on the fretboard, and at some point after that, they were added to the 4000 and 4001 as well. The weights were recessed inside a cavity about 1” square and 1/8” deep.

In late 1974, the back-painted Plexiglas truss rod cover began phasing out across the entire line, replaced with an injection-molded cover with raised, painted letters. “MADE IN U.S.A.” was stamped at the bottom, parallel to the nut, and higher-volume models also got their model number stamped below that. The 4000 was one of the last holdouts, not making the transition until early 1976—and its volume did earn it a model number stamp.

The 4000’s last change would come when, after years of declining sales, Kluson closed their doors in 1982, leaving Rickenbacker without a tuner supplier. The company went the easy route and in July began replacing the Klusons with the “wavy” Grover Slimlines that the Klusons had themselves replaced in 1974.

And that was it for the 4000. Production had begun steadily declining in the late 1970s, and the model was quietly dropped from the price list in 1985 after John Hall purchased the company from his father the year before and began a program of line rationalization. But it was already dead before then—the last 4000 on the Rickenbacker Register dates to July of 1983—the only 4000 produced in 1983 to be currently listed.

So what killed the 4000? The short answer is that total Rickenbacker bass demand began ticking down slightly in the late 1970s—not precipitously, but enough to raise concern. The reason? Rickenbacker basses were designed for flatwound strings—and using roundwounds, with their higher string tension, could void the factory warranty. But the market increasingly wanted the roundwound sound.

Rickenbacker’s answer? The 4003 (click to learn more). The 4001’s thin neck was beefed up and the truss rods were flipped around (for reasons that remain unclear) to provide the strength the higher-tension roundwound strings required. Prototypes were produced in 1979 and production began alongside the 4001 in 1980.

And why “waste” capacity on an “old” entry-level bass when you had pent-up demand for your new premium product? Why develop an entry-level version of your upgraded flagship bass when you’re selling every one you make? The 4000’s time had simply come and gone.

The 4000 didn’t fail—it was outgrown. As Rickenbacker refined the design into the 4001 and eventually the 4003, the need for a stripped-down, entry-level version simply disappeared.

But without the 4000, none of it exists. It was the first draft—the moment where the shape, the construction, and the sound all came together. And even though it has quietly faded from memory, its DNA lives on in every Rickenbacker bass that has followed.

Want to learn more about…everything else? Check out our handy site map and see what’s already been covered. Have a suggestion about what we should tackle next? Drop it in the comments and we’ll add it to the queue.

But there’s one particular guitar that has appeared twice—under two different model names and numbers—that many people seem to think is real. I’ll freely admit it might be—and maybe talking about it here will bring proof to light. But as of right now, I’m not convinced it ever actually existed. So let’s talk about it.

Exhibit A above, a list of additions to the 1982 price list, has a lot of interesting things on it. We have the three B-Series guitars (click to learn more) which debuted that year, along with a B-Series guitar that never appeared—a 325B; we have the 230 Hamburg and 250 El Dorado (click to learn more) that wouldn’t actually appear until 1984; we have the 350 Liverpool which wouldn’t appear until 1983; and then we have two mysteries: the 355 Liverpool Plus and the 655 Brighton.

Now the 655 Brighton is the biggest mystery of the two. The price list gives us quite a few details of what sets this guitar apart—metallic Ruby finish, blacked-out hardware, vibrato—but it doesn’t tell us some really important things…like the body shape. I won’t even begin to tell you all the rabbit holes I’ve been down trying to find details and photos on this one—that’s a story for another day.

The 355 Liverpool Plus is easier to figure out, though: it’s simply a 350 Liverpool with a vibrato. It says so right there in the description. While you can read the complete history of the 350 right here (click to learn more), I’ll give you the salient points.

The 350 Liverpool launched in 1983—meaning the price list above was a bit premature—and took the small-body, three pickup 320 and gave it a standard-scale neck.

Unlike today’s 350V63, the 350 Liverpool featured a 24-fret neck. While the scale length of both guitars is the same—24 3/4”—the bridge is moved further back on the body on the 350V63 to compensate for its shorter neck. As a result, the three pickups are spaced farther apart from each other than on the Liverpool.

What we today call the 350V63 first appeared as the Signature Limited Edition 355JL (click to learn more) in 1990 and was officially rechristened the 350V63 in 1994. It was sold alongside the 350 Liverpool until the production on the Liverpool ended in 1996.

Rickenbacker hadn’t built a vibrato-equipped guitar since around 1970, and the -5 model-number suffix used to designate “with vibrato” models had been absent ever since. The (proposed) introduction of three vibrato-equipped guitars—the 325B, the 355 Liverpool Plus, and the 655 Brighton—must have seemed like the right time to bring that “-5” numbering convention back.

But as we know, none of those vibrato-equipped 1982 price list additions ever actually hit the stores. Why not? Let’s game this out: the Accent vibrato (click to learn more) hadn’t been produced since the late 1960s. If Rickenbacker was going to include a replica of John Lennon’s 325 as part of the B-Series guitars, they needed a replica Accent unit. And if they were going to go to the trouble of developing and sourcing a replica, they might as well throw it onto a few more guitars—thus the planned 355 and 655. Makes sense. So what happened to them?

Well, the simplest answer is usually the right one. Something likely went wrong with the sourcing or production of the replica Accent, and as a result all three guitars had to be shelved.

The Accent replica was nailed down by late 1983—just in time for 325V63 prototypes—and the Accent-equipped 325V63 entered production in 1984. But not the 355 Liverpool Plus. It and the 655 Brighton didn’t get another shot—especially after John Hall purchased the company from his father in 1984 and promptly undertook a program of product-line rationalization.

And that’s the story of the 355 Liverpool Plus. Maybe a prototype or two was built, maybe not. But as a production model? Vaporware. Didn’t happen. That’s phantom number one.

So now let’s fast forward a couple years to 1985.

So…another price list, another vibrato-equipped 350 Liverpool—this time the 350VB. Real—or just another phantom?

VB stood for “vibrato”, and you’ll notice a number of VB-designated models on this pricelist. As already noted, Rickenbacker perfected their Accent replica in 1984 and they were flogging it hard on this price list.

But the 1985 market for Rickenbackers was very different than today’s. The brand was enjoying a college radio and MTV-fueled renaissance. Rickenbacker was attracting a brand new generation of players who had never even heard of an Accent vibrato, let alone seen one on MTV. As a result, the take rate on VB models appears to have been very low.

And as far as the 350 Liverpool itself went…it took some time to find its audience. Vintage Rickenbacker purists didn’t like it because a small body and a standard scale neck didn’t “belong” together, and the new fans hadn’t seen one in the hands of their MTV heroes yet, so they didn’t want one either.

So between its launch in 1983 and 1987—the year the 350VB disappeared from the price list—not a ton of 350s in total were sold. And among those guitars, I have yet to see a single 350VB. Not in person, not on sale online, not on the Rickenbacker Register. Not a single one.

Now let me be clear: I have seen 350 Liverpools from this era fitted with Accent vibratos. You can find them on the Register yourself right now. Here’s one right here:

But that’s not really a 350VB. How do I know? Because that vibrato is an aftermarket Accent—most likely made by Winfield Vintage—not an OEM unit. How do I know that? There’s a very simple tell.

Here’s the side of the string comb on factory Accent:

And here it is on a Winfield Vintage string comb:

Factory unit: closed ends. Winfield unit: open ends. It’s easy to spot once you know what to look for.

And it’s easy to swap an “R” tailpiece for an Accent. The Accent uses the same strap button hole so no extra screw holes are required, and the R tailpiece mounting screw holes are hidden by the Accent tailpiece.

So you do see 350 Liverpools with Accent vibratos in the wild. And since a model called the 350VB appeared on the pricelist for a couple years, people naturally assume that any such guitar is in fact a 350VB, and they get labeled as such—even though they didn’t leave the factory that way.

And so the internet boards are full of references to “Liverpool Plus” and “350VB”, which in turn means that the AI-generated summaries that appear when you Google the subject confidently refer to any 350 fitted with an Accent vibrato as a Liverpool Plus or 350VB—despite there being no evidence that these guitars ever actually existed.

Now am I saying that no 350 Liverpool ever left the factory with an Accent? Of course not. I’ve never seen one, but it certainly could have happened.

But until documented factory-built examples turn up, the 355 Liverpool Plus and the 350VB remain what they have always been: guitars that exist far more often in catalogs, forum posts, and search results than they do in the real world. Phantoms—until proven otherwise.

Want to learn more about…everything else? Check out our handy site map and see what’s already been covered. Have a suggestion about what we should tackle next? Drop it in the comments and we’ll add it to the queue.

Hear me out: an Old Style 360 without binding, with dot inlays, and mono wiring is essentially a 330, right? So why then isn’t this New Style 360—which also has no binding, dot inlays, and mono wiring—a New Style 330?

In every way except the body shape, this is a 330. But there’s a problem: there is no such thing as a New Style 330. So what exactly is this thing?

Well, in discussing the 381 prototypes—also from 1968–shop manager Dick Burke is on the record saying “Things were slow at the factory so I wanted to come up with something new, something different.” I suspect this guitar falls into the same category—something Burke dreamed up and then built because he was bored.

330, 360…in the end does it really matter? That’s the fun of oddball guitars. Every now and then one pops up that doesn’t quite fit the catalog, the timeline, or the model numbering—reminding us that interesting things can happen when the factory plays a little fast and loose with the rulebook.

Want to see more oddball guitars? Check out the “Interesting/Unusual Guitars” section in our handy site map!

According to my timeline, the first 360 with a 24 fret neck and first-gen Higains (click to learn more) appeared in April 1970. The first bound headstock (click to learn more) 360 appeared in June 1970. Yet this guitar—from March 1970—has all of those features. And then there’s that fingerboard.

Rickenbacker had built a handful of guitars with ebony fingerboards before—like the 1968 366/12OS you can read about here. And there are similarities between these two guitars: both featured unfinished ebony fingerboards with—unusually—bound fingerboard ends. But those position markers are something entirely new.

Large pearloid dot markers like this had not appeared on any Rickenbacker before, although they appear to foreshadow the markers found on the fretless 4001FL (click to learn more) in 1972. But this guitar still has one more unique feature.

Not only is this the first 360 with a bound headstock I’ve run across—“production” bound headstocks wouldn’t appear until June 1970—it’s the only 360 with a headstock bound with checkered binding I’ve ever seen.

The 1968 6006 Banjoline had featured a single-ply checkered bound headstock, as had a prototype 381 (click to learn more) from the same year. As so would the 1971 Mando Guitars. But all other 360s built with bound headstocks featured single ply white binding.

Now all this assumes these features are original, and I believe they are. The current owner has owned it since he bought it “new” in 1975, and the fingerboard and headstock are consistent with features that appeared both before and shortly afterward.

So what is it? Why is it? We’ll likely never know for sure, but there was a lot of experimentation with the 360 during this period, and this simply appears to be one of those experiments that escaped into the wild. And that’s why I love transitional-era 360s—you quite literally never know what you’re going to get.

Want to see more weird guitars? Check out the “Interesting/Unusual Guitars” section in our handy site map!

Most of the time, these differences are just variations on the same theme. And while that’s still true of Ruby, its story is a little more complicated. That’s because the name has actually been used twice—in two different eras for two similar but not identical finishes applied in dramatically different ways. It’s worth knowing the difference, so let’s quickly run through it.

The first version of Ruby debuted in 1981, and applying it was a complicated process. First, a base coat of automotive primer was laid down. Then a layer of metallic silver. Finally, several coats of red-tinted clearcoat were applied over the top. The result is quite striking in person.

This version of Ruby was produced from 1981 to about 1990. Given that relatively short run and modest production numbers, not many people have seen one in person. Add to that the fact that the metallic silver undercoat’s subtle sparkle doesn’t photograph especially well, and it’s no surprise that Ruby guitars from this era are often misidentified as Burgundy—and vice versa.

The easiest way to tell if you’re looking at the first version of Ruby or Burgundy is to look for wood grain or neck stripes—Burgundy is semi-translucent while Ruby is opaque. Also note in the photo above that, just like Fireglo, Ruby can vary slightly from guitar to guitar depending on how heavily the tinted clearcoats were applied.

Given the numerous layers, this version of Ruby is one of Rickenbacker’s thickest finishes. As such, it is more prone to checking than most finishes, and in extreme cases the tinted clearcoat can flake away, exposing the silver layer beneath.

You’ll often see Ruby guitars called “Ruby Red”. That’s incorrect—they’re just plain Ruby. I’m not certain how this misnomer became common—my best guess is that shortly after Ruby was introduced another finish simply called Red appeared, and the two ran concurrently until Ruby was discontinued around 1990. Somehow the two colors got conflated to produce the name Ruby Red. But the official name was always just Ruby.

While Ruby guitars were available during the black hardware/black trim era (click to learn more), they came standard with chrome and white plastics. That said, since any guitar could be custom ordered with BH/BT, blacked-out Ruby guitars do exist.

So, as we’ve said, the color was discontinued around 1990. But that’s not the end of this story.

When the Ruby name returned years later, the finish itself had changed completely: no silver undercoat, no tinted clearcoat layers, and a very different visual effect that again, sadly, does not photograph well.

Debuting at the 2012 NAMM Show, the second version of Ruby is—just like Midnight Blue, which first appeared alongside the first version of Ruby in 1985—often described as “metallic”. But that characterization isn’t quite right. A more appropriate description would be pearlescent.

There is a difference between the two, although it’s subtle. Metallic paints contain tiny metal flakes—usually aluminum—that reflect light and create a sparkly shine. The flakes are usually too small to see individually, but in so called “metal flake” finishes they can be much larger and clearly visible.

Pearlescent paints, on the other hand, contain tiny mica flakes—a non-metallic mineral—that both reflect and refract light, giving the finish a deeper, almost three-dimensional effect with subtle color changes. Ruby number two’s paint is pearlescent, not metallic.

The effect is subtle—something that becomes clear when you compare it in person to 2020’s special run of “Ruby Pearlstars” 4003s which added more pearlescent flakes—not so much that the color shifting became obnoxious, but certainly more noticeable.

This second version of Ruby was much simpler to apply: a base coat of the pearlescent finish would then get the same clear top-coat as all other colors.

Ruby would again be discontinued in 2017—although far more guitars were produced during Ruby’s second run than its first. A handful of special runs and one-offs have appeared in the years since, but if there are plans for another revival, they haven’t been shared.

And that’s the tale of two Rubies. Same name. Two eras. Two very different finishes.

To learn more about Rickenbacker’s “factory” finishes throughout the years, follow this link. For everything else, check out our handy site map.

But reducing the 4002 to its rarity alone doesn’t put the model into its proper context—which was not a replacement for the 4001 (click to learn more) or a bid for a broader market. It was a deliberate answer to a narrow demand—one rooted in clarity and control rather than stage presence or mass-market familiarity.

So to really understand the 4002 we have to look beyond the numbers and into the intent. Because its limited production was less an accident of history and more the logical outcome of a bass designed to occupy a very specific role within the Rickenbacker lineup.

If the 4001 defined Rickenbacker’s public image through the 1970s, the 4002 pursued a very focused brief. Rather than refining the midrange growl and aggressive clank that had become synonymous with the 4001, its design emphasized clarity, extended frequency response, and tonal separation. The electronics were not iterative—they represented a completely different direction, one that prioritized precision and control over stage-forward character.

At the 4002’s heart were the Super High Gain humbucking pickups (click to learn more) designed by Rickenbacker chief engineer George Cole. Cole’s name doesn’t surface as prominently as some others when discussing company history, largely because most of his contributions were tied to the post-Transonic solid-state amplifier line of the 1970s. As John Hall once observed, Cole was the “master of voicing amps and speakers”—and this aptitude was reflected in the unusually sophisticated pickup design and wiring scheme he devised for the 4002.

Located in positions familiar to Fender Jazz Bass players, the two humbucking pickups were a departure from anything Rickenbacker had built before and, despite their identical outward appearance, there was a significant functional difference between the two. Both featured side-by-side coils—one for the E and A strings, and one for the D and G strings. That configuration may sound novel, but it isn’t. It closely mirrors the Fender Precision Bass pickup, with one key distinction: the two coils were hidden inside a single Higain casing, beneath a Tolex cover instead of offset under separate covers as on the P-Bass.

But the real party trick was the bridge pickup, which featured bifilar windings. Put simply, each coil had two separate sets of windings that weren’t connected to each other in any way. A coil-tappable pickup also uses dual windings, but in that setup one set of windings can be added or removed to change the pickup’s output. In a bifilar setup like the 4002’s, however, the windings are completely independent, meaning you effectively have two separate pickups sharing the same magnet and footprint.

You’ll note in the photo above both pickups carry a red output wire, while the bridge pickup also includes a green lead. That green lead corresponds to the bridge unit’s “second” pickup, and unlike the primary signal path it completely bypasses the elaborate wiring harness.

And this is where things get really interesting. Because to really understand what Rickenbacker was trying to do with the 4002 we have to talk about low impedance pickups and output.

So what even is impedance? Put as simply as possible, it’s the total opposition a circuit presents to an AC signal. In practical terms, it describes how easily that signal can travel from pickup to output.

So how does that apply here? Well, generally speaking, the higher the impedance—the greater that opposition—the more susceptible the signal becomes to noise and high-frequency loss over distance. Lower the impedance, and more of the original signal survives the trip.

Here’s the catch: most traditional guitar and bass amplifiers aren’t optimized for a low-impedance output. We often talk about pickup “hotness” in terms of ohms—technically DC resistance—and it’s widely understood that higher-output pickups are better at pushing an amp into breakup or overdrive. A low-impedance pickup, by contrast, isn’t designed to drive the front end of an amplifier that way—and the amp isn’t designed to receive that type of signal.

So that’s the trade off: a lower impedance pickup preserves fidelity and extends frequency response, but most stage amplifiers expect a higher-impedance signal to behave as intended.

Active pickups—like those made by EMG—solve this problem by pairing a low-impedance pickup with an onboard preamp, boosting the signal before it even reaches the amplifier. But that’s not what the 4002 did. Instead, it did something quite different: it sent the low-impedance signal directly to an XLR output jack.

An XLR output isn’t something you’d typically expect to find on a production bass from the late 1970s. Unlike a standard ¼-inch instrument jack, which carries an unbalanced, high-impedance signal intended for a traditional amplifier, an XLR connection is designed for balanced, low-impedance audio—exactly the kind of signal you’d run directly into a mixing console.

In practical terms, the 4002’s XLR output allowed it to interface directly with studio-grade equipment, preserving the integrity of its low-impedance design without the need for an onboard preamp. Rather than boosting the signal to suit a stage amp, the instrument could send it straight to the desk—exactly as it left the pickup.

But the low-impedance pickup was only one part of the 4002’s electronics package. In fact, the instrument carried three discrete signal paths. While the low-impedance bridge winding—with an output of 2.5-3k ohms—was intended to run directly into a recording console via XLR, the other pickups were voiced for traditional amplification at around 8k ohms, either through a standard mono output or, if desired, through the Rick-O-Sound stereo jack (click to learn more).

Consequently, the instrument offered multiple routing possibilities. A player could run a standard mono signal into a single amplifier, split the pickups to separate amps via the Rick-O-Sound stereo output, or send the low-impedance bridge winding directly to a mixing desk while simultaneously feeding the remaining pickups into a stage rig.

In other words, the 4002 wasn’t just a bass. It was a routing system.

And we still haven’t even touched on the wiring harness that fed the 1/4” outputs. Because unlike the fairly straightforward layout of the 4001, the 4002’s—designed by Rickenbacker’s “master of voicing”—introduced its own layer of complexity.

To understand why, we need to briefly talk about high-pass and low-pass filters.

They do exactly what the names suggest. A high-pass filter allows frequencies above a certain point to pass through while attenuating those below it. A low-pass filter does the opposite, allowing lower frequencies through while bleeding off the highs.

Most standard guitar tone controls utilize simple low-pass filters. Rolling the tone knob back doesn’t “add bass”—it shaves off treble by sending more high-frequency content to ground. The lows were always there; you’re just removing what sits above them.

That’s only part of what the 4002’s tone knobs do. They incorporate both a high-pass and a low-pass filter. Instead of merely trimming treble, the control reshapes the frequency spectrum from both directions. Rolling the knob up bleeds off the low frequencies, and rolling it down bleeds off the high frequencies. The result is a far more surgical range of adjustment than the 4001 ever offered—and a quieter one as well, thanks to the pickups’ humbucking design.

It was an ambitious, complicated design. And it required a player willing—and equipped—to make full use of it.

But that’s not what the mass market wanted or needed. Stages were getting louder. Amplifiers was getting larger. Reliability and immediacy often mattered more than nuance. Most bassists were still thinking in terms of driving an amp, not interfacing with a mixing console. Tone shaping was expected to be intuitive and familiar, not clinical. Flexibility was valued—but simplicity was rewarded.

Against that backdrop, the 4002’s purpose becomes a bit clearer. A bass offering balanced, low-impedance output, studio-grade routing options, and dual-filter tone controls wasn’t chasing market share. It was answering a more specific question: what if the instrument itself were optimized for fidelity and control first, and stage practicality second?

That distinction matters. The 4002 wasn’t trying to replace the 4001, nor was it meant to appeal to the broad base of working bassists powering arena rigs night after night. It assumed access—to recording consoles, to quieter signal paths, and to players comfortable treating the bass as part of a larger signal architecture rather than a single line into an amplifier.

And there was a market for this type of instrument. You just have to think less in terms of the P-Bass or the 4001, and more in terms of builders like Alembic or Wal—small, boutique operatioms filling a specific niche. And when you look at it in that light, the model’s limited production no longer feels mysterious.

The 4002 wasn’t rare because it failed to find an audience. It was rare because its audience was always going to be small. The 4002 wasn’t designed to be popular. It was designed to be precise.

And when you consider that boutique builders like Alembic or Wal were the perceived competition, the 4002s deluxe features—and its price—make a lot more sense.

At its 1977 launch, the 4002 was positioned at the very top of Rickenbacker’s catalog, carrying an MSRP of $1,275—almost $6,800 today. That was more than double the 4001’s $588 price tag, placing it firmly in boutique territory rather than mainstream production fare. This wasn’t an incremental upgrade; it was a statement instrument, built with premium materials to match the complex electronics—just like the small, high-end builders it most closely resembled.

While the 4002 used the 4001’s body as a foundation, it featured an upgraded ebony fingerboard and “figured” maple wings. Although Rickenbacker had used ebony on occasional one-off guitars in the past, the 4002 marked the first time it appeared as a production-spec feature. Inlays were the large pearl dots found on the 4001F fretless bass.

As the pictures above demonstrate, the figured wings were far subtler than a modern buyer might expect from that description—no “AAAA flame” tops here, just scattered birdseye and light quilting. But for a company that had never put much effort into picking “fancy” maple tops in the past it was a notable shift.

The binding was particularly distinctive, though—two-ply black and checkered on the body, and single-ply black on the headstock—marking the first time a Rickenbacker bass featured a production-spec bound headstock (click to learn more). The headstock also had walnut wings—at a time when all other Rickenbacker basses used maple—and wore West German-made Schaller M4 tuners, arguably the finest bass tuners on the market in 1977. It was also the first time Schaller tuners had appeared on a Rickenbacker instrument.

Plastics were black only, including a multi-layer pickguard—a substantial five-ply black/white/black/white/black assembly—marking the only time such a multi-layer pickguard has ever been used on a Rickenbacker instrument.

These details were not ornamental excess—they were deliberate signals that the 4002 occupied a new and distinctly higher tier within the lineup.

Production ran from 1977 to 1984—a victim of the product line rationalization John Hall undertook after his purchase of the company—and they are indeed as rare as hens’ teeth. Total likely production was probably somewhere between 100 and 200 units, numbers that at first glance sound like a disappointment. But were they, really?

If success is measured purely in volume, then yes—the 4002 was a niche instrument. But volume was never the point. The modern mystique surrounding its rarity often treats those low production numbers as the headline, as though scarcity alone defines its significance. In reality, the scarcity was simply a byproduct of intent.

The 4002 was conceived as a precision tool, engineered for players who valued clarity, control, and routing flexibility over brute stage force. Its production numbers reflect that reality. In an era defined by bigger amps and louder stages, Rickenbacker briefly built a bass optimized not for spectacle, but for fidelity.

The 4002 isn’t remarkable because it is rare. It is rare because it was remarkable—and unapologetically specific. And for the small group of musicians who understood exactly what it offered, that was more than enough.

Want to learn more about…everything else? Check out our handy site map to see what we’ve already covered. Got something you’d like to see covered? Drop it in the comments and we’ll add it to the queue.

Exactly. I know it’s a lot to process, so let’s walk through it.

What we have here is a 2004 325C58 (click to learn more) finished in Blue Boy (click to learn more) with gold plastics, a two-o’clock f-hole (click to learn more), and—just to make sure we’ve fully committed to the bit—twelve strings.

Making it a 325/12C58.

Like I said…that’s a lot.

Now there are other 12-string 325s out there—although technically we should call them 320/12s instead of 325/12s as they (obviously) don’t feature a vibrato. F.C. Hall had the first one made for John Lennon (click to learn more) after the Beatles’ first visit to America in 1964, and replicas were made of that guitar for collectors in 1986 and 1999/2000.

But that guitar—and its replicas—are based on the thinner “New Capri” 1964 version of the 325, not the thicker 1958 325 Capri. This guitar, however, uses the 325C58 as its foundation, meaning it’s built on the earlier, chunkier body style. Thicc, as the kids would say.

There were allegedly ten different one-off guitars built around this time—possibly for the 2004 NAMM show—and other oddities made around the same time exist—like a 6-string 325C58 in Blue Boy and a 315C58, lending credibility to this theory. But since I originally hit publish I got a more likely explanation.

John Minutaglio suggests in the comments below that these were “thank you” guitars built to the individual specs of the “C-team”, a group of collectors and experts who advised in the development of the C-Series guitars. That appears to be the more likely explanation.

But nothing else like this particular one exists: the (as far as we know) one and only 325/12C58 ever built. In Blue Boy. With gold plastics. And with a two-o’clock f-hole.

A twelve-string, vintage-spec short-scale in a finish that didn’t belong on that body—yet somehow works anyway.

Viva la difference!

Want to learn about more weird guitars? Check out the “Interesting/Unusual Guitars” section on our site map…or any other category that interests you!

It won’t be an “obvious” answer like the famously “rare as hen’s teeth”—to quote John Hall—4002 bass. There’s probably around 200 of those out there. It’s not the Bantar, either. While there are probably fewer than 50 of those, that’s still a pretty large number for what we’re talking about. The Mando Guitar? A solid choice, but as a custom order it doesn’t count.

It may not be the absolute rarest, but the 1957 half-tulip Combo 450 has to be pretty close to it. Bridging the gap from the tulip era to the cresting wave (click to learn more) era and produced for only a few months in late 1957, most people don’t even know it exists. Well, if you’re here you probably do—but if you didn’t, you do now.

We’ve already covered the complete history of the Combo 450 (click to learn more), but the half-tulip only gets a brief mention there because, over the course of its twenty-seven-year lifetime, this version was little more than a blip. So let’s give it a little love here.

So first of all, why “half-tulip”? It’s simple. The first Combo 450—introduced earlier in 1957—was a two-pickup version of the Combo 400 (click to learn more). The Combo 400 had debuted the year before, and featured a body shape that looks a lot like…a tulip.

The first Combo 450s looked just like that, but with two pickups. Later that year, however, Roger Rossmeisl revised the design. As you can see, the tulip’s concave cutaways made upper fret access difficult. Whether in response to player feedback or just common sense, he trimmed the lower cutaway significantly, removing half of the “tulip”. And thus the half-tulip was born.

Because 1957 serial numbers don’t contain date information, it’s difficult to say exactly when during the year the change happened. However, of the thirteen 1957 Combo 450s documented with photos on the Rickenbacker Register, only three are half-tulips—which suggests the change likely occurred late in the year.

Of course, more exist than those three documented examples—there are pictures of guitars other than those three in this article alone. But if those three represent ten to twenty percent of the total production—which is a pretty good rule of thumb for register entries of this vintage—that means there’s somewhere between fifteen and thirty guitars total out there. That’s pretty rare.

The Combo 450 wasn’t the only guitar to transition from a full tulip to a half-tulip in the back half of 1957—the short-scale 1000 solidbody (click to learn more) did as well, having launched as a full tulip early in the year. Unlike the Combo 450, however, the 1000’s half-tulip remained in production until 1965.

If you think the half-tulip looks a little ungainly, so did Roger Rossmeisl. In early 1958 he took a whack at the Combo 450’s upper cutaway as well. The result was the “cresting wave” body shape that lives on to this day on the 620 and 660.

And just like that—with only a few months under its belt—the half-tulip Combo 450’s very short life was over.

Note that all three of the shapes we’ve seen—the tulip, the half-tulip, and the cresting wave—are all the same underneath. All that differs is how much of the tops of the tulip is cut away. Look closely at the cresting wave version and you can still see the original tulip’s top.

As a side note, if you’ve ever wondered when the Combo 450 became just the 450, in the collector world this is it: when the half-tulip was replaced by the cresting wave. The 1959 price list would be the last year to explicitly call it a Combo 450, and solidbody guitars would be labeled as the “Combo Series” on the price list through 1968, but in collector lingo tulip/half tulip equals Combo 450 and cresting wave equals simply 450.

One other interesting thing about the half-tulip Combo 450s is that they challenge a commonly held belief that is often stated as a fact. That “fact” is that Fireglow (and yes, it had a -w until 1967) debuted in 1959. So what color would you call that guitar above? It certainly looks like Fireglow.

Yes, it could be a refinish. But what about this one?

Or how about this 1958 cresting wave 450?

The simple fact is this: yes, “Fireglow” first appeared on the price list and on semihollow Capris in 1959. But the evidence strongly suggests that Rickenbacker began experimenting with the finish earlier than that—likely as early as 1956. These half-tulip Combo 450s are compelling evidence of that early experimentation.

So if the half-tulip Combo 450 isn’t the rarest production Rickenbacker, what else might compete for the title? The 6005 and 6006 Banjoline twins are strong candidates. The Combo 850 and 650 are definitely up there as well—although I’m not convinced that the Combo 650 actually exists—the only known examples are trade show guitars, not production examples.

In the end, the half-tulip Combo 450 may not be the rarest production Rickenbacker—but it’s hard to imagine many that are rarer. It’s a guitar that existed just long enough to be forgotten—until you learn to recognize it. And once you do, you’ll start spotting this odd little in-between shape hiding in plain sight.

I mean, the R tailpiece beautifully blends form and function, making it a key part of the brand’s visual identity while still performing its intended purpose of anchoring the strings. But it also has a reputation for…occasionally exploding. Let’s walk through it.

As iconic as the R tailpiece is today, no one seems to know who designed it. All the usual sources—the Richard Smith book, the Martin Kelly book, the RickResource forum (click to learn more)—are silent on the subject. Which is surprising given how central it is to Rickenbacker’s brand identity—but for now, that detail appears to have been lost to time…although like so many other details from this era the answer is probably shop manager Dick Burke.

We do know when it was introduced, though. The R tailpiece debuted on the “New Style” round-top 360 (click to learn more) when it was introduced in 1964. Well…sort of. The first “production” New Style 360s were built in August 1964, but the R tailpiece wasn’t quite ready yet—so those August guitars would all be finished as Accent Vibrato-equipped 365s. That makes an October production batch of 360/12s the tailpiece’s first “official” appearance.

It would next appear on the 1993 and 330S—a domestic market Rose-Morris 1997 without the Accent Vibrato (click to learn more)—in November 1964. From that point forward it quickly became the standard tailpiece on all semi-hollow guitars—including the 4005 bass (click to learn more) which launched in late 1965. With that, the trapeze era at Rickenbacker was over.

Now this first version of the R tailpiece does not explode—and I promise we will get to that in a minute. These early units were made of chrome plated cast brass and are still rock-solid today.

There are a few details that distinguish these early brass tailpieces from later versions. The easiest differences to spot are on the back of the tailpiece, where there are three differences of note. The most obvious are the string slots. On the early brass tailpieces, these slots were cut by hand with a chopsaw—and all had twelve slots cut, even those that would end up on 6-string guitars. On later versions the slots are an integral part of the casting itself—and there is both a six and a twelve string version. And a four string version for the original 4005 bass—but not the modern 4005V which uses a six string tailpiece—and even a five string version for the Bantar (click to learn more).

The next thing you’ll note is that later tailpieces have round molding marks—evidence of where the molten zinc alloy flowed into the tooling.

You’ll also notice that the surface is much rougher on the back of brass castings that on the zinc.

And finally, the shape at the bottom is slightly “squarer” on the brass unit than the zinc.

Of course, you have to take the tailpiece off to note these differences—which isn’t always possible or practical. Luckily, there is also a way to spot the difference without removing it, although it does require a ruler.

The mounting screws on the brass tailpiece bracket—also made of brass—are set slightly wider (about 7/8” on center) than on later tailpiece brackets (about 11/16” on center). That’s a noticeable difference, but unless you have one of each side-by-side you’re going to want a ruler.

But you shouldn’t need to do that unless the guitar was made in mid-to-late 1966—that’s when the brass tailpiece was replaced by one made of a zinc alloy called Zamak.

Zamak is the name for a family of zinc alloys, and the name comes from its primary components: zinc, aluminum, magnesium, and copper (“kupfur” in German). You probably touch Zamak items every day without realizing it—it’s used in bathroom fixtures, car parts, kitchen utensils, toys—you name it. If it has die-cast metal parts, there’s a good chance they’re Zamak.

So why is everything made of Zamak? It’s strong, melts at a relatively low temperature, flows extremely well in molds (making manufacturing labor- and cost-efficient), takes finishes like chrome or paint beautifully, and—most importantly—zinc is abundant and relatively inexpensive.

When people refer to the Rickenbacker R tailpiece as a “zinc tailpiece”, they really should be saying Zamak—and that’s an important distinction. On its own, zinc isn’t especially strong and would make a pretty lousy tailpiece. That’s exactly why the aluminum, magnesium, and copper are there. But…

There are numerous Zamak variations that adjust the proportions of each of the components. In general, the less zinc, the stronger. Even small changes can make a big difference: adding three percent more copper to Zamak 3–the “standard” formulation—makes Zamak 2, which is almost twice as strong.

You’ll often see the R tailpiece described as being made of “pot metal”. That’s not exactly right. The term “pot metal” refers to a cheap casting material made of…whatever material was handy to throw in the pot. It usually includes zinc, yes, but there is no formula, no specification, and no expectation around durability or quality. It’s a catch-all. And Zamak is none of those things.

Now we get to the exploding part. We don’t know exactly which Zamak formulas Rickenbacker has used over the years, but we are fairly sure the formulation changed at least once. And that’s where the problem appears to have started.

Zamak tailpieces produced from 1966 to the late 1970s or early 1980s appear to be largely immune. It is only after then—and some insiders have suggested 1979 as the point the formulation was changed—that the problems began appearing.

Before we get into the details, let’s talk about this in terms of order of magnitude. The overwhelming majority of these tailpieces are and will be absolutely fine. But you never hear about those.

There’s no formal data, but if I had to estimate I’d put the percentage of affected instruments in the very low single digits—with one notable exception we’ll get to in a moment. Large enough that patterns get noticed, but not so much that the issue could be considered widespread.

So what actually happens? Simply put, they fail at their weakest point: the bottom corners where the tailpiece slots into the bracket. Years of constant string tension gradually weakens this vulnerable spot—which is likely due more to individual casting variation than the material itself—until one or both corners snap.

When that happens, it can be dramatic. The broken tailpiece can be flung by the strings’ suddenly released energy, while the bridge—no longer held in place by the strings—clatters to the floor. Hence the “explosion” language.

While there are a handful of examples of this failure occurring on six-string guitars, the overwhelming majority occur on 12-strings—which makes sense: double the strings means double the tension.

Failures like this are common with all sorts of manufactured parts: some percentage fails, the manufacturer replaces them, and either fixes the underlying problem or decides that the ongoing replacement of a small number is more cost-effective. Usually, everyone moves on. That’s not how Rickenbacker has responded—and that response has helped turn a relatively small problem into something that feels much larger.

Step one: deny there is a problem, or suggest that the user may be in some way responsible. Rickenbacker has done both at various times. Step two: replace the broken part—at full retail price—and require that the broken part is returned before a replacement is shipped. Neither step leads to positive consumer feedback.

Now, for a company as obsessed with protecting their intellectual property (click to learn more) as Rickenbacker was during John Hall’s tenure, requiring return of the broken part makes all the sense in the world: you don’t want factory parts showing up on counterfeit guitars. And most people understand that. What people react negatively to is the combination of denying there is a problem—however small—and charging people for a replacement. And they have been vocal about it.

If you spend any time on Internet forums you’ll hear these stories—and they attract significant attention and retelling. So when you Google “exploding Rickenbacker tailpieces” you’ll find plenty of links—but most ultimately tie back to the same handful of aggrieved parties.

As noted earlier, there is no hard data, but I am confident the numbers are low. With one exception: the Black Hardware/Black Trim (click to learn more) guitars. This is where the story changes slightly.

Something in the powder coating process these parts went through appears to have negatively impacted their stability, as they exhibit a significantly higher failure rate than their chrome counterparts. We see a similar effect on black bass bridges, where tail lift (click to learn more) is more pronounced than on “standard” chrome-plated units.

How much worse? Again, there is no data, but I’d estimate there are two to three times more failures on the black powder coated tailpieces than on the standard chrome. That still doesn’t rise to epidemic level—but isn’t trivial either.

To make matters worse, the powder coated tailpieces haven’t been available from the factory for decades, so if it one breaks, it can only be replaced with a chrome version. This small but real risk has led many players to proactively remove otherwise intact tailpieces and replace them with aftermarket substitutes. The very existence of these replacements underscores that the concern, while limited, is real.

You don’t hear much about “exploding” modern tailpieces, but the problem is a product of time, and only time will tell if it has truly gone away. If the Zamak formula has changed again, the company hasn’t said anything. A cynic might say that publicizing a change would mean admitting there was a problem—but sharing that type of inside information is not something Rickenbacker has ever been known for.

Again, the chances of this ever happening to you are slim. But there is another design weakness that almost certainly will affect you: the R tailpiece is notoriously difficult to string— especially on the 12-string.

It all comes down to the slots that hold the string ball ends. Getting the ball end seated correctly is fiddly to begin with, and it only stays put once tension is applied—tension that’s hard to maintain while you’re still stringing and tuning.

There are two basic strategies for restringing a Rickenbacker R tailpiece: all at once or one string at a time—and both have drawbacks. Just like the string ball ends requires tension to stay seated, so do the tailpiece and bridge themselves. Remove all the strings at once and suddenly nothing is under tension—so nothing wants to stay put.

The biggest benefit to doing it this way is that you can flip the tailpiece over and visually confirm every ball end is correctly seated. The problem is that nothing keeps them there once you flip it back. Most people solve this with tape, pulling each string tight in its slot and then taping it in place to the underside of the tailpiece—but now you’re left with twelve loose, dangling strings to keep sorted as you string and tune.

The other option is to string one string at a time—removing and replacing each string in turn. This solves the tension problem, but it also highlights how difficult it is to seat the ball end blindly. The gap between the tailpiece and body is too small to get a finger in to ensure proper seating—or to hold it in place. You have to rely on feel. And then you have to maintain manual tension as you complete the process. And if I had a dollar for every time a string has popped out the moment I started tuning it…well, I’d have many dollars.

Focusing so much on the R tailpiece’s flaws really does a disservice to how elegant the design actually is. I began this article by saying how beautifully it combines form and function, and that remains true—even if form takes slight precedence over function.

In the end, the R tailpiece is a perfect metaphor for Rickenbacker itself: distinctive, beautiful, a little stubborn, and endlessly discussed. Yes, it has quirks. Yes, it has a history. And yes, it occasionally tests the patience of the people who love it most. But it has also anchored the strings of some of the most recognizable guitars ever made for more than half a century—and remains one of the most unmistakable pieces of guitar hardware ever designed.

For better and for worse, it wouldn’t feel quite right if it were anything else.

One last fun postscript: while researching this article, I stumbled across something new to me. On a forum, someone referred to the R tailpiece as a “baby dinosaur”. He was right—and now you won’t be able to unsee it.

When discussing the early days of the electric guitar—especially in Southern California, the industry’s epicenter—you see a lot of the same names pop up again and again: Paul Bigsby, Leo Fender, Paul Barth, and one Clayton “Doc” Kauffman.

Kauffman played both Spanish and Hawaiian style guitar, and he wanted to find a way to get the Hawaiian guitar’s fluid sound out of the Spanish guitar. An inveterate tinkerer—he even held a 1944 patent for a home dishwasher—in 1928 he invented a simple mechanism that allowed the player to create a light pitch-changing effect. He applied for a patent in 1929 and it was granted in 1932, making the Kauffman Vibrola the very first guitar tremolo.

The mechanics of the Vibrola were…something of a dead-end, if we’re being honest. There’s a pretty good reason why all the systems that followed worked differently. But here’s how it worked.

You’re familiar with how both the Bigsby and the Strat tremolos work. While the mechanics of the two are different, the principle is the same: pull the handle up, string tension increases and pitch rises, push the handle down, string tension decreases and pitch lowers. That isn’t how the Kauffman works.

You’ll notice in the picture above that the tailpiece the strings attach to on the Kauffman sits on a central pivot. Its handle doesn’t move up and down—it moves side to side. When you move it, the tailpiece moves side to side on that pivot. This means that tension is increased—unevenly—on half the strings, raising their pitch. At the same time, tension is decreased on the other strings, lowering their pitch.

If that sounds a little…strange, it is. But that’s because you’re thinking about it in the modern context of what a tremolo is supposed to do—not in the context in which it was designed: making a Spanish guitar sound like a Hawaiian guitar. In that light, well, it’s still weird—but it makes more sense.

The earliest reference I’ve found to mention Kauffman’s invention appears in the 1934 Epiphone catalog, where it was offered as an aftermarket accessory. While it was not fitted as standard to any of their models, the fact that a market leader like Epiphone would consider it interesting enough to add to their catalog speaks volumes about the Vibrola’s novelty. The catalog even includes multiple pictures of Epiphone artists playing Vibrola-equipped guitars.

But it wouldn’t be one of the market leaders like Epiphone or Gibson to fully embrace the Vibrola and offer the first guitar with Kauffman’s invention fitted as standard. That honor would instead go to an upstart from California: Electro String Instrument Corporation—the corporate predecessor to modern Rickenbacker.

And it makes perfect sense that it would be Rickenbacker—who had built their business on the first electric Hawaiian steel guitars—who would want to apply Kauffman’s Vibrola as they tried to make inroads into the Spanish guitar market. After all, the whole point of the Vibrola was to make a Spanish guitar sound Hawaiian.

And so when Rickenbacker introduced their first Spanish guitars around 1935—both B-Series lap steel-derived models and the more traditional Ken Roberts model—it was only natural that some of them were equipped as standard with Kauffman Vibrolas.

While the Gibson ES-150—famously played by Charlie Christian—is often considered to be the first electric Spanish guitar, the Rickenbacker Ken Roberts model actually beat the ES-150’s 1936 introduction by a year or more, first appearing in either 1934 or 1935 depending on the source. That said, the Ken Roberts was essentially a rebadged Harmony acoustic guitar with a Rickenbacker horseshoe pickup and Kauffman Vibrola added.

So perhaps technically the first Spanish electric guitar—and by some accounts the first artist signature model electric guitar—although the details of Ken Roberts’s identity have largely been lost to time. But the Ken Roberts model wasn’t the only Rickenbacker Spanish guitar equipped with a Kauffman Vibrola. And it certainly wasn’t the weirdest.

Doc Kauffman had another trick up his sleeve—and another patent to prove it. The patent application makes it clear he developed it alongside Rickenbacker or with them firmly in mind.

Introduced in 1935, the Vibrola Spanish guitar is both brilliant and bizarre. Based on the Bakelite B-Series lap steel, it added the existing Vibrola mechanism…and motorized it.

A variable speed motor controlled by a knob on the guitar’s front drove a pulley-powered cam that moved the Vibrola handle back and forth automatically. The best way to explain the effect is to show you:

You can almost see what Kauffman had been chasing all along—and it makes just how different this first vibrato system was from our modern expectations abundantly clear.

The Ken Roberts model ran until about 1939, with roughly fifty produced. The Spanish Vibrato Guitar survived until around 1940, with probably more than that made…but not many more. And that was the end of that. Until 1958, that is.

Which brings us back to where we started: the launch of the Capri line. So why go back to the Kauffman Vibrola when an objectively better alternative—the Bigsby—was readily available?

There’s no way to know for sure, but we can make a pretty reasonable guess: F.C. Hall never threw anything away. There was likely a dusty box full of the Kauffman units in the stock room, and Hall simply said “Good enough”.

But it wasn’t, really. Not only did it fail to deliver the kind of vibrato players were coming to expect, its tuning stability was…bad. A common joke is that if you breathe on the Kauffman Vibrola wrong the guitar goes out of tune—and that’s not that far from the truth.

Because the string attachment point sits on a spring-loaded pivot, tuning any single string changes the tension across the whole unit—pulling the other strings out of tune. The design was later improved with a second spring on the other side of the unit, but the springs were offset, creating unequal tension and still offering no guarantee the unit would return to its starting position after each use. It’s easy to see why the central pivot approach turned out to be dead end in tremolo design.

These flaws led to the gradual phase-out of the Kauffman in late 1959/early 1960. Its replacement, the Accent Vibrato (click to learn more), was itself a fairly crude design, but still a dramatic improvement.

Despite its relatively short lifespan during the modern era, a number of slightly different Vibrola variants can be found, all attached to the same bracket used on the trapeze tailpiece. The most common is the short-body version seen on the 1958 365 prototype above. There was also a long-body version, seen below and usually found on F-Body guitars (click to learn more), that riveted the short-body version to an extension plate.

A second long-body version was riveted directly to a non-angled trapeze tailpiece blank.

Likewise, some F-Body guitars used the F-Body’s longer trapeze blank as an extension.

In the name of authenticity—certainly not functionality—the 2002-2010 reissue model based on John Lennon’s original 1958 325, the 325C58 (click to learn more), featured a Kauffman Vibrola. Like Lennon did himself, many players have since removed the unit and replaced it with a Bigsby. John Hall had exact reproductions created for the model, although rumor has it that some of the first guitars may have even received leftover originals from the 1958-1960 runs. Just like his father, John doesn’t appear to throw anything away either.

In hindsight, the Kauffman Vibrola is easy to dismiss as an awkward and short-lived experiment. It was unstable, quickly outdated, and ultimately replaced by better designs.

But the Vibrola sits at the very beginning of the vibrato story—a mechanical stepping stone between the lap steel world Rickenbacker came from and the modern electric guitar that would soon follow. It may have been a technological dead end, but it was a historical starting point. And without experiments like Kauffman’s, the tremolo systems we now take for granted might have taken much longer to arrive.

I’d like to thank the good folks at joesvintageguitarsaz.com for allowing me to share their excellent demonstration video of the Vibrola Spanish Guitar. Go check them out!

And then there are the folks who can’t wait to get their first Rickenbacker just so they can experiment with the Rick-O-Sound. Which they do for the first few weeks of ownership…and then often never use again.

So what exactly, then, is “Rick-O-Sound”, and why does it inspire both fear and curiosity? And why, even though it wasn’t the first to market, is it actually better than what came before—even if few players regularly use it?

Let’s start with what actually was first to market. And like so many electric guitar firsts from the 1950s, it was a battle between Gretsch and Gibson. Gretsch won this round, coming to market in 1958 with “Project-O-Sonic”-equipped guitars.

As to what “Project-O-Sonic” was, the simple answer is stereo output of the guitar’s two pickups—one pickup in each channel. The longer answer is…weird.

What you have here is two Gretsch Filter’Tron humbucking pickups, but with polepieces for just three strings on each—low strings on the neck pickup, high strings at the bridge. So not only are you sending only one pickup to each channel, you’re also splitting the guitar itself, with only three strings feeding each side of the stereo output.

Well—mostly. The magnets and the windings run the full width of the pickups, so you do get a little bit of the other strings. But only a bit. Weird, right?

A stereo cable ran from the guitar to a splitter box, with a separate mono output jacks for each pickup’s signal—which you would then run to two different amplifiers for the full stereo effect. And because the guitar was only equipped with a stereo output jack, players had no choice but to use the split output.

The design was later…improved? Both sides of the pickup got polepieces and players were given the choice of which three strings were sent to each channel…or all six if they were feeling daring.

The fact that you’ve probably never heard of Project-O-Sonic tells you all you need to know about how the market ultimately responded. But in those guitar arms-race days, if Gretsch did something new, Gibson was almost guaranteed to respond—and to try to do it better.

And so they did in 1959 with the ES-345—taking the ES-335 that had launched the year prior and giving it fancier split parallelogram inlays, a six-way Varitone tone switch, and stereo output.

Sometimes less is more, and such is the case with the ES-345. Gibson eschewed Gretsch’s odd split pickups and simply wired one full pickup to each channel. But once again, stereo output was the guitar’s only option.

Rickenbacker was watching with interest. After Gretsch, and then Gibson, had introduced guitars with stereo wiring, it was clear the major manufacturers saw potential in the idea. Rickenbacker wanted a piece of it—and they also saw an opportunity to solve the biggest practical problem.

Putting aside the Project-O-Sonic’s questionable partial pickup approach, both the Gretsch and the Gibson suffered from the same basic problem: stereo output was the guitar’s only option. Rickenbacker’s answer was simple and elegant: give the guitar two output jacks—one stereo, and one mono—and let the player decide which one to use.

This also sidestepped another problem Gibson and Gretsch faced: with them you had to buy a special guitar (Gibson) or order a custom wiring package (Gretsch) to get the stereo option. Rickenbacker, by contrast, could in principle equip almost any guitar with two output jacks as standard. No special guitar or custom order required.

But when the feature was launched in mid-1960 on full-sized Capri (click to learn more) and F-Body (click to learn more) models under the “Rick-O-Sound” banner, Rickenbacker chose to limit its application to “Deluxe” (click to learn more) models. Standard models would have to make do with mono wiring only. You have to pay more to get more.

The stereo setup was essentially the same as Gibson’s: when the stereo output jack was used, each pickup was assigned its own separate channel. Rickenbacker’s Rick-O-Sound splitter box (sold separately) had an integrated stereo cable that plugged directly into the Rick-O-Sound output jack. The box then provided two mono output jacks—one for each pickup—from which standard mono cables could be run to two separate amplifiers.

But—and this is the important part—you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to. If stereo isn’t your thing, just plug a standard mono cable into the mono jack. That simply wasn’t an option on the Gibson or the Gretsch.

The jacks are labeled—“Rick-O-Sound” for the stereo output, “Standard” for mono—although the lettering tends to wear off over time. Fortunately, they’re consistently placed: the mono jack is closest to the strap pin on the left (when facing the guitar), and the stereo jack is on the right.

When the Deluxe solid-body 625 (click to learn more) joined the lineup in 1962, it too was equipped with the dual stereo/mono jacks. Rickenbacker appears not to have been fully convinced that bass players would want the Rick-O-Sound wiring—it took until 1968 for it to become an option on the Deluxe 4001 (click to learn more) bass, and until 1970 for it to become standard.

So if few players regularly use it, why is it still included on most Deluxe models to this day? The simple answer is that it really doesn’t cost all that much to include, and at some point it just became part of the brand identity—Rick-O-Sound is just one of those things that makes a Rickenbacker a Rickenbacker, even if you never plug it in.

And so more than sixty years later, Rick-O-Sound is still there—mysterious to those who don’t get it, and mostly ignored by those who do—quietly reminding you that a Rickenbacker isn’t just any guitar: it’s a Rickenbacker.

And even though I’ve just wrapped this all up neatly, I feel compelled to share the following line from the Gretsch Project-O-Sonic user manual: “The system is simple—just understand it.”

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And when it arrived, he was a little disappointed to see it looked nothing like George’s—it was one of the first of the “New Style” 360 family (click to learn more) with its rounded-over body and cutaways. And it wasn’t brown, either. It was burgundy. Still, it was his, and he loved it, and it helped carry him to fame.

You’ve heard that story because that’s the way Randy Bachman—who would shortly thereafter achieve fame in the Guess Who, and later Bachman-Turner Overdrive—tells it. And on the face of it, it makes sense. But here’s the funny thing about it: the story doesn’t completely add up when you look at it closely.

Memory is a funny thing. Over time, details that feel like they should belong make their way into the memory, and what “actually” happened gets quietly reshaped to fit the new narrative. It’s not a conscious process, it just happens.

So let’s talk about what we do know for a fact. Bachman did custom-order a Rickenbacker with a “natural walnut” finish from Lowe’s in 1964—which matches Harrison’s Gretsch Country Gentleman’s finish. And this guitar, produced in October 1964, is what he received several months later:

What really excites Rickenbacker fans about this guitar isn’t really Bachman’s ownership—although that certainly gives it a good story. It’s the color: Burgundy. Specifically, it’s the first known Burgundy-finished “Spanish” guitar Rickenbacker produced.

Rickenbacker wasn’t exactly in the one-off custom-color business. And while F.C. Hall wasn’t one to turn down a sale—especially on a brand new guitar model like the New Style 360—the factory was already stretched thin trying to churn out guitars for Rose Morris, the company’s UK distributor. So they likely turned to a color already in the Rickenbacker arsenal and declared it “close enough”.

Burgundy had been in use since the early 1950s on lap and console steels—most notably on the Model 100 lap steel. So they likely pulled a can of that off the shelf, sprayed Bachman’s guitar, then moved on. One can even imagine a memo going out to the field afterwards saying something to the effect of “no more custom colors”.

That last bit is pure speculation, of course. But the numbers from the Smith book (click to learn more)—which must be taken with a grain of salt as they reflect sales figures rather than production numbers—do lend some circumstantial support as they show only three guitars produced in “other” colors in 1964.

But those same numbers cast the first real doubt on Bachman’s story. Of those three “other” color guitars sold in 1964, two are 375s—which seems awfully coincidental. Maybe the guitar wasn’t built directly in response to Bachman’s order. Maybe it was a factory experiment that just happened to coincide with his order and the same “close enough” logic was applied. We’ll likely never know. What we do know is that the second “other” color 375 has yet to be discovered—that could help answer some questions.

But the real problem with Bachman’s story is the timing. He specifically says he wanted a guitar like Harrison’s, but with six strings and not finished in Fireglo. So let’s walk through the timeline of Harrison’s guitar—and why it’s difficult—but not impossible!—to reconcile that timeline with Bachman’s.

The guitar was built in November 1963. It was given to Harrison in New York during the Beatles’ first visit to the US on February 8, 1964. While the Beatles would appear on the Ed Sullivan Show three times during February (the third, on the 23rd was pre-recorded at the same time as their first appearance on the 9th), George would not play the Rickenbacker on any of them. February 1964 was North America’s introduction to the Beatles—and the Rickenbacker was not part of it.

The Rickenbacker made its first public appearance the day the Beatles got back from the U.S.—February 23rd—at a taping for the UK TV show “Big Night Out” which aired on the 29th. In the UK only. Most of March and April were spent recording and filming “A Hard Day’s Night,” both of which would, of course, heavily feature the Rickenbacker.

A handful of UK concerts and TV appearances occurred during this period—most notably a March 25th appearance on “Top of the Pops” (filmed on the 19th)—that did feature the Rickenbacker. But none of these TV appearances would be broadcast in North America.

North America’s first exposure to the Rickenbacker would occur on May 24th on the Ed Sullivan Show. The broadcast featured an interview with the band—filmed in the UK—and a prerecorded performance of “You Can’t Do That” which featured George on his Rickenbacker.

If Randy Bachman decided he wanted a Rickenbacker because he had seen George with one, this was his first likely possible exposure. And yes—The Ed Sullivan Show aired in Canada.

On August 11th “A Hard Day’s Night” premiered in the U.S., and with it George’s Rickenbacker became unavoidable. This was reinforced by a tour of the U.S. and Canada beginning August 19th, 1964, which featured the Rickenbacker prominently onstage. By the end of the month, the linkage between George Harrison and the Rickenbacker was unmistakable.

So let’s talk briefly about Bachman’s 375. The New Style 360 guitars entered production in August 1964—terrible timing given the sudden surge in interest in the Old Style 360. Bachman’s was built in October. Apart from the custom color, all other features are exactly what they should be—even the fancy Van Ghent tuners (click to learn more), which were standard on early production New Styles.

Let’s say Bachman did make his mind up on May 24th when Harrison’s Rickenbacker first appeared on his television screen, and marched down to Lowe’s Music in Winnipeg the very next day to place his order. It could have happened that way, and the timing would probably work.

But this raises an obvious question: why would he have ordered a three-pickup, vibrato-equipped 375 when Harrison’s 360/12 had only two pickups and no vibrato? There are a couple of plausible explanations.

One ties back to our happy coincidence theory—his custom-color order for a 360 arrived at around the same time an experimental Burgundy guitar had been produced and was looking for a home. And so Rickenbacker figuratively shrugged and said “close enough”.

The second is that it wasn’t a copy of George’s guitar he ordered—he ordered a copy of John’s, but with the same finish as George’s Gretsch. Let’s examine the evidence. This is the price list Lowe’s likely would have had when Bachman placed his order:

Remember that this was well before the internet, when you couldn’t just pull out your phone and compare guitar models. Rickenbacker was still a relatively unknown brand, and that piece of paper was likely all Bachman and Lowe’s had to guide his order.

And yes, it’s a 1962 price list. There was no 1963 version, and the 1964 price list didn’t appear until July, which makes it doubtful Lowe’s had it at the time the order was placed. This 1962 list is likely what they were working from.

Consider this: which Beatle’s Rickenbacker was immediately visible— right from that very first Ed Sullivan appearance—and featured three pickups and a vibrato? It wasn’t George’s.

Either of these scenarios fits the facts better than Bachman’s recollection. But that doesn’t mean his story is wrong—it’s possible that a mix of these factors led him to end up with this specific guitar. That’s the thing about memory: over time our minds fill in the blanks to make it all make sense.

Burgundy would become a official factory color in 1968—although it would be rechristened Burgundyglo—and would stay in production through 1984. Funnily, it would lose its -glo and become just Burgundy again in 1976. It would later reappear as the 2002 Color of the Year.

In 1965 Chad Allen and the Expressions would release a single as the Guess Who? in an attempt by their label to imply that the record was secretly recorded by a British Invasion band incognito. Which band? Guess who? The name stuck and the Guess Who (without Allen, who left to return to college) would go on to score 14 Top Forty hits in the U.S. and over 30 in Canada.

Regardless of its true origin, Randy Bachman’s 1964 375 is an iconic piece of Rickenbacker’s history. Its unusual Burgundy finish, early place in the New Style 360 lineup, and connection to a young guitarist inspired by the Beatles make it a story worth telling. Whether it was a happy coincidence, a subtle nod to John Lennon’s instrument, or a mix of both, the guitar represents the way inspiration, timing, and factory quirks can come together to create something memorable.

Beyond its technical specs, this 375 captures a moment in musical history: the arrival of the Beatles in North America, the early days of a Canadian rock legend, and the emergence of a color that would become a lasting part of Rickenbacker lore. For collectors, players, and historians alike, it’s more than a guitar—it’s a piece of story, memory, music, and mystery all rolled into one.

But F.C. Hall didn’t know any of that would happen when he bought the company in 1953. That market didn’t even exist yet. He just wanted to sell some guitars—to whoever wanted them.

And Rickenbacker’s first modern guitars—the Combo 600 and 800 (click to learn more)—reflect that ethos: “Here, we made a guitar. Do you want one?”

What the Combo 600 and 800—and the later Combo 400—taught Hall was that you needed a target audience first: find out what they want and build it, instead of just throwing something out there and hoping people like it.

So as Roger Rossmeisl spent late 1957 and early 1958 furiously refining what would become the Capri models (click to learn more), Hall was just as furiously loaning those prototypes out and putting them into players’ hands for feedback.

One of the takeaways was that the line Rossmeisl was developing was missing a guitar that appealed to jazz guitarists—which, in the late 1950s, still represented an important part of the market in both prestige and sheer numbers.

At the time, the jazz market still favored conservative, traditional designs—an aesthetic mismatch for Rossmeisl’s bold double-cutaway Capri.

So to fill that gap in the line, a design was sketched out and two prototypes were quickly built for the June 1958 NAMM show. Just like that, the F-Body (for “Full Body”) guitars were born.

Like the Capri line, the F-Body line would consist of eight models—four standard and four deluxe—and it borrowed the Capri’s model numbering scheme, with an “F” tacked on at the end. So if a standard Capri with two pickups and vibrato was a 335, its F-Series counterpart was a 335F.

The two prototypes differed only slightly from the production models, in much the same ways prototype Capris had: the slash soundhole was long with a slightly curved tail, and since neither prototype was equipped with a vibrato, both used an off-the-shelf tailpiece rather than the trapeze fitted to production models. The two-tone pickguard on the 360F prototype is original—a bit of visual flair that wouldn’t carry over to production guitars.

On both the prototype and production guitars, F-Body guitars featured a single rounded cutaway, a 16” wide body, and a 2 1/4” body depth. The deluxe models had the triangle inlays and bound necks found on the Capri models, but added fancier two-ply checkered binding on the body. The standard guitars, by contrast, had no body binding and simple dot inlays—although most retained the bound neck.

All other features—hardware, plastics, electronics—were shared with the Capris. The only exceptions were the tailpieces. Well…kind of.

As you can see, the non-vibrato equipped guitars got a trapeze tailpiece like their Capri counterparts—only stretched out to accommodate the larger body size.

Likewise, vibrato-equipped F-Bodies got the same antiquated Kauffman Vibrola as the Capris, with an extra bracket to extend the unit—without it, the vibrato arm would have ended up behind the bridge! At least two different extension brackets were used with the Kauffman.

Tracking changes to the F-Bodies over their production run is difficult for a few reasons. First, volumes were incredibly low, with perhaps around 150 produced in total over its 1958-1962 run. The Smith book (click to learn more) cites 129, but we all know those numbers are best understood as “directional”.

Secondly, these guitars were largely hand-built—the early ones mostly by Rossmeisl himself, with assistance from Dick Burke—and minor variations abound.

A good example of this instrument-to-instrument variability can be found on the small handful of early guitars with walnut heel caps on the back—and no obvious answer why.

Likewise, while the deluxe guitars launched with two-ply checkered binding, a number of 1958 and 1959 examples have either plain white—like the example above—or two-ply black and white binding. By early 1960 the two-ply checkered binding seems to have returned as the standard.

One of the most obvious changes tells us more than you might realize. Early F-Bodies featured a three-piece maple top and a two-piece maple back. These guitars were constructed the same way as the Capri models: the top was cut out from a solid block and routed out from the rear, with the back attached afterwards.

But given how large these guitars were, that involved a lot of routing. In late 1959 the construction method changed: the top, sides, and back were each built separately, and then assembled together—a much more labor-efficient process. With that shift came a move to a two-piece top.

At around the same time there was also a standardization in the way the neck was set. Some earlier guitars had the neck set at a slight backwards angle—much like a Gibson Les Paul—as commonly found on jazz guitars of the era.

That design choice required the bridge pickup and bridge to be shimmed to the correct height. Longer screws with springs were used on the pickup, and plastic shims were stacked to bring the bridge where it needed to be.

Other guitars had a flat neck set, like all other models in the line. But the change to body construction coincided with a standardization to the neck set—all guitar necks were now set flat. Together, these changes significantly improved manufacturing efficiency, making higher production levels possible.

The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed at least three different sizes of soundholes in the pictures above. There’s the long, curved ones on the prototypes:

A shorter one (about 7 1/2”) on the first production guitars:

And then the final, 6 1/4” version:

The final version appeared slightly before the change in body construction, so there are a handful of guitars with three-piece tops and the short soundhole.

In 1960, along with the rest of the line, the vibrato-equipped F-Bodies saw the Accent vibrato (click to learn more) replace the outdated and finicky Kauffman Vibrola. Once again the F-Bodies received a stretched version, this time distinguished by cutout musical note embellishments.

1960 would be the high water mark for the F-Body guitars. Production would drop dramatically in 1961 and cease entirely after January 1962. The only changes of note over that time were a decrease in body depth to about two inches in 1961, and the handful built in 1962 would get the fifth “blend” knob (click to learn more).

One especially notable F-Body guitar—a 360F—was produced in 1961 as part of a matched set. A 360F, a 4000 bass, and a Martin 000 28-style acoustic—custom built by Rossmeisl—were all finished in powder blue for Jim Reeves and the Blue Boys. These instruments—and that distinctive color—would later inspire the 2002 Color of the Year (click to learn more) Blue Boy.

As a postscript, at least one 365F was produced in 1964, with two-ply black-and-white binding and period-correct white plastics. Its three-piece body construction strongly suggests it was a leftover body from 1958-59 that was completed in 1964.

So…was the F-Body line a success ? If success is measured in production numbers, the answer is no. F-Body guitars were expensive to build, sold in very small quantities, and quietly exited the catalog after only a few years. By conventional commercial metrics, they were a dead end.

But that framing misses what the F-Bodies actually accomplished.

They helped clarify what it would take to compete in the traditional jazz guitar market. Conservative styling alone wasn’t enough. By the late 1950s, jazz players already had deep brand loyalties, and Rickenbacker was never going to displace Gibson or Epiphone by meeting them on their own turf.

Just as importantly, the F-Body line exposed the practical limits of Rickenbacker’s early construction methods. The mid-run changes to body construction and neck set weren’t cosmetic tweaks; they were hard-earned lessons in efficiency, repeatability, and scale. Those lessons would shape how the company built guitars going forward.

In that sense, the F-Bodies didn’t fail because they were flawed instruments. They failed because they were answering the wrong question. Instead of asking how to make a Rickenbacker fit an existing market, the company soon shifted toward asking what made a Rickenbacker unmistakably itself—and in doing so began to define its niche.

That lesson wouldn’t sit dormant for long. Only a few years later, Rickenbacker would take another run at the “full body” idea with the short-lived F-body revival of 1967–68—a very different experiment, informed directly by what the original F-Series had taught them. We’ll cover those guitars separately, but they make far more sense when viewed as new take—not a resurrection—on the same core idea.

The shift away from tradition and toward identity is what ultimately made the British Invasion guitars possible, and later allowed the brand to resonate again during the college radio and 120 Minutes era. It was the moment Rickenbacker stopped trying to fit in and started learning how to stand apart.

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The 360 has the triangle inlays, the fancy binding, and of course it has the Rick-O-Sound (click to learn more) stereo wiring. If you want the full Rickenbacker experience, you’re gonna want the Rick-O-Sound—even though you’ll probably never use it. And if you want all that, well, you’re gonna need a 360. So let’s talk about them.

The 360’s story—along with the 330’s—begins in 1958 with the introduction of the brand new semi-hollowbody Capri line. And to tell the story of how we got from there to here we’ll actually be discussing four models that were all built on the same foundation: the two-pickup 360, the “360 with a vibrato” 365, the “360 with a third pickup” 370, and the “360 with a third pickup and a vibrato” 375. Apart from the number of pickups and the presence or absence of a vibrato, all four of these models are the same underneath.

And as we discuss changes, bear in mind that prior to the introduction of CNC manufacturing in 1995 these were largely handmade instruments, with tooling that wore down over time and was replaced with tooling that didn’t necessarily replicate exactly what it was replacing. The point being that body, neck, and headstock shapes all continuously vary slightly over time. We’re not going to try and capture that here—it would just be impossible. We’re going to focus instead on significant or easily identifiable changes. Make sense?

If you’ve already read our 330 timeline (click to read) you’re going to recognize a lot of this because let’s face it: from its launch in 1958 until 1964 the 360 was just a fancied up 330. And even after the round top “New Style” 360 launched in 1964 and the two body shapes diverged, the two models still used a lot of the same basic hardware and electronics. So apologies if a lot of this seems familiar. But I promise there are more than enough differences to make the read worth your while! And so with that in mind, let’s begin.

1958

The full size semi-hollowbody Capri models introduced in 1958—Capri being the name of F.C. Hall’s family cat—were the product of an evolution that traces all the way back to Rickenbacker’s first “modern” electric guitars, the 1954 Combo 600 and 800 (click to learn more).

Originally designed by industrial designer Hunt Lewis, the newly hired Roger Rossmeisl added his own flourishes to the original drawings by slightly reshaping the treble cutaway and adding a German carve (click to learn more) to the top. Then, in 1957, Rossmeisl significantly modified the bass cutaway to create the Combo 850.

Still tinkering, Rossmeisl then took this basic shape—which was a solidbody—and hollowed it out by carving it out from the back and then added a short scale neck to create the first true semi-hollowbody Rickenbacker, the “Polynesian” (click to learn more) prototype, so called in honor of the local band F.C. Hall loaned the guitar to for feedback.

Realizing the German carve would be difficult/expensive for large-scale production—remember, these were still largely hand-carved by Rossmeisl (and his assistant Semie Moseley, who would later add this design element to his own Mosrite guitars)—the top was flattened, and so was born the semi-hollowbody short scale Capri.

But we’re not done yet! Rossmeisl then built a handful of short scale Capris with a longer body—but still the short scale neck:

He then added a regular scale neck to this body:

The long body was then widened, and a “cat’s eye/slash” soundhole was added (one of the first long-body prototypes actually had a painted-on cat’s eye soundhole!). Et voila—the full size Capri had arrived.

The full-sized Capri line of semi-hollowbodied guitars debuted with a total of eight models split evenly between “deluxe” (click to learn more) 360 models and “standard” 330 models. The differences between the two were purely cosmetic—the 360 featured a double bound body with a bound neck and triangle inlays while the 330 had no binding and simple dot markers. But the underlying foundation was identical: a 2” thick double cutaway back-carved semi-hollow body with a slash soundhole, two or three toaster pickups, and a set 21-fret neck.

Several body materials/constructions were used before they standardized on a three-piece maple body. These early guitars can be found with bodies made of alder, birch, “butcher block” maple, mahogany, and two piece maple. Back construction began as birch plywood before standardizing on solid three-piece maple.

The necks began as solid maple with maple headstock wings—as the short scale Capris would remain—before landing on the now familiar three piece sandwich. However, these early necks featured shedua instead of today’s walnut for the center stripe and headstock wings, consistent with Rossmeisl’s pre-Rickenbacker and prototype multi-piece neck designs.

Both Kluson Deluxe and Grover Sta-Tite (click to learn more) tuners could be found on early Capris, although they would eventually standardize on the Klusons in 1959. The headstock also featured a gold back-painted truss rod cover.

While dual hairpin truss rods (click to learn more) would later become a Rickenbacker hallmark, the Capri models would all be equipped with a single hairpin rod.

If you look closely, the triangle inlays (click to learn more) on the early 1958 360s may look “extra pointy”. That’s because they are. Let’s compare an early 1958 365…

With a late 1958 375:

The Capri’s inlays were a polyester resin—the triangles were routed out, the sides of the fingerboard were dammed and the liquid resin was poured in and allowed to dry in place. On early 1958 Capris, the triangle was routed to a very sharp point, but by the end of the year the point was softened and eventually lost altogether.

Fingerboards were paduak—despite being very similar in appearance, Rickenbacker’s “trademark” bubinga would not make an appearance for several years. These early boards also did not feature Rickenbacker’s now characteristic finished fretboards.

The soon-to-be “signature” Rickenbacker cat’s eye/slash soundhole went through at least three iterations over the course of the year. Prototype and very early production models featured an extra-long soundhole of about 8 3/4” with a curved tail:

Version two would be shorter at 8 5/16” and without the curved tail:

The final version—still in use today—came in at 6 1/8”:

Very early non-vibrato guitars came equipped with a generic, off-the-shelf tailpiece. This would quickly be replaced with the now familiar trapeze tailpiece.

Vibrato-equipped 365s and 375s came with the extremely outdated Kauffman Vibrola (click to learn more)—which had first appeared in the 1930s.

Vibrato models came with roller saddles on a six-saddle adjustable bridge. Non-vibrato models featured the standard Rickenbacker six-saddle adjustable bridges found on all other Rickenbacker models.

You’ll have noticed that many of the Capris we’ve looked at up this point feature a single-level gold back-painted teardrop pickguard and a two control knob layout with one or two switches—often with seemingly different control locations on each example.

If you want to go down an inconclusive rabbit hole, try looking up what those early harnesses actually do! Suffice it to say that by the end of the year the guitar had received an upper guard for player comfort, and a more familiar four knob/one switch layout. We should also note that the earliest guitars had chrome metal lap steel knobs, but those transitioned fairly quickly to the brown Rogan “cooker” knobs.

The guitar above more or less represents the “final” configuration of the 1958 Capri, with its three piece maple top, short slash F-hole, three piece neck, larger inlays, and two-level pickguard with four Rogan knobs/one switch controls.

1959

At the beginning of 1959, tuners standardized to Kluson “single line” Deluxes with small hex bushings.

A subtle change occurred towards the middle of 1959. Up to this point, the edge of the pickguard on all guitars was flush with the pickups—as it remains on three pickup guitars today. Midway through the year, however, this changed on two pickup models: the upper pickguard was extended approximately half an inch between the pickups. This pickguard layout remains standard to this day.

A much more significant change occurred towards the end of the year: Rickenbacker transitioned from a nitrocellulose finish to a conversion varnish (click to learn more). With this change, fretboards gained their now-customary glossy finish.

Also towards the end of the year, the finicky Kauffman Vibrola on the 365 and 375 was replaced with the Accent vibrato (click to learn more), a design licensed from Paul D. Butts. The same design would be licensed a year or two later by Gibson and branded as the “Maestro Vibrola”. At launch the Accent wore a small rhomboid “Ac’cent by paul” plaque on the front.

That said, the Kauffman did not immediately disappear. It would continue to be used on some guitars into early 1960. Not only that, but the “long” Kauffman previously used on F-body guitars would begin appearing on Capri models during this period as well—possibly to use up leftover stock.

1959 also saw the introduction of Fireglow (with a “w”, at this point), the quintessential Rickenbacker finish.

1960

The 360 saw only one significant change in 1960, but it was a significant one indeed: the introduction of “Rick-O-Sound” stereo wiring.

Introduced in the middle of the year, it became standard on all 360 variants. The “lower” output jack was a standard mono jack while the “upper” output jack was stereo. An optional “Rick-O-Sound” box—a glorified stereo-to-mono splitter—plugged into this jack and provided two separate outputs, one for each pickup.

1961

Always a tinkerer, Roger Rossmeisl had one last major trick up his sleeve before his tenure at Rickenbacker came to an end. Midway through 1961 Rossmeisl took the existing Capri body and enlarged the horns, lowered and pinched the waist slightly, and reduced the body depth from 2” to 1 1/2” to create the “New Capri” 300 series guitars. And thus, with only minor changes since, the modern shape of the flat-top 360 and 330 was born.

All hardware and plastics from the “old” Capri carried over—gold back-painted pickguard and truss rod cover, trapeze or Accent by Paul tailpiece, brown Rogan knobs—with one notable addition: the mysterious fifth “blend knob” (click to learn more).

I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have tried and failed to come up with a clear, one sentence explanation of what that knob does. The best I’ve come up with is this: because the output between the neck and bridge pickup on guitars that featured the “vintage tone circuit” (click to learn more) was so different, the knob controls the volume of the neck pickup relative to the bridge pickup to allow a more precise fine-tuning of the blend.

The 1961 New Capris also gained a sparkly addition: the poured resin triangle inlays were replaced by crushed pearl triangle inlays.

This would be a one-year-only feature, as the poured resin inlays would reappear in 1962. And while crushed pearl would reappear in 1964, it’s generally believed that the 1961 inlays were made from a different material as the flakes appear larger on the 1961 guitars.

The New Capri would also see the 360 transition from a single hairpin truss rod to dual hairpins—a defining feature for Rickenbacker guitars and basses throughout their peak era and beyond.

Now a question that often gets asked is “at what point did the ‘New Capri’ stop being a ‘New Capri’”? That’s a great question. In fact, company literature never actually referred to them as “New Capris”—and indeed the Capri moniker was already gone on the 1960 price list—the “Capri” models were merely referred to as “310–375 Series, Thin Body.” Meaning that “New Capri” itself may well just be a collector’s term that’s been used so long we all just assume it’s legit.

The commonly accepted answer to the question—but by no means a definitive one—is “when the gold plastics go away.” That’s as good an answer as any—and about as authoritative.

1963

So by the “end of the New Capri?” definition we just established, late 1963 was the end of the New Capri. And this particular guitar sealed its fate:

That guitar marked the end of the gold plastics era. White plastics had begun appearing on other guitars in 1961, but by the end of 1963 the “New Capris” were the last gold holdouts. But from this point on all the 330 and 360 models would wear white plastics.

Along with the white plastics, black KK (Kurz Kasch) knobs would replace the brown Rogan cooker knobs.

Midway through the year, Van Ghent tuners (click to learn more) with pearloid buttons began appearing on most (but not all) deluxe models, including the 360. Despite their fancy buttons, the teardrop covers on the back concealed simple open gearing. They appear to have been chosen for their appearance rather than any meaningful improvement in performance.

Also in late 1963 the Accent Vibrato would lose the small “Ac’cent by paul” plaque.

But before all that happened, there was one very important 360 New Capri: the Suzi Arden 360/12 (click to learn more).

This was the very first Rickenbacker 12-string guitar, built in July of 1963. Shop manager Richard Burke designed the ingenious headstock—with its sideways tuners—to meet F.C. Hall’s request to keep it as short as possible.

The guitar was strung “normally” for a 12-string with the octave strings coming first, as opposed to what would later become Rickenbacker’s trademark “reverse” stringing. The standard adjustable six-saddle bridge would have two notches cut in each saddle to accommodate the extra strings. Apart from the accommodations for the extra strings, the rest of the guitar was a standard 360 New Capri (the “R” tailpiece in the picture above was a later modification; new it featured a trapeze tailpiece).

The second Rickenbacker 12-string, built in November, made the switch to white plastics and Rickenbacker reverse stringing. You already know where that one wound up. If not…scroll back up to the beginning of the year!

1964

As important as 1958 is to the 360 story, 1964 is the year the 360 as we know it today was truly born—in a case of spectacularly bad timing!

The first production batch of the new round-top 360 was built in August, 1964. You know what else happened that month? A Hard Day’s Night hit the theaters, with George Harrison playing the flat-top 1963 360/12OS he’d received earlier in the year—a guitar that had quite literally just been replaced and could no longer be purchased. And yet, somehow, the “New Style” 360 survived and thrived.

A quick terminology note: to distinguish between the older flat-top top and newer round top designs, you will usually see the older design referred to as OS or “Old Style”—even when discussing guitars produced before the round-top version appeared. While you will sometimes see the round-tops referred to as NS or “New Style”, the term is largely redundant and seldom used except when distinction between the two versions is required. We’ll be using it frequently here in that context.

Rossmeisl had left Rickenbacker for Fender in 1962, which made the new round-top 360 the first significant evolution of the design after his departure. So who was responsible?

As with almost all post-Rossmeisl 1960s design changes, the answer is shop manager Dick Burke—though some employees derided it at first for looking like a “toilet seat”! Burke was also responsible for the ingenious slotted headstock design (click to learn more) on the twelve-string variant.

The standard solid-body guitars had had their edges rounded over in the name of player comfort in 1961. Burke took that idea to its logical extreme—softening the horns and rounding over the entire top of the guitar. The result was a dramatically different feel—both visually and physically—despite the guitar remaining fundamentally the same underneath.

The biggest difference between Burke’s initial design and the finished product was the treble cutaway horn—slightly smaller than what production models would ultimately receive. There would also be a handful of similar prototypes influenced by the Rose Morris guitars dominating current production.

The back of the guitar got the fancy checkered binding that had first appeared on the deluxe F-bodied guitars in 1958. Well…eventually. Prototypes and the first production batch from August featured plain white binding, but subsequent guitars made the switch to the checkered binding we associate with vintage (click to learn more) 360s.

To make up for having lost its bound top, the New Style 360 got a new deluxe feature: Rickenbacker’s first production bound soundhole.

The New Style 360 also saw the return of crushed pearl triangle inlays. This feature would carry over to all deluxe models by the end of the year.

Two other new features—both of which would soon spread across the entire line—also debuted on the New Style 360. The first of these was the knobs.

The black KK knobs that had first appeared on the 360 just a year earlier were replaced with silver-topped knobs featuring an indicator dash on the top, and a dot on the skirt. These first knobs would not feature the now familiar Treble/Bass Tone/Volume labels.

The other new feature appeared with the 360/12—the second production Rickenbacker 12-string guitar behind the Rose Morris 1993—when it entered production in September: the now iconic “R” tailpiece.

This first iteration of the tailpiece was heavy, made of chrome-plated cast brass with the string slots on the back hand-cut with a hacksaw. They all had twelve slots cut—even when used on six-string guitars—so the factory could use the same part on any configuration.

Fun fact: all guitars from the first production batch of the six-string New Style 360 were equipped with the Accent vibrato, as the new tailpiece was not quite ready.

So while the 360 was completely new for 1964, there were a number of company-wide changes that year that impacted the model as well. One of these stemmed from a request Rose Morris had made: they asked for “MADE IN U.S.A.” to be added to the truss rod cover on guitars destined for the UK. Rather than carry two separate parts, Rickenbacker applied this change across the entire product line.

You’ll notice that this August 1964 example features the Van Ghent tuners that first appeared in 1963—and indeed most 1964 six-string production examples do. The twelve-string, however, used the Kluson Deluxes found on all other models, although those tuners themselves changed in 1964 from the “single line” logo on the back to the “double line”. The double line tuners also had round bushings as opposed to the hex bushings used on the single line versions.

Six-string guitar headstocks also slimmed down noticeably in 1964 across the line, losing well over a quarter-inch of width—most noticeable in the width of the walnut wings.

Finally, midway through the year the toaster pickup bobbins lost the injection molding “dimple marks” in the corners, becoming smooth all the way across the toaster slots.

It was also “around this time” that the fretboard material changed from paduak to bubinga. Not only was the transition of the Old Style 360 to the New Style now complete, but so too was the shift to what we now think of “vintage specifications”, a process that had begun with the 1961 New Capri redesign.

That this all happened in the shadow of A Hard Day’s Night—with the “wrong” guitar on screen and the “right” one just out of reach—only adds to the irony. The 360 that survived 1964 wasn’t the one audiences first fell in love with—but it was the one that would go on to define the brand for decades to come.

1965

Although sales of the New Style 360 were strong, demand from players who wanted a 360 that “looked like George Harrison’s” was high enough that Rickenbacker made the flat-top version available by custom order. Thus was born the “Old Style” or OS 360s—a flat-top version produced alongside the round-top rather than replacing it.

Apart from the double-bound flat-top shape, the OS models shared essentially all other parts and specifications with contemporary New Style 360s. Because of their relative rarity—and their close visual association with Harrison’s original guitar—mid 1960s 360/12OSs are widely regarded as among the most desirable and collectible Rickenbackers today.

Let’s return briefly to the Old Style/OS term itself—which we cover in depth here (click to learn more).

OS was an internal factory term, used in production records to differentiate between flat-top and round-top 360s, but was never an official model designation. Collectors later adopted the term to describe all 1960s flat-top 360 “New Capris”—including examples produced before the round-top New Style ever existed.

At some point—generally placed in the early 1970s transitional era (click to learn more)—that internal designation shifted to WB (with binding) or WBBS (with binding both sides). Collectors mirrored this change in their own shorthand, and today guitars from this earlier period with 21 frets are typically referred to as OS, while later 24-fret examples are grouped under the WB designation.

With that terminology clarified, the actual modifications to the 360 in 1965 were quite minor compared to the dramatic changes of 1964. While Van Ghent tuners would continue to appear sporadically into early 1966, by mid-1965 they had been replaced as the standard fitment on six-string 360s by double-line Kluson Deluxes.

Around July, the silver-top knobs—still featuring an indicator dash on the top and dot on the skirt—gained their now familiar “Treble/Bass” and “Volume/Tone” labeling.

There are two oddities worth noting from 1965. First, a small number of 365s were built with serial number stickers (click to learn more) applied beneath the clearcoat on the back of the headstock rather than using a stamped jack plate. The reason for this approach—and the exact production window in which it was used—remains unclear.

Secondly, on a handful of guitars built in January the checkered binding layer on the back was replaced with plain black binding. The general consensus among the experts is that the factory simply ran out of checkered binding and used whatever was handy until supplies could be replenished.

1966

In late 1966 the chrome-plated brass “R” tailpiece would be replaced by a chrome-plated zinc alloy version. The new tailpiece was slightly smaller, with the mounting screws spaced slightly closer, and it featured cast string-retainer slots instead of the brass version’s hand-cut slots. For the first time, separate six and twelve-string versions of the tailpiece were introduced.

Around September the final version of the silver-top knobs began appearing across the entire line, with indicator dots replacing the earlier dashes on the top. Guitars with dash-top or mismatched knobs continued to appear sporadically into 1967.

Around November/December the 360’s top changed from three pieces to two center-seamed pieces.

In December production began on a brand new model: the 6/12-string “convertible” 366/12 (click to learn more). The 336/12 and 456/12 would follow in early 1967.

When engaged, the comb you see below captures and pulls down the octave strings, muting them and “converting” the 12-string guitar to 6 strings.

On the semi-hollowbody 330 and 360 with their top-mounted pickups, the converter assembly had to be raised from the guitar face to reach the strings. A white plastic block—made of the same material as, and integrated into, the pickguard—was installed to meet this need. An extra internal bracing block was also added below this mechanism to reinforce the top.

A number of “Old Style” 366/12s were also produced over the model’s lifespan.

Although much can be said about the converter guitars, the concept ultimately had limited utility that did not last long in the marketplace. Production would end in 1968.

Here’s a fun fact: arguably the most famous 1960s round-top 360 is the 1966 370/12 played by The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn. Except it isn’t. McGuinn owned two Mapleglo 12-strings—a 1964 that was stolen and its 1966 replacement—and both were actually 360/12s with an added third pickup. On the first, the modification was done by McGuinn himself; the second was ordered that way from the factory. At the time no official 370/12 model was offered, and were it not for McGuinn there likely never would have been.

1967

Up until 1967, none of the guitars built for UK distributor Rose Morris were based on the New Style 360. That would change this year with the introduction of the model 3262 (factory designation 360S).

They never made it to Rose Morris, though. Originally intended to be based on the new 366/12 converter guitar—but with the Rose-Morris f-hole—relations with Rose Morris had deteriorated to the point where all outstanding orders were cancelled shortly after production began. The handful that had been begun received a…unique modification.

The 12-string headstock routs were covered and filled with a black plastic piece, and the guitars were finished as 6-string models. These guitars ultimately ended up being shipped to Italian distributor Saporetti & Cappelli.

1968

Around April, the MADE IN U.S.A. imprint on the back-painted plexi truss rod cover began shifting from parallel to perpendicular to the Rickenbacker logo by the nut. Higher volume models—including the 360, 360/12, the 365, and the 366/12 (but not the 370 or 375) would also have their model number printed above the MADE IN U.S.A. marking.

At around the same time the nut would change from a black phenolic material to white.

The 336/12’s production would end in September, bringing the 6/12 converter experiment to a close.

1969

Two product line-wide changes impacted the 360 in 1969. While Accent-vibrato-equipped 330 and 360s far outnumbered their non-vibrato counterparts at launch, the ratio shifted steadily until 1967 when vibrato-equipped guitars became the minority.

This trend accelerated in 1968, and in 1969 regular production of all Accent equipped guitars—including the 365 and 375—came to an end. Whether this marked the expiration of the Accent vibrato’s license or simply reflected declining demand for an aging design is unclear. While the 375 would remain on the price list through 1973 and the 365 would last through 1977(!), the “-5” model vibrato era had effectively come to an end.

Secondly, the “model number” truss rod covers introduced in 1968 proved to be quite short-lived, disappearing from all 360s by early 1969.

1970

The next few years would prove to be a particularly turbulent period for both Rickenbacker in general and the 360 in particular. We’ll therefore need to differentiate between 6-string, 12-string, and Old Style instruments separately, as each followed its own timeline.

So why all the changes? Well, Rickenbacker guitar demand had begun dropping in 1967, and by 1969 it had fallen off a cliff. From a mid-1960s peak of over 100 employees the factory workforce had shrunk to just eight by 1970. Were it not for 4001 demand taking off in 1972–73, Rickenbacker’s survival as a company would have been very much in doubt.

Facing this collapse in demand, Rickenbacker embarked on a multi-year effort to modernize its flagship 360 in hopes of regaining market share. For the six-string model, that effort began in earnest in April of 1970.

Before diving into the details, a quick caveat: many 360s from this era exhibit “mismatched” features. The dates discussed here reflect the first appearances and best estimates as to when those features became standard—but that doesn’t mean they were exclusive. Exceptions absolutely exist.

The first and most obvious change was the neck, which sprouted three additional frets, increasing the count from 21 to 24. As a result, the neck pickup moved closer to the bridge, and the pickguard was reshaped and slightly reduced in size to both accommodate the new pickup spacing while maintaining its relative position. This subtly increased the curvature on the upper guard.

The only one of the new frets to gain a marker was the twenty-fourth—but it can hardly be called a triangle.

Another change introduced along with the new neck falls into the category of details that are easy to miss—until you see them, and then you can’t unsee them. Look closely at the rounding/beveling of the treble-side horn on the 21-fret 1969 360 below:

Now compare that to a 24-fret 1970 360:

The later guitar’s round-over is noticeably smaller and more abrupt. Because the longer neck and tenon required internal changes to the body, entirely new body tooling was introduced—and it differed from the earlier pattern. This detail would persist for quite some time.

April also brought a major electronics change: the toaster pickups were replaced with first-gen Higains (click to learn more), designed to deliver a heavier sound more in line with contemporary tastes.

First-gen Higains had debuted on the 381 (click to learn more) in 1969 and began replacing the toaster pickup across the line in 1970. Unlike the toaster’s magnetic polepieces, the Higain used non-magnetic polepieces made of threaded stock that rested on a bar magnet at the bottom of the pickup. The bobbins themselves were made of clear or green PCB material and painted black.

All of those changes arrived in April. The next followed in June when the 360 received a bound headstock for a touch of visual flair.

If the 24-fret neck and Higain pickups were an attempt to appeal to the demands of the modern player, the bound headstock was simply a style upgrade.

The final new feature appeared in December, and it was a doozy: slanted frets (click to learn more).

Listed on the 1971 price list as a $100 option on “most Spanish guitars”, the feature was in practice exclusive to the 360.

Differences between the 360SF (for “Slanted Frets”) and the standard model were minimal. The neck was obviously different, but while the pickups and bridge were slanted to match the frets’ angle, they were otherwise stock units. A reshaped truss rod was produced to fit the angled nut.

Unlike the standard model, the slanted fret variant did not have a position marker at the twenty-fourth fret. And the nut received a “PAT PEND” imprint as a patent was indeed filed to cover the design.

By contrast, the 12-string and Old Style 360s saw no significant changes in 1970—but this year appears to mark the end of OS production. While it is possible a small number were built in 1971-72, the next known double bound 360s—produced in 1974—feature modern specifications and are designated WB rather than OS.

1971

In 1971 the model number returned to the truss rod cover on higher volume models—including the 360. This feature made it to the 360 in May, but would not appear on the 360/12, 370, or 370/12.

In September two related changes followed—one driven directly by the other. The aging Kluson Deluxe tuners were replaced by Grover Rotomatics (click here to learn more). Unfortunately, the Grovers’ larger footprint would not fit the existing headstock shape. The solution was the introduction of the wider Gumby headstock (click here to learn more).

The other end of the neck changed as well. The twenty-fourth fret marker was eliminated, and for the first time in the model’s history the end of the fretboard itself was bound—although not on the slanted fret version.

Once again, the 12-string 360 remained unchanged, retaining its 21-fret necks and toaster pickups, just as before. That said, there was at least one 360/12 built in 1971 with 24 slanted frets, Higains, and a bound headstock.

This may be the only 360/12SF built.

1972

1972 was a very low production year for the 360. While we see the last known appearance of some features during the year—most notably bound headstocks and slanted frets—no major changes to the model’s specifications were introduced.

Although the final 360SFs were built in 1972, the slanted fret option would remain on the price list until 1984.

On the oddities front, in September a small number of 360/12s were built with Rose Morris f-holes—likely using leftover bodies from the cancelled 1967 3262 order.

And maintaining the pattern of the last few years, the 360/12 saw no significant specification changes.

1973

1973 marked the culmination of the 360’s transition from vintage to modern specifications—a process that had begun in 1970 and now included the 12-string, which had remained largely unchanged up to this point.

The first 360 production batch of the year occurred in May and introduced a number of cost- and production-driven changes right off the bat. First among them, the 6-string guitars lost their decorative yet labor-intensive headstock binding.

At the same time the construction of the three-piece neck was revised. As a cost-saving measure, the walnut center stripe was reduced in width from 5/8” to 5/16”, and the material was changed to less expensive shedua—the same wood used as the center stripe on the 4001.

Also in that first production batch, the Higain pickups were updated. The magnet type was changed, the coils were wound slightly hotter, and the threaded stock polepieces were replaced by button-top drive screws which were painted black along with the bobbin. The button-top Higain had arrived.

The 360/12’s first change also came in May, though it was more modest. Like its 6-string counterpart, it would be fitted with the new button-top Higains, bringing the toaster era for the 360 family to an end.

The shell base material used for Rickenbacker’s crushed pearl inlays was sourced from an island near Okinawa. Around 1972-73, the waters surrounding the island were converted to a protected marine reserve, cutting off Rickenbacker’s supply and forcing the company to find a new inlay solution.

Around August the 6-string guitar transitioned to a poured pearlescent resin, a less costly approach similar in concept to the method used before crushed pearl was adopted. Rather than routing the triangles all the way across the fretboard, however, the new inlays were inset. This approach both improved fingerboard structural integrity and simplified production by eliminating the need to manually dam the fingerboard edges before pouring the liquid resin.

You’ll also notice in the photo above that at roughly the same time the 360 again lost the printed model number on its headstock, and the nut reverted to a black phenolic material.

In October both the six- and twelve-string guitars lost the two-ply checkered back binding, which was replaced by single-ply white binding.

At this point, the 6-string 360 had completed its transition, with all vintage specifications replaced by modern ones—simpler, faster, and easier to produce at scale. The 360/12 would end the year with its 21-fret neck and crushed pearl triangle inlays intact, though neither would carry over into 1974.

1974

After everything that happened in 1973, 1974 feels anticlimactic—but there was still one final change to come. The 360/12 finally transitioned to a 24-fret neck—with the narrow center stripe and the poured resin triangle inlays—bringing the six- and twelve-string specifications back into sync for the first time since 1969.

But the flat-top 360 would also return in 1974—now designated the 360WB instead of the 360OS.

Apart from the double-bound flat-top body, all other specs—pickups, neck, frets, inlays—were identical to the round-top version—including the Gumby headstock. Like the OS 360s, WB guitars were not listed in the catalog and were only available by special order.

1976

Starting in late 1975, the old style backpainted plexi truss rod cover was replaced across the line by an injection-molded cover with a raised Rickenbacker logo. The logo would be painted—white on black covers, and black on white covers—and MADE IN U.S.A. was stamped at the bottom near the nut. Higher volume guitars, like the 360, would also have their model number stamped below the MADE IN U.S.A. imprint.

This new truss rod cover appeared on 6-string 360s in March 1976. 12-string guitars, however, received a “generic” cover with no model number imprint.

This would prove to be the only change of note to the 360 for the next several years.

1980

For the first time, the 370/12 was officially added to the price list in 1980—on a mid-year “additions” list. No longer would players need to custom order a 360/12 with an added pickup, as Roger McGuinn had first done in 1966.

We talk often about how dire things were for Rickenbacker guitars throughout much of the 1970s, but less often about what reversed that decline in the early 1980s. Much of the credit goes to three guitarists who introduced Rickenbackers to a new generation: The Jam’s Paul Weller, The Smiths’ Johnny Marr, and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck.

While Weller and Marr favored 330s, Buck’s Jetglo 360—built in 1980 (though some sources say 1981)—became his primary guitar in R.E.M.’s early years and remains so to this day. Its sound helped define jangle-pop and is arguably one of the most famous New Style 360s, playing a significant role in Rickenbacker’s early-80s guitar renaissance.

1981

When it comes to Rickenbackers, one of the most often cited examples of the Mandela Effect concerns soundhole binding on WB 360s. Many players swear that this feature first appeared when the WB flat-top supplanted the OS in 1974. It didn’t. Soundhole binding would not appear on WB 360s until December 1981.

From that point on, bound soundholes became standard on WB guitars—although exceptions do exist.

A new option also appeared on the 1981 price list: checkered binding, priced at $75 per side.

The most well-known guitar so equipped is Carla Olsen’s Azureglo 620, but a handful of 360WBs with checkered binding were produced as well. The option would remain on the price list through 1984, but none with a production date later than January 1982 have been documented.

1982

Rickenbacker officially entered the reissue game in 1982 with the launch of the B-Series guitars (click to learn more). On paper, the three guitars in the series—the 320B, 4003SB, and 360/12BWB—were inspired by guitars played by the Beatles.

In practice, however, they were largely stock period instruments with some cosmetic touches added—along with genuinely significant “new old” feature.

The 360/12BWB—nominally inspired by George Harrison’s 1963 360/12OS—illustrates how limited the “reissue” effort was. A standard 360/12WB, complete with its historically inaccurate 24-fret neck and bound soundhole, received a back-painted plexiglass truss rod cover—which, to be fair, marked the first appearance of this feature on any Rickenbacker guitar since 1975. From a cosmetic standpoint that was the extent of the changes

The bigger story of the B-Series, however, lay in their pickups: the first appearance of toasters since 1974. Well…kind of.

It’s funny to think about today, but the term “toaster” had not entered the official Rickenbacker lexicon when the B-Series guitars launched, so period literature referred to them as “vintage chrome bar” pickups.

Referred to today by collectors as “12k” or “hot” toasters, they mostly looked the part—though you can easily spot them by the corner screws: Phillips head on this version versus flathead on the originals. But where they really differed from vintage spec was the output: wound much hotter at roughly 12k ohms versus the originals’ 7.4k—hotter even than period Higains.

Still, these pickups were a nod to Rickenbacker’s golden era, and they would go on to be used on all vintage and reissue models until 1999.

1983

Things had not been going well for Kluson since the late 1960s. Competitors like Grover, Schaller, and Gotoh continued developing and improving their products, while Kluson did not. By the early 1980s Rickenbacker was one of Kluson’s largest remaining customers. So when John Kluson died in late 1981 and no buyer expressed interest in the company, the family made the decision to close its doors.

Which left Rickenbacker in a bit of a bind as the Kluson Deluxe was still their primary guitar tuner—including its fitment on the 360/12.

At the time, Grover made a guitar tuner of similar construction to the infamous “wavy Grover” bass tuner with a footprint not dissimilar to the Kluson—and similar “bean” tuner buttons. All guitars that had previously featured Klusons would have their tuners replaced with these Grover “Slimline” tuners—except the 360/12.

Instead of the Slimlines, the 360/12 would finally gain the same Grover Rotomatics the 6-string 360 had been equipped with since 1971—albeit with smaller “bean” buttons, as the 6-string’s kidney buttons were simply too large for the 12-string’s complicated headstock. Initially the tuners featured “star back” housings…

..but by August this would change to the more familiar smooth “dome back” Rotomatics.

Towards the end of the F.C. Hall era, a number of custom order/one-off guitars were produced. One of the most unusual was a 1983 360/12WB New Style (click to learn more)—a double bound, flat-top 360 paired with the rounder horns of the New Style body. Only one such guitar is known to exist.

1984

1984 was a momentous year for Rickenbacker. John Hall purchased the company from his father, F.C. Hall, bringing Rickenbacker’s most storied era to a close while laying the groundwork for a revitalization of the brand.

The first year under the new leadership proved to be one of the most significant in company history. No fewer than five major changes (and possibly six) impacted the entire Rickenbacker guitar line, and the 360 was very much along for the ride.

First came an updated bridge design, overseen by Forrest White during his second stint with Rickenbacker. The locking nuts that had held the saddle adjustment screws in place since the bridge’s 1950 debut were replaced with a spring behind each saddle, achieving the same result. At the same time, the bridge was moved slightly rearward to address the intonation issues that had plagued the 360 since the first Capris launched in 1958. This slimmer bridge would become the standard across the line in January 1985.

Second, the internal structure of the semi-hollow body guitars was updated: the bracing shifted from traditional x-bracing (click to learn more) to a more modern integrated bracing design, improving structural rigidity while also streamlining production.

Third, beginning in late 1984/early 1985, the 360—like all Rickenbacker guitars—transitioned from the traditional double hairpin truss rods (click to learn more) to a pair of conventional single-action truss rods. Neck construction was adjusted slightly to accommodate the change—but only internally, within the truss rod channel. You can spot the difference without removing the truss rod cover: the new system features two acorn nuts visible at the end of the fretboard.

In early 1984, Grover discontinued the Slimline tuners currently in use on most guitars other than the 360. While Rickenbacker worked on a permanent replacement, the 360’s Grover Rotomatics were pressed into service. But this use re-emphasized the same problem that had led to the 1971 introduction of the Gumby headstock: the tuners didn’t really fit.

Unfortunately, the Schaller M6 mini tuners (click to learn more) selected as the permanent solution had bushings just as large as the Rotomatics—so they didn’t fit either. This issue gave rise to the fourth major change: the paddle headstock.

The narrow “vintage” headstock in use on all 6-string guitars apart from the 360—which still sported the Gumby headstock—was widened by roughly half an inch to provide the extra room the Schaller bushings required. The new headstock began phasing in across the line in the back half of the year, including on the 360.

Ironically, the paddle headstock looked more like Mr. Gumby himself than the “Gumby headstock” it replaced. The 360 would receive the paddle in December—bringing it back into sync with the rest of the line for the first time since 1971—although it was still equipped with Grover Rotomatics.

The fifth significant change of the year is invisible unless you open the guitar and look at the wiring harness—but immediately obvious once you plug the guitar in. At some point during the year the vintage tone circuit (click to learn more), a high pass filter capacitor that had been standard on all Rickenbacker guitars and basses since the 1950s, was removed. This change gave the bridge pickup higher output with more noticeable bottom end.

Finally—and do not quote me on this—there is the possible sixth major change of 1984. This is likely the year the neck radius changed from the vintage 7.25” to a flatter 10” radius. We know that early 80s guitars retain the old 7.25” radius, and I own a 1986 guitar with a confirmed 10” radius. Given the sheer number of other major changes taking place in 1984, it’s reasonable to suspect that the neck radius change occurred during this same period—even if firm documentation remains elusive.

In October, the 370 and 370/12 would move off the main price list and onto a new Custom Order Price List. The WB option for all four 360 variants also appeared on this list, marking their first official appearance on any price list.

The 360/12BWB—which Hall famously hated—was quietly discontinued at the end of the year. Behind the scenes, a much improved replacement was already in the works, but while a few test mules (click to learn more) from late 1984 have surfaced in the years since, we wouldn’t see the finished product until 1985.

Taken together, the changes of 1984 mark the most profound transformation of the Rickenbacker guitar line since 1973. Under John Hall’s new leadership, long-standing design compromises were addressed, production was modernized, and several features that had defined Rickenbackers since the 1950s quietly disappeared. In many ways the year neatly sums up John Hall’s aspirations for the company: to modernize both the instruments and the manufacturing process in order to meet the needs of contemporary players and improved production efficiency—while still respecting the brand’s heritage and DNA.

1985

After the dramatic changes of 1984, 1985 may seem relatively quiet, but there was a very important addition to the 360 family this year: the 360/12V64.

Modeled after George Harrison’s 1963 360/12OS, this was Rickenbacker’s first serious attempt at a vintage reissue model—as opposed to the somewhat half-hearted 360/12BWB it replaced—and it got a lot right.

Both the body and neck were completely new, with correct period details like 21 frets, square neck heel profile, wider center neck stripe, and full-width poured resin triangle inlays.

The hardware mostly looked the part too, with the hot toaster pickups that had debuted on the B-Series guitars, a trapeze tailpiece, black vintage “KK” knobs, back-painted plexi truss rod cover, and a notable effort to replicate a vintage Fireglo spray pattern.

It wasn’t perfect—the body had modern integrated bracing rather than the original’s x-bracing, the bridge was a stock modern unit, and the tuners were Schaller vintage-style machines that were close to the old Kluson design but not exact replicas.

Still, it was a significant improvement over the B-Series it replaced, and the market responded very positively. It would sell steadily until it was replaced by an ever more historically accurate successor: the 360/12C63.

In January, Schaller M6 Mini tuners replaced Grover Rotomatics on the 360—with one exception that we’ll get to in a minute.

Beginning in late 1984, all models had begun losing the model number stamp on their truss rod covers. You will find 360s produced into the later part of 1985 both with and without the model number stamp, but by the end of the year it was gone for good. The BH/BT guitars we are about to discuss never carried a model number stamp.

Mid-1985 would see a distinct new look for Rickenbacker with the beginning of the BH/BT (black hardware/black trim) era (click to learn more). Midnight Blue, Red, White, Silver, and Mapleglo guitars would come equipped as standard with black finished tuners, pickup covers, bridge covers (but not the bridge itself), strap pins, serial number plates, and black plastic binding, pickguards, and truss rod covers.

While Red, White, Midnight Blue, and Silver guitars came standard with BH/BT, during the BH/BT era—which ran from 1985 to roughly 1998—any color guitar could be custom ordered with black hardware and trim.

Similarly, guitars that came standard with BH/BT could be custom ordered with chrome hardware and white plastics. Such instruments are referred to today as “WT” (for white trim) guitars.

WB guitars could also be ordered with black hardware and black trim, giving them the unwieldy designation of 360WB BH/BT.

At the time Schaller became Rickenbacker’s primary tuner supplier in early 1985, they did not yet offer an M6 Mini tuner in a black finish. As a result, BH/BT guitars were fitted with black Grover Rotomatics until Schaller introduced black M6 Minis in early 1986, making the BH/BT model the last Grover holdouts at Rickenbacker.

While the data is purely circumstantial, it does appear that the black powder-coating process used on the “R” tailpieces may have had some impact on the structural integrity of the tailpiece, as black tailpieces seem to be more prone to breakage than their chrome-plated counterparts.

1986

Two new options were added to the price list in 1986: the stock Higain pickups could be replaced on any guitar with toasters (referred to here as “Vintage Bar pickups”) and the R tailpiece could be replaced by an Accent Vibrato (referred to here as “Vintage RIC Vibrato”).

Guitars so equipped are referred to today as “VP” (vintage pickup) or “VB” (vibrato)—language that was formally added to the price list in 1996. An Accent equipped 360 is therefore a 360VB, not a “335”.

Unlike in their original production run, the Accent option did not include a roller bridge—the standard six-saddle adjustable bridge was left unchanged on guitars ordered with the Accent option.

Guitars with the factory VP option always have the pickups mounted on the standard Higain foam pad. Guitars with toasters mounted on vintage style grommets represent aftermarket modifications, not a factory configuration.

This detail is somewhat difficult to pin down but “early 1986” seems the most likely, although it could be “late 1985”. Since their introduction in 1973, the button top Higain pickup bobbins had been made of a greenish PCB material which—along with the button-tops’ drive-screw polepieces—were then painted black.

Sometime around 1986, however, the bobbin material was changed to a black PCB material, eliminating the need for paint altogether.

1987

A “third pickup” option was added to the price list in 1987. When selected on the 360, the factory officially designated the finished guitar a 370—despite the “370” not currently appearing on the “custom order pricelist”.

1988

The second entry in the Signature Limited Edition (click to learn more) series of guitars was also the first based on the New Style 360. Announced in late 1987, with production beginning in January 1988, the 370/12RM attempted to faithfully recreate both the look and sound of Roger McGuinn’s 1966 360/12-with-an-extra pickup.

Available in Fireglo, Jetglo, and Mapleglo—with Mapleglo sales outnumbering the other two combined by nearly two to one—the 370/12RM was more than a cosmetic homage to McGuinn’s heavily modified original.

First, the 370/12RM was the first New Style 360 to feature a 21-fret neck since 24 frets became the standard in 1973. This required new body tooling, but the 360/12V64’s neck was pressed into service—resulting in an “incorrect” square neck heel. Checkered binding was also used on the back for the first time since 1973.

Next, the 370/12RM was fitted with a 12-saddle adjustable bridge, making it the first Rickenbacker 12-string ever so equipped.

But the 370/12’s biggest party trick was its electronics. A custom-built onboard compressor was installed to replicate the sound McGuinn achieved on early Byrds records through heavy studio compression.

The guitar could also be ordered without the onboard compressor, but the take rate was significantly higher for the compressor-equipped version. The two versions are easy to distinguish—the standard unit used a conventional Rickenbacker five knob control layout while the compressor-equipped version featured five full-sized knobs in an offset layout.

A total of 1000 guitars were produced between 1988 and 1991.

1991

1991 saw the addition of a 6-string counterpart to the 360/12V64: the 360V64. The body and hardware were the same as those used on the 360/12V64, with a neck borrowed from the Rose-Morris 1997 reissue, which had first appeared in 1987 and served as the foundation for the Pete Townshend Signature Limited Edition 1998PT.

The 360V64 would sell alongside the 360/12V64 until their discontinuation in 2001.

A minor but notable change to all Higain equipped guitars—including the 360—occurred around August 1991. A new dual-use pickup bobbin was introduced that could be used for both Higain and toaster pickups, bringing an end to the “fiberboard” button-top Higain era.

1995

Around July, all non-vintage/reissue guitars—including the 360–moved away from the vintage reeded edge strap button that had been used since the late 1950s. It was replaced with a Schaller-style strap lock button, albeit still attached to the Rickenbacker-style bolt rather than a standard wood screw.

While the supplier has changed over the years, the basic design remains in use to this day. The reeded bolt is still used on vintage/reissue guitars, as well as for the mute adjustment screw on bass bridges.

Rickenbacker began moving to CNC manufacturing in early 1995. Prior to CNC machining, bodies and necks were hand cut using templates that wore over time, leading to slight variations from guitar to guitar and year to year as those templates wore and were replaced. Now the same shape would be cut every time.

The 360 would make the transition to CNC in October.

1996

October 1996 saw a step back towards vintage specifications. The three-piece neck’s center walnut “stripe” was widened from 5/16” to 5/8”—returning it to its pre-1973 dimensions.

1999

In mid 1999 Rickenbacker replaced the “hot/12k” toaster pickups with much more historically accurate “scatterwound” toasters, wound to approximately 7.5k ohms, in line with vintage toasters.

These pickups can be easily identified by the corner screws, which changed to slotted heads—matching vintage original toasters. These began appearing on the 360V64 and 360/12V64 in December.

2000

The year 2000 saw the introduction of the second New Style 360 Signature Limited Edition model: the Carl Wilson 360CW and 360/12CW.

Available in six and twelve string versions in both Fireglo and Jetglo, the 360CW was inspired by the 1965 360 played by Wilson in The Beach Boys during the mid 1960s.

One of the most faithful vintage-inspired models to date, the 360CW’s highlights included a 21-fret neck, the newly launched scatterwound toasters, and a flamed maple top approximately 1/8” thinner than current production guitars—much closer to 1960s specifications.

Sadly, the model was replaced posthumously—Wilson had passed away in 1998. The guitar that ultimately reached production was approved by his estate, but was not the model he and John Hall had been developing prior to his death. That unrealized design was based on a 200-Series guitar (click to learn more).

A total of 500 guitars were produced between 2000 and 2001.

2001

While sales of both the 325V63 and 360/12V64 reissue models remained strong, both were discontinued in 2001 in anticipation of the forthcoming C-series replacements. The last 360V64s were produced in August 2001, and the last 360/12V64s in November.

2003

Here’s another minor Higain tweak. In March 2003, shortly after “dimples” (to match the molding marks found on 63 and earlier toasters) were added to the corners of the slots on toaster bobbins to help make the new C-series guitars appear more authentic, Higain pickups got the same treatment. These pickups first began appearing on the 360 mid-year.

2005

As much of an improvement over the 360/12BWB as the 360/12V64 had been, it still wasn’t the exact recreation John Hall ultimately wanted to build. In 2005, Rickenbacker finally delivered that guitar with the 360/12C63.

Work had begun several years earlier to ensure every detail was as faithful as possible. An entirely new body was created, with a more pinched waist and a properly x-braced top—although, in a nod to production efficiency, the x-braces were an integral part of the top rather than individually glued into place

Production was restarted on the vintage “locknut” bridge specifically for this model. The headstock and the truss rod cover were reshaped to match the original. Even the MADE IN U.S.A. print on the truss rod cover was removed in the name of historical accuracy.

In the end, the 360/12C63 accomplished exactly what it set out to do: it delivered the most faithful recreation of George Harrison’s 1963 Rickenbacker 360/12OS the company had ever produced, without sacrificing modern consistency or reliability. It remains in production effectively unchanged to this day.

As elegant a design as the Rickenbacker 12-string headstock is, stringing the sideways tuners has always been a challenge. To address this long-standing player complaint, Rickenbacker began routing the slots for the sideways tuners all the way through the headstock for non-vintage models in 2005.

The change was somewhat divisive—while most praised the improved ease of stringing, many objected to the cosmetic impact, with plenty of players holding both opinions at the same time. The revised headstock first appeared on the 360/12 in June 2005.

2006

In 2006, the Higain pickup gained adjustable button top polepieces for the first time in its history. These updated pickups would first appear on the 330 in April 2006, and this version of the Higain remains in use today, making it the longest-running version of the Higain.

Fun fact: the polepieces can be removed, threaded in from the back, and then installed in a toaster cover. No one will ever know.

2007

In April 2007, there was yet another step back toward vintage specifications. The paddle headstock shrank back to its pre-paddle dimensions—why the Schaller tuners suddenly “worked” on the smaller size headstock remains something of a mystery.

2008

February 2008 saw the return of full-width triangle inlays—and they were neither poured acrylic nor crushed pearl, as had been used in the past. Instead, an acrylic sheet material—similar to the type found on a Gibson Les Paul Standard—was laser cut to shape, and glued in place. This method and material remain in use today.

At the end of 2007 the 6-string 370 was removed from the price list for good. A sizable number were nevertheless produced in 2008 to clear existing orders—including Color of the Year (click to learn more) examples in Blueburst and Amber Fireglo.

While the 370/12 would remain in production for several more years, any 6-string 370 encountered after this point—apart from a small 2018 special run in Satin Autumnglo—has likely had the middle pickup added aftermarket as Rickenbacker last offered the official “add a third pickup” option in 1991.

2009

While a six-string version of the 360/12V64 became a standard offering during the model’s run, the same was not true of the 360/12C63. That said, two special runs of a six-string 360C63 have been produced over the years.

The first took place in 2009 for the Japanese market, commemorating the 60th anniversary of Rickenbacker’s Japanese distributor. A total of 60 guitars were produced—39 in Fireglo and 21 in Jetglo. Most specifications were identical to the 12-string version, with a few notable exceptions.

First, the guitar came with an “R” tailpiece instead of a trapeze. While the neck itself was obviously a six-string neck, this also meant that there was no need to reshape the truss rod cover. And finally, the tuners were—for some reason—Grover Sta-Tite copies instead of the the standard Kluson Deluxe copies.

2011

There is much debate (and misinformation) about the wood Rickenbacker has used for its fingerboards. While the company has always used the generic “rosewood” terminology, the specific genus and species used has changed over time. Consequently, “bubinga” or “African rosewood” are the terms most commonly used to describe the fairly evenly colored, tightly grained, fairly porous and slightly reddish boards historically used.

In late 2011 that changed to chechen, a Caribbean rosewood. Chechen is browner, shows more color variation, and features a more figured and less porous grain—meaning there is much less white grain fill used on the boards. That grain fill had become in turn a defining part of the Rickenbacker board “look” in many players’ eyes

2012

A very subtle change was made to the MADE IN U.S.A. font on all raised letter truss rod covers. The new font is a little squarer and more compact.

2014

What if a 360, but walnut? That question was answered in 2014 with the launch of the 360W and the 360/12W.

Identical to the standard 360 in all respects except woods and finish, the new 360W and 360/12W featured an oil-rubbed walnut body and maple fingerboard.

In April a special run of 50 six-string 360C63s were produced for U.S. retailer Guitar Center. Apart from the six-string neck, all specifications were standard 360/12C63. No six-string 360C63s have been produced since—although the C63 body has been used for multiple special runs featuring unique color and binding combinations.

2017

At the end of 2016 the three-pickup 370 model officially came to an end when the 12-string 370/12 was removed from the price list for good. A small number were nevertheless completed in 2017 to clear existing orders, but any three-pickup 360 bearing a later production date has probably had its third pickup added after the fact.

2020

Whether it was a conscious decision or a COVID supply chain issue that just became permanent, the silver topped knobs that had been standard on all core Rickenbacker models since 1965 began phasing out across the entire line. By August, black “vintage” knobs became standard on the 360.

2021

In the late 2010s/early 2020s, John Hall began stepping away from Rickenbacker’s day-to-day management, leaving the reins increasingly in his son Ben Hall’s hands. As Ben grew more comfortable in the role, he began trying to put his own stamp on the brand.

If we can assign any theme to his approach, it would be “give the people what they want”. Sometimes it’s worked—and sometimes…the loudest voices haven’t been truly representative.

Case in point: in July 2021 fingerboards on all core instruments—including the 360—went from being finished to unfinished. This move would prove to be quite divisive, and in the end it didn’t last long.

2022

In September Rickenbacker quietly began finishing fingerboards once again, bringing a brief and unsuccessful experiment to an end. The 360 was among the first models to revert to the traditional finished board.

2023

Ben’s next significant move would prove far more popular. In January 2023 Rickenbacker introduced one of its most significant changes in years: a return to the vintage-spec 21-fret neck.

They clearly used existing “reissue” tooling, as evidenced by the square neck heel. And like the reissue guitars, the neck was not bound at the bottom, as it had been since the 24-fret neck was introduced.

One “once you see it you can’t unsee it” detail of this new 21-fret version is the teardrop pickguard: the outer edge in the upper guard area is noticeably straighter and less rounded than older 21-fret guitars’ pickguards. Why? Who knows.

And finally, early in the year the primary tuner supplier shifted from Schaller to Gotoh. The new tuners were cosmetically identical to the Schaller M6 minis they replaced, apart from a new “R” logo on the back. The new tuners began appearing on the 360 in April.

2024

At the beginning of the year, the twin single-action truss rods for all guitars apart from the 360/12C63 were replaced by a single, dual-action truss rod.

The change can be identified without removing the truss rod cover by looking at the end of the fingerboard where, for the first time in the 360’s history, no truss rod channel is visible.

Technically speaking, a dual-action rod is far superior to a single-action, so from a pure functionality standpoint this was an upgrade. The change did however bring to an end one of Rickenbacker’s most defining—and longest-lasting—features: the dual truss rod system.

Looking back across more than six decades of production, the story of the Rickenbacker 360 is not one of sudden reinvention, but of constant negotiation—between tradition and modernization, player expectations and production realities, mythology and practicality.

From its origins as a deluxe Capri to its transformation into the definitive “New Style” Rickenbacker, the 360 evolved less through clean generational breaks than through overlapping eras. Vintage features lingered well into the modern age, while forward-looking changes often arrived years before the market fully understood them. The result is a model whose history resists simple categorization—and rewards close inspection.

At various points, the 360 was asked to be many things at once: a flagship, a testbed, a cost-saving measure, a nostalgia piece, and a modern working musician’s instrument. Sometimes those goals conflicted. Sometimes they aligned. When they did—as with the 360/12C63 or the return to 21 frets in the 2020s—the results were among the most successful instruments Rickenbacker has ever produced.

What ultimately sets the 360 apart is not that it remained unchanged, but that it never lost its identity—even as bracing systems, neck profiles, electronics, and production methods came and went. The guitar players recognize today is the product of decades of incremental decisions, compromises, reversals, and refinements, each leaving its mark.

In that sense, the 360 is not just a model—it is a record of how Rickenbacker itself has navigated the balance between heritage and progress. And as long as that tension remains, the 360’s story is unlikely to be finished.

Now I tried to be as complete and correct as possible, but I am sure I missed something or got something wrong. These timelines are always a work in progress—drop your corrections in the comments and I’ll fix them.

The idea he liked—Beatles reissue guitars—but the execution? Not so much. He hated them so much that killing them was one of his first official acts upon purchasing Rickenbacker from his father in 1984.

And to be fair, there wasn’t much effort put towards authenticity with the B-Series models—the 320B, 4003SB, and 360/12BWB. Stock period guitars got some tweaked plastics and new “toaster” pickups that looked the part but didn’t sound it. Et voila!—“reissues”.

Take the 360/12BWB in specific. Here’s a period 360/12WB:

And here’s a 360/12BWB:

Can you spot the differences? I mean, apart from the color. Well, there’s the pickups, and then…well, that’s pretty much it.

Okay, that’s not entirely fair. I didn’t show you the headstocks. The B-Series guitars did get a back-painted plexiglass truss rod cover—the first to appear on any Rickenbacker guitar since 1975. So there’s that.

As a reminder, here’s the original it was trying to evoke:

21 frets, full width triangle inlays, trapeze tailpiece, unbound soundhole, black KK knobs…and that’s just the obvious differences—there’s plenty more.

So John Hall hated the B-Series guitars. But, as I said, he liked the idea. He just wanted them to be better.

Work started almost right away on what would become 360/12V64, designed to fix as many things that the 360/12BWB got wrong as possible. Production began in March/April 1985, but in the years since a few test mules from late 1984/early 1985 have appeared that show us the work in progress.

A quick caveat: parts like pickups, plastics, tailpieces can be replaced. But the body and the neck? Those are forever. So that’s what we’ll look at to identify the test mules.

That said, this guitar from January 1985 is a perfect example of the type of test mule we’re talking about.

We have here the perfect mix of stock production and prototype features. Stock Higains, “R” tailpiece, silver top knobs, and inset triangle inlays, but on a 21-fret neck guitar with unbound soundhole. Not quite a 360/12V64, but not merely a 360/12WB.

Here’s another one from November 1984:

This one has all the vintage specs apart from the full-width triangle inlays, but the factory was clearly experimenting with their Fireglo pattern on this one.

Another vintage detail the 360/12V64 got right was the three piece neck—with a wider center stripe than the period 360/12—seen here on another January 1985 mule.

So what’s the point of all this—I mean apart from the fact that John Hall really hated the 360/12BWB? The point is that sometimes it’s the little things that make a guitar special. These late 1984/early 1985 test mules look almost stock at first glance, but tiny quirks set them apart—perfect for collectors who love spotting hidden gems, even if those quirks don’t always translate into market value.

Want to learn about more weird guitars? Check out the “Interesring/Unusual Guitars” section on our site map…or any other category that interests you!