In August 2013, Rickenbacker started teasing something special for 2014.

By the end of its 2000 to 2006 run, collectors were trying their best to come up with the most unique Color of the Year (click to learn more) order possible. Whatever model you can think of, there’s probably at least one example out there somewhere wearing a later Color of the Year finish.

So the prospect of a new Color of the Year after a seven-year absence immediately set the collector community abuzz. But shortly before the official NAMM 2014 unveiling, John Hall made it clear everyone had been barking up the wrong tree.

“Well, John, maybe because you teased a ‘2014 Color of the Year,’” was the main response…followed almost immediately by even more speculation about what “it” actually was.

On the first day of NAMM 2014, we finally got our answer.

Note especially the “available 2014 only” part. Sometimes things don’t go according to plan—and occasionally that’s a very good thing. We’ll talk more about that in a moment.

So what exactly is the W Series? Well, here’s how Rickenbacker described the new line in the original press release:

We’ve always been careful not to change much to the formulas that make our guitars and basses iconic in sound and design. For this reason, we rarely bring anything new to market. However, this year we just couldn’t resist introducing the W Series of walnut made designs of our traditional 330, 360 and 4003 models.

This is a natural spin on our classic models. These walnut Rickenbackers boast the same full, rich and warm sounds that we’re known for, while adding the strength and natural character of walnut polished with an oil finish. The full model lineup for the W Series includes the 330, 330/12, 360, 360/12 and 4003. All are outfitted with Maple necks. The entire line is made from top quality wood to deliver thorough excellence.

At launch, the lineup included a 330W, 330/12W, 360W, 360/12W, and 4003W. Apart from the different woods and oil-rubbed finish—and the black fretboard dots on the two 330 models—all other specs and features were identical to their maple brethren.

As were the prices. While walnut can cost significantly more per board foot than maple, the incremental material cost was offset by the much less labor-intensive oil-rubbed finish, allowing the W Series guitars to debut at the same price points as their maple counterparts.

These, of course, weren’t the first walnut-bodied Rickenbackers. Walnut had first appeared on the 650 Dakota in 1992, followed closely by the 650 Sierra and 4004 Cheyenne (click to learn more) in 1993.

While the 650 and 4004 were unapologetically modern Rickenbackers, 1995’s 380L Laguna (click to learn more) looked much closer to a “traditional” 360—albeit with plenty of modern touches of its own.

But by 2009, the last production walnut guitar had rolled off the line. That said, hints of what was to come began to appear, with walnut-bodied 4003 experiments surfacing as early as 2011.

Still, nobody was expecting a full line of walnut bodied guitars, and the response caught even Rickenbacker a little off guard. Here’s what John Hall had to say only a few weeks after the NAMM show.

Remember: less than a month earlier Rickenbacker was describing these guitars as a 2014-only offering. And here Hall was already openly considering adding them permanently to the lineup.

As it happened, sell-through was every bit as strong as sell-in, and so that’s exactly what happened. The W Series became a permanent part of the lineup—and the line itself even expanded. A 4003SW had not been part of the original lineup, but one was added in early 2015.

The 4003SW wouldn’t be the only model added over the years. When the 5-string 4003S/5 joined the lineup in 2019, it received a walnut version as well.

The same held true with 2025’s 4030S (click to learn more), which also received a walnut counterpart.

So what exactly is the appeal? What transformed a planned one-year run into a permanent fixture in the Rickenbacker catalog?

I think it comes down to two things. First is the weight. Walnut is roughly 15–20% lighter than maple, and on a 4003, for example, that can easily translate into a one pound difference between the walnut and maple versions.

Second is the feel. Glossy finished fingerboards have been a Rickenbacker trademark since 1959—but they’ve also always been one of the brand’s more polarizing features.

This is especially true on basses. If we’re being frank, Rickenbacker basses tend to attract a broader audience than the company’s guitars and, as such, have a larger potential customer base. An unfinished board on a Rickenbacker bass, therefore, significantly increases the potential buyer pool.

That’s not to say the same doesn’t hold true for guitars, but the effect is even more pronounced for basses—which is why every new bass model introduced since the W Series joined the lineup has also received a walnut version with an unfinished board.

So a lighter guitar with a feel many players actually prefer. What’s not to like?

As already mentioned, all other specs and features on the W Series guitars are identical to the “normal” maple versions. So as tuners, knobs, pickups, and other appointments have changed on those guitars, so too have they on the W Series guitars—including 2023’s shift from 24 to 21-fret necks on the 330 and 360.

One change that obviously didn’t carry over was 2021-22’s experiment with unfinished fingerboards (click to learn more) on all legacy models. Turns out, the W Series was enough to satisfy that demand.

The W Series guitars have occasionally appeared incognito in places you might not expect. Many—though not all—special run models (click to learn more) with maple fingerboards are actually W Series guitars hiding beneath a custom color.

In the end, the W Series succeeded because it managed to thread a needle that had proven very difficult for Rickenbacker up to that point: guitars that offered something genuinely different without fundamentally changing what made them Rickenbackers in the first place.

Lighter weight. A different feel. A slightly different aesthetic. But underneath it all, still unmistakably the same guitars and basses players already knew.

It gave the Rickenbacker-curious an excuse to give one a shot—and continues to convince a number of them to stick around.

All in all, not too shabby for an idea that was supposed to only last a year.

Technically, that’s true. But what if I told you that Purpleburst guitars exist anyway. Because they do—under a very specific set of circumstances. Let’s get into it.

We already know that the finish on most Rickenbackers made prior to 2009 can yellow from exposure to sunlight. We may use phrases like “ambered Fireglo” or “mellowed Mapleglo” or “creamy White” to make this seem like a desirable thing—and aesthetically it often is—but let’s not pretend that this was the plan. It’s simply a byproduct of time, UV exposure, and the materials that were available at the time.

But here’s the important distinction: in most cases it’s not actually the color coat itself that is changing. It’s the clearcoat on top. If you could somehow peel that clearcoat away, the finish underneath would still be—more or less—as vibrant as the day it left the spray booth. Rickenbacker’s color coats have historically proven to be quite stable.

Usually. But let’s face it: if you stick anything in the sun long enough, it’s going to fade. And one Rickenbacker finish is more prone to that than any other.

This is Blueburst. The 2005 Color of the Year (click to learn more), Blueburst is a striking dark-to-light blue sunburst and remains one of the more sought-after COTY finishes today, carrying a significant price premium over “standard” finishes—and most other COTY finishes as well.

But sometimes—under the right conditions—it can become…Purpleburst?

Now we’re all immediately familiar with what we’re seeing here. One of the most famous electric guitars in the world—the 1958-1959 Gibson Les Paul—does exactly the same thing. After years of UV exposure, a finish that left the factory looking like this…

…can wind up looking like this:

But what’s actually happening here? On the Gibsons, the red aniline dye they used was—unknown to them at the time—extremely UV sensitive. That means sunlight slowly breaks down the red pigment over time. The longer the exposure, the more the red disappears, leaving behind the yellow and amber tones underneath.

Rickenbacker is famously tight-lipped about the specifics of their color formulas—as is their right—but it’s clear that something similar happened with whatever pigment they chose for Blueburst.

For reference’s sake, remember the “Purpleburst” 330 we just looked at? Here’s what the back of that same guitar looks like:

Yep. Same guitar. Don’t believe me? Let’s take the tailpiece off.

That dark blue “R” shadow is (much closer to) the original finish color, protected from years of UV exposure. If that doesn’t demonstrate exactly what a lot of sunlight can do to a Blueburst finish, nothing will.

But just so you don’t think that’s a one-off, here’s another front-and-back comparison, this time from a 2008 360.

Or how about a 2007 620 that got it front and back?

Or even a 2008 4004 Cheyenne II:

The point is this: this isn’t a one-off phenomenon.

Here’s the good news: this appears to take a lot of UV exposure to occur. We’re talking “hanging on the wall across from a big window for years” levels of exposure. And consequently, examples like this are few and far between. But they do exist.

Will you find other sun-bleached finishes on Rickenbacker guitars? Sure. Like I said, stick anything in the sun long enough and it will fade. But no other finish is as prone to fading as Blueburst, and as much sunlight as it takes to turn those guitars purple, I can’t even imagine how much it would take to turn a Jetglo guitar gray!

Fun fact, though: UV exposure can turn a Jetglo guitar green.

Well…kind of. The same yellowed topcoat that can turn White into “Cream” can turn Jetglo green…in direct sunlight. Take it back inside and it’s Jetglo again.

If you want a cheaper Blueburst—or if you actually like the Purpleburst effect—well, this is a good way to go. And while both the 330 and 360 pictured above are on Reverb as of this writing, Purplebursts are in fact quite rare. Like I said, it takes years of sunlight to achieve this effect.

Just to be on the safe side, though, I probably wouldn’t buy a Blueburst guitar sight unseen.

If you enjoyed this exploration of Purpleburst guitars, you might enjoy this discussion on Glueglo.

The answer, of course, is yes. They were all of those things at once—and that’s precisely what makes them so fascinating. So let’s talk about the Lightshow guitars.

But first, a little context. By the late 1960s, the British Invasion wave that had carried Rickenbacker through the mid-’60s was no longer cresting—it was receding. The Beatles had stopped touring. The Byrds had evolved. And the chiming sound of a Rickenbacker through an AC-30 was being crowded out by the snarl of a ‘59 Burst plugged into an overdriven Marshall stack. The formula that worked only a few years before was no longer enough. Something had to change if the company was going to survive.

And so we enter Rickenbacker’s “transitional era” (click to learn more)—a period largely defined not by sweeping reinvention but by incremental adjustments, cautious experiments, and attempts to find stable ground in a rapidly shifting market.

But the Lightshow guitars were decidedly not that. They weren’t a cautious step forward—they were a cannonball into the deep end.

And really, what did they have to lose?

So let’s define what the Lightshow guitars were and how they worked.

First off, the idea didn’t originate inside Rickenbacker.

Frank Zappa once told a great story about how some of the best and most original music came from an era when record labels were run by “old guys with cigars” who basically shrugged and said “I dunno…maybe somebody will buy it?”

I always think of that story when it comes to the Lightshow guitars, with F.C. Hall cast in the role of the cigar-chomping executive willing to greenlight something completely ridiculous just because it was interesting.

The idea was brought to Rickenbacker by Stephen F. Woodman and Marshall Arm—two figures I have been able to find remarkably little information about beyond their connection to the project itself.

Their original pitch was to incorporate the technology behind the Lightshow guitars into the Transonic amplifier line. But somewhere along the way the concept migrated from amplifiers to guitars.

Sources consistently say they licensed the concept to Rickenbacker for development, and period literature referred to the technology as patented—and the 331’s pickguard is actually marked “Pat Pending”. But despite a lengthy search, I haven’t been able to locate a corresponding patent filing or issued patent tied directly to the Lightshow guitars.

But the concept itself—of marrying music and color—actually dates back further than the psychedelic era. Much further back, in fact.

In 1725, French Jesuit monk Louis Bertrand Castro designed what he called the “Ocular Harpsichord”: a mechanical instrument that paired notes with color. Behind the keyboard sat 60 colored glass panes concealed by small curtains, each of which would rise when its corresponding key was struck.

This was the first of the “color organs”, an idea that was dramatically expanded upon in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when electricity made large-scale color projection possible.

By the mid-1920s, Hungarian composer Alexander László was touring Europe with an elaborate electric color organ system and publishing works such as Color-Light-Music, which explored the relationship between sound, light, and human perception.

The shift from mechanical systems to electronic methods of generating colors from music would occur in the mid-1960s, and these newer devices became more commonly known as “light organs”—although you will still see the color organ term.

At their core, light organs used electronic circuitry to divide an audio signal into separate frequency bands. Different portions of the sound spectrum would then trigger different colored lamps, causing the lights to pulse and change in response to the music being played.

If that sounds a lot like what a Lightshow guitar does, that’s because it is. At its core, the Lightshow is really just a light organ stuffed inside a guitar body.

Which probably explains the apparent lack of any Lightshow-related patents—Woodman and Arm simply dreamt up a novel new application for existing technology.

So let’s talk about the guitar itself.

The first prototype was built in July 1970. Factory invoices referred to it as the “Xmas Tree Special,” which feels pretty appropriate in hindsight.

A standard Rickenbacker 330 (click to learn more) served as the starting point, but extensive modifications were required to transform the concept into a functioning instrument. Let’s start with the finished product and work our way through exactly what was changed.

Just like a standard 330, the top and sides of the 331—as the guitar was officially designated—began as a solid two-piece body blank. But the 331 was about a half an inch thicker overall than the 330—around 2” versus the 330’s 1 1/2”—to allow room for the internal electronics.

On a conventional 330, the body blank is routed out from the rear, and then sealed with a solid back panel to create the semi-hollow construction. Both the top and the back are roughly 1/4” thick.

The 331 followed the same basic approach, but with one major difference: much of the “top” was hollowed completely through. Only a solid center section was left intact to provide mounting points for the pickups and the bridge.

You’ll also notice that the 331 does not have the signature “tailpiece ramp” found on virtually every other full-size semi-hollowbodied Rickenbacker. This wasn’t an aesthetic choice—the ramp simply consumed too much real estate that the electronics package required.

Most of the top was covered with two mirror-image pickguards. But these weren’t conventional guards. Each assembly was actually made up of two layers: a clear Plexiglas top layer and a thin backing sheet of Rowlux—a lenticular film that produced a shifting moiré effect as light passed through it.

The guitar electronics themselves were fairly standard for the era: transitional Higains (click to learn more) with their threaded polepieces, the familiar 5 knob/1 switch control layout, and—somewhat unusually for a 330-derived instrument—Rick-O-Sound stereo wiring (click to learn more).

Also unusual for a 330-derived guitar, the 24-fret fingerboard was bound—although the guitar retained dot inlays rather than the triangle inlays (click to learn more) usually paired with bound necks.

Fun fact: 330 sales were so low during this period that the handful that were built around the same time simply used the 331’s bound fingerboard for simplicity’s sake. We highlight one such example here: Short Takes: 1971 330 with Bound Neck.

But then there was all the other stuff. Because the 331 wasn’t just a guitar—it also had to function as a self-contained light organ.

It actually took two tries. Which is to say there were two distinct versions of the 331’s electronics package—a first, rudimentary version, and a far more sophisticated second design.

All of the photos of 331 internals we’ve seen so far have shown the first version of the electronics package that entered production in March 1971. And from those photos, it’s obvious that the setup was fairly rudimentary…six lights arranged in a straight line on the bass side, and three on the treble side.

The entire assembly was hand wired—even the bayonet bulbs themselves were hardwired directly into the system. An additional knob by the tailpiece controlled light intensity, and the whole setup required an external transformer for power, connected to a separate input mounted below the jack plate.

One feature that has been modified on the first-generation example shown above is the lightbulbs themselves. The bulbs in that guitar have been painted, but as stock the bulbs were clear and fitted with colored, cone-shaped diffusers, as seen below.

The second version of the electronics package appeared in August 1971 and was clearly a much more thought out system. For starters, printed circuit boards replaced the hand-wired assemblies used in the original design.

It had more lights, too: still six on the bass side, but now five on the treble side. And instead of being arranged in straight lines, the lights were arranged to more closely follow the contours of the body.

The colored diffusers were also replaced with colored bulbs, and in a major serviceability upgrade the bulbs were now fitted into sockets—meaning they could finally be replaced without breaking out the soldering iron.

Hidden in the middle of the guitar is one of the most important parts of the whole assembly: a heat sink—because stuffing a light organ inside a semi-hollow guitar body turns out to generate a fair amount of heat. This nondescript bent metal panel was designed to absorb and dissipate as much of that heat as possible.

So after all that…did it actually work?

It did indeed. This video from Elderly Instruments gives you a good idea of what it all looked like:

But that’s not the really important question. Did it sell?

Well, no. Not really. The guitar was clearly designed with the psychedelic ‘60s in mind, but by the time the 331 hit the market in 1971, psychedelia had mostly passed its sell-by date.

Weird? Sure. Cool? To some, sure. Compelling enough to justify a $140 upcharge over a standard 330—almost $1,150 today? Not really.

Plus, it was probably kind of a pain to build. That extra $140 likely didn’t generate much extra profit once all the extra parts and labor required to put it all together were factored in.

And so the 331 ended up with one of the shortest production runs in Rickenbacker history: preproduction models in late 1970, first production batch in March 1971, and last production batch January 1972. Just over a year.

Although, to be fair, it remained on the price list through 1975. But during the F.C. Hall era that can usually be interpreted as “there was at least one still sitting in the warehouse”—F.C. seemingly operated on the theory of “you can’t sell it if people don’t know you have it”.

But let’s talk about that name: “Lightshow”. Those of you paying close attention may have noticed I have not used it to refer to the 331 itself. And that’s because Rickenbacker never did.

On price lists, in advertisements, in brochures—it was always just “331”. So where did the Lightshow name come from?

I can’t be 100% certain, but I’d be willing to bet it came from this 1971 brochure:

“The Model 331 combines a fine musical instrument with the thrill of a lightshow.”

That’s the first usage of the term I have been able to find. And because collectors know a snappy name when they see one, over time the 331 became the “331 Lightshow”—or simply the “Lightshow”.

You may have also noticed that the title of this article is “The Lightshow Guitars”, plural—and so far I’ve only shown you the 331. While the 331 was the only “official” Lightshow model, it wasn’t the only Lightshow instrument built. Including, as the brochure above proudly states, a “lighted hollow body bass”.

Well, there’s something like five to ten of them out there.

Using the 4005WB (click to learn more) as a foundation, a handful of 4005 Lightshow basses were built in 1971. The major difference between them and the 331 was the pickups. At that point, the only Higain bass pickup in existence was the large bridge unit, so the 4005 Lightshow retained the same toaster pickups used on the standard 4005.

You may reasonably ask if the 4005 Lightshow received its own dedicated PCBs. It did! Don’t make the same mistake I did and assume the guitar below is original. It’s a “Frankenstein” rebuilt from leftover bits.

And if that greenish PCB material looks familiar to you, it should—it’s the exact same material Rickenbacker used for Higain pickup bobbins.

Now you’ll notice I refer to this guitar as the “4005 Lightshow”. It was never an official production model, so it did not get a unique product designation like the 331. Both the Smith and Kelley books (click to learn more) refer to it as the 4005LS, and given that both authors had access to factory records that designation is probably correct.

Oddly enough, however, Smith refers to it as a “Lightshow” and Kelley a “Light Show”. Make of that what you will.

It seems like almost every modern six-string Rickenbacker eventually gets a twelve-string counterpart, so naturally the question becomes was there a 331/12?

Indeed there was, although there are almost certainly fewer of those than there are 4005 Lightshows. Like the 4005LS, the 331/12 was never a production model.

But even that’s not the rarest Lightshow guitar. That would be this one:

That is a one-off three-pickup 341/12 with slanted frets custom built for Roger McGuinn. With Byrd wiring (click to learn more) to boot. It really doesn’t get much weirder than that—although McGuinn has a second 341/12 without the slanted frets.

So perhaps equally as rare, but not nearly as weird.

There’s a truism in the collector world that rarity alone does not necessarily create value. Some things are rare for a reason, and the factors that made them undesirable in the first place haven’t changed.

But sometimes rare does equal valuable, and few Rickenbackers are considered as valuable today as the Lightshow guitars.

So what changed? What makes this slightly ridiculous, perpetually anachronistic instrument so desirable today?

Precisely that, I think. In this age of data science and focus groups and target demographics, the Lightshow guitars are a reminder of a time when cigar-chomping executives were willing to take a chance on something they didn’t fully understand and say, “I dunno…maybe somebody will buy it?”

Plus, silly or not, how cool is it?

If you enjoyed this story on transitional-era weirdness, you’ll probably like this one on slanted frets:

No matter what your answer is, I can guarantee you this: you probably don’t love your favorite model nearly as much as the people who answered “the 4004” love theirs. There are dedicated fan bases, and then there are 4004 people. Those guys scare me a little bit.

And if you’re not one of them, you’ve probably never given the 4004 a second thought. “That’s because you’ve never even played one!” the 4004 crowd is screaming at their screens right now.

Alright guys, relax. Today we’re going to let the rest of the world know what they’re missing—and why they should consider joining you in the “definitely not a cult” 4004 fan club.

So first, some context. Almost from the day John Hall purchased the company from his father in 1984, he tried to build a Rickenbacker that would appeal to the “modern player”. And honestly, that makes sense, right? “Innovate or die” has been a business mantra for decades—and the 1970s and early 1980s had not been particularly kind to Rickenbacker.

Hall’s first attempt, in 1984, was the 200 Series (click to learn more) of guitars and basses. And frankly, for what they were—American-made guitars with some innovative-yet-cost-saving features—they were pretty cool and priced fairly well. I remember seeing ads for them back in the day and thinking that the 250 El Dorado, especially in Jetglo, looked absolutely killer.

Honestly? I still think that.

But here was the problem the 200 Series encountered: as much as Hall wanted to redefine what a Rickenbacker could look or sound like, the market had already more or less decided what a Rickenbacker “was”—and this wasn’t it.

I’m not sure what the sales ambitions for the 200 Series guitars were, but I suspect they were not fully realized. In the years following the 200 Series launch, demand for Rickenbacker’s legacy products surged—driven both by their growing popularity among the college radio crowd and by the introduction of vintage reissue models. Whether because of disappointing sales, factory capacity limitations, or some combination of the two, the 200 Series line was discontinued at the end of 1994.

Or maybe it was just pushed out of the way by the new “modern” Rickenbacker that had launched in 1992—the 650.

Hall had clearly learned a key lesson from the 200 Series experience: if you were going to make a modern Rickenbacker, you still needed some recognizable Rickenbacker DNA in the mix.

There was a lot for the modern player to like about the 650 guitars: 24 frets with a scooped neck heel (although first-year production models had a traditional heel), a wider and flatter neck, crunchy HB-1 humbuckers (click to learn more), and an optional Hi-Tek vibrato. And although the cresting wave body (click to learn more) was softened somewhat for player comfort, the guitar was still unmistakably a Rickenbacker.

The same basic philosophy was applied to the 4004 when it appeared the following year in 1993: give modern players what they wanted without building something that no longer felt like a Rickenbacker.

And for a certain type of player, that hit hard.

The 1993 4004 came in two variants. The deluxe (click to learn more) Cheyenne featured gold hardware, walnut body and headstock wings, and an oil-rubbed finish. The standard Laredo featured chrome hardware, maple body and headstock wings, and came in Jetglo only.

Both instruments featured neck-through construction (click to learn more) with a slightly tapered maple fingerboard that was about 2-3mm wider than a 4003’s, Schaller M4 tuners, and a weighty, custom-designed ABM bridge with roller saddles.

Pickups were two HB-1 humbuckers, with the bridge pickup in roughly the same location as on the 4003, and the neck pickup about an inch higher, butted up against the end of the neck. Controls were simplified to a top-mounted master volume, master tone, and three-way mini-toggle selector switch. Both instruments were mono only.

Because there was no pickguard to mount the pickups below as on the 4003, the 4004 borrowed a design element from the 650: shallow, form-fit pickup cavities that allowed the HB-1s to sit slightly recessed into the body.

Even the truss rod cover reflected the new direction: black injection-molded plastic with the raised lettering painted gold on the Cheyenne and silver on the Laredo.

After launch, sales settled into what I’d call the “respectable, but not spectacular” category—typically one to two production batches per year throughout the model’s run. Which actually puts the 4004 in roughly the same category as almost all models except the 330, 360, and 4003. So it performed well enough.

But who was buying them?

That’s an interesting question. From the start, there were two pools of players the 4004 was probably never going to win over. The first was the Rickenbacker diehards—the ones who loved the look and the clank of the 4003 and didn’t want that formula messed with. That’s a relatively small—but still important—piece of the overall bass market, and honestly, it’s fine that they didn’t buy 4004s. Otherwise you’d just be cannibalizing your own product line.

Then there are the players who would never consider a Rickenbacker bass under any circumstances. Maybe they just don’t like the look. Maybe they played one once and hated the neck. Maybe they heard horror stories about the hairpin truss rods (click to learn more) that Rickenbacker hadn’t even used in almost ten years. You’re never going to change their minds.

Luckily, the majority of the market falls somewhere between those two extremes. So who actually ended up liking—and buying—the 4004?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have won over many players who likely otherwise wouldn’t have considered a Rickenbacker. The biggest fans—the scary ones we’ve talked about—were the players who were already predisposed to like Rickenbacker basses, but wanted one that did more.

The good news is that many of those players probably would have gone elsewhere to get that “more”. So it was additive volume—but only in the one to two production batches a year range. Not a failure—remember, respectable but not spectacular—but not exactly a breakout hit either.

So what exactly was the “more” the 4004 provided? Why do 4004 fans love them so much?

Well, the wider fretboard is certainly a plus for some. The modern-yet-traditional looks help too. But more than anything else, what people seem to love is the range of sounds you can get out of a 4004.

The key ingredient that sets the 4004 apart from the 4003 is the HB-1 pickups. Thanks to their dual-blade humbucking design, they’re hotter, fatter, and warmer than traditional Rickenbacker single-coils. And quieter to boot.

The result is a bass capable of sounds a 4003 simply can’t produce. Ironically, the one thing the 4004 struggles to deliver is the classic Rickenbacker clank—although many players report you can get close with an external treble booster.

So a Rickenbacker bass that does non-Rickenbacker things sounds like a pretty good idea. But the first iterations of the 4004 came in a fairly plain wrapper, and sales were relatively modest when compared to what would later come.

What ultimately pushed the model from “useful modern bass” to full-on cult favorite was the fact that the 4004 got really pretty over the course of its run.

The first change to the 4004 was relatively minor. In 1995, all “standard” Rickenbacker finishes became available on the Laredo. The days of “any color you want, as long as it’s black” were finally over.

And that was a step in the right direction. But 1999 is when the truly major changes started. They were substantial enough that the Cheyenne was renamed the Cheyenne II to reflect the redesign. In collector-speak, you’ll usually see the original walnut Cheyenne referred to as the Ci, and the revised version as the Cii.

First, the fingerboard changed from maple to Bubinga. Second, the pickups were both moved about an inch closer to the bridge. That change—which slightly altered the 4004’s warm tone—proved less popular with players, but any complaints were more than outweighed by the final revision: gorgeous flamed maple caps for the Cheyenne’s walnut wings.

Now that’s what I call a glow-up.

In 2000 the Cheyenne II’s “maple cap on walnut wings” construction changed to a maple-walnut-maple sandwich. It also gained new Cheyenne II-exclusive finishes specifically chosen to show off all that flamed maple: Trans Red, Trans Green, and Trans Blue.

2004 saw the introduction of a 5-string Cheyenne II. The 4004 5-stringer featured an almost impossibly wide neck and another custom bridge from ABM. Because of the wide neck and string spacing, the HB-1 pickup’s sensing range was simply too narrow to cover all five strings so an HB-2 was used in its place.

So what, you may ask, is an HB-2—and how does it differ from the HB-1? That’s a great question with a surprisingly simple answer: it’s the same pickup with a different case.

The HB humbucking pickup platform was originally designed for the 381JK John Kay Signature Limited Edition (click to learn more) guitar. Ironically, the HB-2 version appeared in production first, on the 200 Series guitars.

The HB-1 is packaged inside the metal case used on Higains, which effectively focuses and limits the edges of the pickup’s magnetic field. The HB-2’s plastic housing doesn’t do that, allowing for a slightly wider sensing range. Were the B and G strings still a little weak on the 5-string 4004 anyway? You bet.

The 5-string Cheyenne never made it to the official price list, and production was limited to only a handful of 2004 examples.

2005 saw the pickups return to their original positions—a welcome change in many players’ eyes. But the next major revision to the 4004 was not one of choice.

In mid-2007, Klaus Mueller, the owner of German parts company ABM—who had designed and supplied the 4004 bridge—unexpectedly passed away. A period of uncertainty about the company’s future followed, and Rickenbacker was forced to find a new supplier.

Consequently, in 2008 a Schaller bridge replaced the ABM unit. The bridge was “fine”—and certainly still better than the 4003’s bridge that had remained essentially unchanged since its introduction in 1963—but most players (and even John Hall himself) didn’t think it was quite as good as the ABM bridge it replaced.

There’s a term you hear thrown around a lot these days: the “enshittification” of products. Little cost-cutting measures, subtle spec changes, and feature reductions that slowly pile up until the thing no longer feels quite as good as it did at its peak.

That term feels harsh in this context, but the underlying principle applies. The flame on the maple wings gradually became less and less dramatic—and around 2006 it disappeared from the neck-through section entirely. We’ve already talked about the switch to the Schaller bridge.

And then came the change that hurt the most. In late 2009, the 4004’s wider neck—one of the instrument’s defining features from the very beginning—was replaced with the same narrower two-piece blank used on the 4003.

To be fair, the Schaller bridge couldn’t provide the wider string spacing the older ABM unit was designed to deliver, so much of the extra neck width was effectively wasted. But still.

Don’t get me wrong—this didn’t kill the model. Demand remained more or less exactly where it had always been. And honestly, maybe the changes were a net positive overall—not everybody liked the wider neck.

But today, if you ask those people I’m a little afraid of, they’ll tell you that peak 4004 had the wider neck and the ABM bridge.

The 4004 would remain effectively unchanged until its discontinuation in 2016. Which was not spurred by any precipitous collapse in demand. In both 2013 and 2016, special Laredo runs in Snowglo sold out almost immediately, and remain highly collectible today.

But as the last surviving example of a younger John Hall’s attempts to introduce “modern” models into the Rickenbacker lineup, the 4004 simply no longer fit the company’s broader product strategy. The final examples rolled off the line in July, 2017.

We’ve left out one important piece of the 4004 story: the 4004LK Lemmy Kilmister Signature Limited Edition. Based on the original walnut Cheyenne, the 4004LK was easily the most over-the-top of all the Signature Limited Edition models.

Built to Motörhead bassist Lemmy Kilmister’s specifications, the 4004LK featured hand-carved acorn and oak leaf motifs on the body wings, checkered binding, star inlays, gold hardware, and three HB-1 pickups. Of the design, John Hall once said:

I told Lemmy that it was a bit over the top, gilding the lily, sorta like a hooker overloaded with lace and gold jewelry.

He said "And that's bad, how?"

Sixty were produced between 2001 and 2006.

The 4004 occupies an odd place in Rickenbacker history. It was never a blockbuster. It never defined the brand the way the 4003 did. And for most of its life, it quietly sold in small but steady numbers, far away from the spotlight.

But the people who got the 4004 really got it.

To them, it was the perfect middle ground: unmistakably a Rickenbacker, but smoother, hotter, cleaner, prettier, and more versatile than your everyday 4001 or 4003.

And once you learn more about the 4004, you start to understand why 4004 owners talk about them the way they do. They’re probably wrong about it being the best Rickenbacker bass ever made—but don’t you dare say that to their faces.

UK distributor Rose Morris watched Beatlemania sweep across Britain in mid-to-late 1963, and moved quickly to capitalize on it. By the end of year they had secured exclusive UK distribution rights for Rickenbacker, and placed an enormous opening order for 300 guitars.

Rickenbacker spent most of the first half of 1964 filling that order, just in time for Beatlemania to explode in the United States as well. And as if demand wasn’t already high enough, Rickenbacker themselves handed another Beatle what would become one of the most famous guitars in company history: George Harrison’s 1963 360/12 prototype. Since a 12-string model hadn’t been part of their original order, Rose Morris quickly expanded their order to include one of those too.

Gaining those distribution rights had been a smart move: Rose Morris sold through several of the more popular models almost immediately, so they ordered still more. By the end of 1964, Rickenbacker had produced around 650 guitars for Rose Morris, with still more orders on the books. And while Rickenbacker had dramatically expanded their capacity, the backlog of domestic orders had exploded. Filling the Rose Morris orders had been the top priority.

And so, heading into 1965 Rickenbacker faced a difficult choice: who were they going to disappoint? Rose Morris, or domestic dealers?

Rickenbacker chose to satisfy the domestic demand first.

As 1965 progressed, the flow of guitars to the UK slowed to a trickle. Correspondence from Rose Morris grew more strident as the year stretched on.

Despite that, there was still hunger from Rose Morris for more—and new—guitars, especially the semi-hollowbodied 4005 bass (click to learn more) which launched in late 1965. But by the end of the year, only about 225 guitars had been shipped to the UK.

The first real cracks in the relationship were showing.

F.C. Hall and Rose Morris met at the 1966 NAMM show in Chicago, and as perhaps a gesture of good faith Hall proposed two new models: the 4005 (click to learn more) Roy Morris had been asking for—with an f-hole instead of a slash soundhole, of course—and a similarly f-holed 336/12 6/12 convertible guitar (click to learn more). Both were assigned a Rose Morris part number—3261 for the bass (4005S internal designation), 3262 (365S internal designation) for the guitar—and a purchase order was written.

Still, as 1966 ended, only 100 guitars had made their way across the Atlantic. None of them the 3261 and 3262s that had been ordered in July at the NAMM show.

So in early 1967 Rose Morris took matters into their own hands, and traveled to Japan to find an alternate source. They returned with private label “Shaftesbury” Rickenbacker copies built by Teisco Gen Gakki.

When Hall contacted Rose Morris in June 1967 to inform them the first 25 3261s were finally ready to ship, he was told—probably in not terribly polite terms—words to the effect of “we don’t want them. Cancel all outstanding purchase orders.” And with those words, the Rickenbacker/Rose Morris relationship effectively ended.

The immediate problem Rickenbacker faced was what to do with the 25 weird f-holed 3261 basses they now had on hand. And while the 3262 guitars were still somewhere in the production pipeline when Rose Morris cancelled the order, those needed to find a home as well.

Rickenbacker had turned away many European distributors over the past few years—they were having a hard enough time satisfying Rose Morris—so it didn’t take long to find a buyer: Italian distributor Saporetti and Cappelli. There was just one catch: they’d take the basses as-is, but they didn’t want a 12-string—especially not a 6/12 convertible. Six strings only, please. That’s where this monstrosity comes in:

A “New Style” round-top 360 (click to learn more) with an f-hole is unusual, but not entirely unprecedented—some of the first 360NS prototypes have an f-hole. But this headstock is truly one of a kind.

While we’re not entirely sure how many of these guitars exist, or how far along in the manufacturing process they were when production was paused—but they were clearly far enough along to already have slotted and drilled 12-string headstocks. So how do you turn that into a 6-string?

The easy answer would be to plug the slots and paint it a solid color, but it is likely these guitars were already somewhere in the finish process. So the slots were routed out a bit more, filled with black plastic caps, and…good enough!

Converter guitars like the 362/12 this guitar was based upon have an additional internal block to provide a solid mounting point for the converter assembly, but externally there is no difference. So apart from the Rose Morris f-hole, you can’t tell there’s anything else unusual about the guitar from the body alone.

But putting the Rose Morris f-hole and that headstock together in one package places the 3262 near the very top of the “what in the world is that thing?” list among Rickenbacker collectors.

When we talk about rare Rickenbacker models, we usually talk in terms of significance. That’s not the case with the 3262. It’s just weird. Not “prototype that didn’t go anywhere” weird, but “factory solving a problem in real-time” weird.

It’s also an artifact of an important relationship gone sour, and that story is worth telling. But mostly it’s just weird—and that’s my favorite part.

I doubt anyone could give you a definitive answer to that question—I certainly can’t. But I do have a pretty good idea what the top contenders likely are. Certainly some very early finishes from the 1950s like Two-Tone Brown, Turquoise Blue, and Montezuma Brown belong on the list. The Trans Blue/Green/Red finishes available on the 4004 probably do too. The matte finishes available on the 430, 3000, and 3001 are also contenders given how few of them were made.

But all of those examples come with caveats: they either come from very early in modern Rickenbacker’s history, or were only available on certain models.

So let’s revise the question a bit. What do you suppose is the rarest factory finish that was theoretically available across the entire main-line catalog?

My guess is Walnut.

“Now hold on,” you’re saying. “How can a color that was on the price list from 1974 to 1985 be the rarest Rickenbacker finish?”

And that’s a fair point. I should be more precise. What I’m talking about is Walnut as it appeared in 1974 and 1975. A very specific Walnut.

This Walnut:

Now you were probably picturing this when I said Walnut:

This far more common version of Walnut—produced from 1976 to 1985—is a burst pattern that ranged from brownish to orangish over its run and has launched a thousand arguments over “is it Walnut or Autumnglo?”

For the record, the answer in this case is Walnut. The confusion comes from the fact that Walnut and Autumnglo are actually the exact same color—the only difference is the clear coat. Autumnglo is matte, while Walnut is buffed to a high gloss.

But that’s not the Walnut we’re talking about here.

We’re talking about the first, monochromatic version.

Now I said for us to consider a finish to be a contender for the title of “the rarest” it had to be theoretically available across the entire line. And the 360 above helps make that case.

But if we’re being honest, well over 95% of the instruments you’ll find in this color are 4001 basses.

Here’s why that’s so—and why I still think it counts.

As we’ve discussed elsewhere, Rickenbacker guitar demand absolutely cratered in the early 1970s, dropping to only about 20-25% of the factory’s output in 1974 and 1975.

Luckily, however, bass demand exploded at roughly the same time. The factory simply couldn’t make enough 4001 basses to satisfy the demand.

So right away we already know that basses represented almost 80% of total production. That alone explains why the overwhelming majority of monochromatic Walnut instruments are 4001s.

The rest likely comes down to dealer ordering behavior. Given the state of the market, dealers were ordering 4001 basses to stock and guitars to order. You only buy what you know is going to sell, and Rickenbacker guitars simply weren’t selling at this point.

So a dealer might order five basses to hang on the wall because they knew they’d move. And they’d probably take whatever colors Rickenbacker happened to ship because special finish orders would only slow things down further.

Guitars were different. Somebody had to walk into the store and say “I want this guitar in this color”. And in 1974 nobody even knew this new Walnut color existed yet.

So why did they change from the monochromatic Walnut to burst Walnut in 1976? It probably came down to efficiency.

Rickenbacker had begun experimenting with both the monochromatic Walnut and the “burst” Autumnglo/Walnut in 1973, and you will find examples of all three from that year. Browns were the hot color palette of the 1970s, after all.

The monochromatic Walnut officially entered production in 1974, and Autumnglo followed in 1975. I suspect it didn’t take long to realize that it made more sense to spray one color scheme and simply change the final finish treatment. Buff it to a high gloss and you had Walnut. Leave it matte and you had Autumnglo.

And so the first iteration of Walnut ended up lasting only two years—the shortest run of any catalog, whole-line finish in the modern era. Is it the absolute rarest finish Rickenbacker ever produced? No. But is it the rarest finish ever offered across the main-line catalog? I’d say probably, yes. Answer me honestly: did you know it even existed before this? Enough said.

Want to learn more about all of Rickenbacker’s factory finishes? This article will tell you all about it:

Well, there’s actually a bit more to it than that. So it’s worth taking a few minutes to understand what exactly people mean when they say “gold plastics”, where they were used, and why people care. It’s a small topic, but one that comes up constantly once you start paying attention.

So first, “plastics”. We’re talking about pickguards and truss rod covers here. Things that are usually—but not always—made of…plastic. They take up a significant chunk of real estate, and have a noticeable impact on the “look and feel” of the guitar.

And then, “gold”. Rickenbacker plastics come in three flavors: white, black, and gold. Gold came first, and it has a significant difference from the other two.

The material most often used by Rickenbacker for pickguards—and for truss rod covers until 1974–75, which we’ll come back to—is acrylic. You’ll often hear the brand name “Plexiglas” used to identify it.

Acrylic is very durable—and very scratch-resistant, which makes it an excellent choice for a pickguard. It’s also naturally clear, which is why it is often used as a tougher, lighter substitute for glass.

For black and white Rickenbacker pickguards (but not truss rod covers), the acrylic is colored—white or black. The actual shade of white Rickenbacker uses is called “sign white”—it’s semi-translucent and designed to be used in backlit signs. That’s why it has that slightly “soft” look and why you can sometimes see the outlines of the routs underneath. By contrast, the black is fully opaque.

Gold, however, isn’t colored acrylic at all. Instead, it starts life clear, and is then painted on the “backside” with a metallic gold paint.

The earlier acrylic truss rod covers were made the same way: from clear acrylic, with the logo screen-printed on the back and then sealed beneath a coat of white, black, or gold paint. You will occasionally see “lifting” of that paint, especially near the screws, where it can adhere to the headstock and pull away when the cover is removed.

From 1974–1975 these were phased out and replaced by injection-molded versions in black or white with raised, painted letters. There was no gold version as gold plastics themselves had already been discontinued. Which brings us to the obvious next question: when and where were gold plastics actually used?

In fact—and this is where it gets interesting—the “plastics” were gold before they were plastic. The very first modern Rickenbacker electric guitars—1954’s Combo 600 and 800 (click to learn more)—had gold “plastics” that were actually gold anodized aluminum.

Anodized is a term you hear a lot—and you probably know what it looks like—but what does it actually mean? Anodizing is a chemical process that uses an electrical current in an acid bath to build up an oxide layer that is harder and more wear-resistant than the base material—aluminum, in this case. In simpler terms, it’s a controlled way of creating an extremely durable “rust” on the surface of the metal.

After the oxide layer is built up, it can then be dyed almost any color. Rickenbacker chose gold. And just like that, the Combo 600 and 800 ended up with gold anodized aluminum “plastics”.

Truss rod covers were obviously handled differently on these guitars—the logo was silk-screened on the top rather than on the back. As such, the logo is subject to wear, unlike the acrylic versions.

Not all Combo 600 and 800s got gold “plastics”. Usually—but not always—Turquoise guitars got gold, and Natural guitars got black. Guitars with black plastics actually got plastics—a backpainted Plexiglas truss rod cover and a Bakelite pickguard.

The next model to launch, the Combo 400 (click to learn more) in 1956, also featured gold anodized “plastics”—and when it gained an extra pickup the following year to become the Combo 450 (click to learn more) , it too featured anodized “plastics”. So what was the first guitar to get true gold plastics?

That’s a little hard to pin down. We know it was in 1957 and that it was one of two instruments: either the Combo 850 or the 4000 bass (click to learn more). The complication is that while the 4000 was introduced in 1957, it didn’t really enter production until 1958. So we can say that the Combo 850 was the first “production” instrument with gold plastics—but the actual first? That’s less certain.

The Combo 600 and 800 were adapted to use the same gold plastic pickguard, and quickly replaced their anodized guards. By 1958 the only guitar left with gold anodized “plastics” was the newly redesigned 450.

There were a handful of “half and halfs” produced in 1957—plastic pickguards paired with anodized truss rod covers—likely to use up leftover parts.

1958 saw the launch of the Capri line and a fairly consistent standardization of the use of gold plastics—and of all plastics in general. Student and entry-level models—like the 425, 950, 1000, etc—received a white plastic pickguard with a stamped metal truss rod cover, and everything else got gold plastics.

With one exception: the 450 retained its gold anodized pickguard, paired with the stamped metal truss rod cover.

1961 marked the beginning of the shift away from gold plastics. The 450 finally dropped the anodized pickguard for white plastics…but with a gold truss rod cover. Pre-production 4001 basses (click to learn more) featured a white plastic pickguard—of a different design than what would go into production—with a gold truss rod cover.

The revised New Capris of 1961 would be the last guitars to launch with gold plastics.

In 1962 the first white truss rod covers appeared, first on the new 625 (click to learn more)—the first guitar to feature all white plastics—and then replacing the stamped covers on the student and entry-level guitars.

In December 1963 the gold plastics era effectively ended with a prototype guitar that would go on to become one of the most famous Rickenbackers ever built: George Harrison’s 1963 360/12.

Technically this wasn’t the very first New Capri with white plastics…but it was almost certainly among the very first few. Were there any gold plastic New Capris made after this guitar? It’s possible…but I haven’t seen one.

And then gold plastics just disappeared. There may have been the occasional one-off, but as a production feature, they were gone.

That is, until the vintage reissue guitars appeared. Guitars designed to replicate—or at least evoke—guitars from the vintage era needed vintage appointments. And that meant gold plastics.

1982’s B-Series (click to learn more) 320B—roughly inspired by John Lennon’s 1958 325—was the first guitar to feature gold plastics since 1963. As did 1985’s 325V59 and 2002’s 325C58 (click to learn more), both inspired by the same instrument. And then there was the 1994 5002V58, inspired by a 1958 Roger Rossmeisl-penned (click to learn more) electric mandolin most people didn’t even know existed. Although this one wasn’t exactly accurate as the original 5002 had featured a gold anodized aluminum pickguard rather than gold plastics.

1991 saw the first new model to launch with gold plastics since the New Capris in 1961—the 660/12TP Tom Petty Signature Limited Edition (click to learn more).

Using Mike Campbell’s 1963 620/12 as its starting point, the 660/12TP got a wider neck, fancy checkered binding, and gold plastics for a vintage “vibe”. The 660 remains in production to this day, long after the Signature Edition completed its 1000 piece run.

Over the past twenty years or so, gold plastics have appeared on any number of special runs, and they can be bought both from the factory and aftermarket manufacturers to retrofit almost any model you can think of. They’ve become so common that it’s easy to forget how special they seemed when they appeared on that first 1982 320B—a deliberate throwback to a feature that had been gone for almost two decades.

Maybe I’m a pedant, but gold plastics just don’t look right to me on a guitar that didn’t originally feature them. But I appear to be in the minority on this one—gold plastics in the “wrong place” don’t appear to be going anywhere . And that’s okay. Now you know where they do and do not “belong”. What you do with that is entirely up to you.

But if you dig a little deeper, there are a more than a few details that don’t neatly fit that narrative—along with a complicated geopolitical framework that influences the story yet rarely gets mentioned. There’s also some tragedy—and a little bit of crime.

It’s a story worth telling in its entirety. So that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Buckle up—it’s gonna be a fun ride.

Let’s begin with Roger’s father, Wenzel Rossmeisl. Wenzel was born in 1902 in Graslitz, the son of a musical instrument craftsman—but not a maker of stringed instruments, rather one who built brass and woodwinds.

Graslitz had long been known as a center of brass instrument production, along with the nearby town of Schönbach, which was also renowned as a center of stringed instrument production. So it makes sense that Wenzel’s father would become an instrument maker, and that so would Wenzel himself. Except he didn’t…at least not at first.

But before we get into that, it’s worth taking a short geopolitical detour—one that isn’t strictly necessary for our story, but adds some useful historical context.

You’ll notice I didn’t say that Graslitz and Schönbach were in Germany. And that’s because they weren’t. Both were part of the historical Kingdom of Bohemia, which at the time of Wenzel’s birth was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Most of what was once the Kingdom of Bohemia falls today within the Czech Republic—as do Graslitz and Schönbach, which are now known by their Czech names, Kraslice and Luby. Both towns sit within about 5 kilometers of the German border.

Bohemia was populated by both German speakers and Czech speakers. After World War I, the Austro-Hungarian empire was dissolved, and most of Bohemia was merged with parts of Moravia to form the new country of Czechoslovakia.

German-speaking regions like Graslitz and Schönbach remained within the new state of Czechoslovakia rather than joining Germany or Austria. These German-speaking regions in Czechoslovakia, primarily located near the Czech-German border, would come to be known in the 1920s and 30s as the Sudetenland.

The Pan-Germanist movement that arose in Nazi Germany—centered on the idea that all German-speaking people should be united—led to the Sudeten Crisis of 1938, wherein Germany demanded the annexation of the Sudetenland. In the hopes of appeasing Hitler, the UK, France, and Italy agreed to this annexation in the 1938 Munich Agreement.

That policy of appeasement, of course, only emboldened Hitler—but that’s another story.

After World War II ended, Czechoslovakia’s pre-war borders were reestablished, and the majority of the German-speaking population—over 2.1 million people—were forcibly expelled.

And, tying this back to our main story, that forced expatriation of German-speakers effectively sounded a death knell for the musical instrument centers of Graslitz and Schönbach. We’ll come back to that in a minute.

For now, let’s return to Wenzel, who—despite growing up as the son of an instrument maker in Graslitz—did not train to become one himself, despite what the standard Roger Rossmeisl narrative would have you believe.

We’re not 100% certain what he did study. Some contemporaries report he may have trained to become a hairdresser—not exactly the path you’d expect. But we do know that what he really loved more than anything else was playing the guitar. Not building them, playing them.

He moved to Berlin around 1925, and he and his first wife Elizabeth—a singer who performed under the stage name “Lollo”—played in jazz clubs throughout the city. In 1927 Elizabeth gave birth to their first and only child, a son they named Roger Raimond Rossmeisl.

Here’s the thing about the German guitar industry in the 1920s: it didn’t really exist. Yes, Höfner can trace its roots back to 1887—in Schönbach, of course—but they wouldn’t start making guitars until the mid 1930s. There were a handful of master luthiers—mostly centered around Schönbach and Mittenwald near the Austrian border—but even they had largely been trained in violin making techniques and were simply applying that knowledge to guitars.

In other words, guitar building in Germany was still a craft tradition—not an industry. There was certainly no production at scale like in the US. To Wenzel Rossmeisl, a guitar fanatic who lusted over American archtops, this looked like an opportunity.

The problem was that Wenzel didn’t actually know how to build a guitar. This is where Franz Hirsch comes in.

Hirsch, born in 1879, had trained as a guitar and lute builder in Schönbach—where he still resided—and was highly regarded as a master craftsman. Wenzel, meanwhile, had very clear ideas of what the ideal jazz guitar should look like, but not the skills to build it. So how did the two connect?

The answer is inconclusive. Some accounts say they were distant relatives, but given that Hirsch had grown up elsewhere and only later moved to Schönbach to study, that seems unlikely. More likely, Wenzel knew of Hirsch through his reputation—passed along by other guitarists or perhaps family involved in the instrument trade.

Either way, a deal was struck: guitars would be built by Hirsch’s workshop in Schönbach with design input from Wenzel, and then sold in Berlin by Wenzel. The name chosen for this venture—and for the guitars themselves? “Roger”, Wenzel’s pride and joy.

The first “Roger” guitars were produced in 1930, and all prewar “Rogers” were built by Hirsch in Schönbach. While Wenzel did learn many useful things from Hirsch during this period, he still did not know how to build a guitar himself.

Wenzel was conscripted in 1940, and served until the war ended in 1945. Nothing is known about his war record. Some time before that, likely around his tenth birthday, Roger was sent to train to become a luthier.

There are two narratives you will hear as to where Roger actually studied. The first, as told by Roger himself, and what you will most often find cited, is that he was trained at what is now known as the Staatliche Berufsfachschule für Musikinstrumentenbau (State Vocational School for Instrument Making) in Mittenwald. The other, more likely story, is that he trained with Hirsch in Schönbach.

And there are enough data points to make the Mittenwald story sound plausible—most notably that the school at Mittenwald, founded in 1858, combined a traditional academic curriculum with vocational training. Roger would have been around ten years old when he was sent away, and would have needed to continue his formal education alongside his training in lutherie. While Hirsch would have been an excellent teacher, there was no equivalent structured program in Schönbach at the time.

That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have gone to school and studied with Hirsch, just that there was no formal structure for doing so. On top of this, Roger also told many people stories of his time in “the Alps”—where Mittenwald was located—that reinforce the Mittenwald theory.

But why would Roger claim he had been trained in Mittenwald rather than in Schönbach? Once again geopolitics plays a central role. The Sudetenland, including Schönbach, was returned to Czechoslovakia when the war ended, and in 1948 Czechoslovakia became a communist state. And as the Red Scare was gripping the US in the late 1940s/early 1950s, any association with communist Czechoslovakia would have been problematic for Roger as he applied for immigration to the US in 1953. To avoid this, he put “Mittenwald” on his paperwork instead of “Schönbach”—which, again, was perfectly plausible—and then had to stick to the story.

There is no documentation to prove the story either way. But the experts tend to believe that Schönbach is—in addition to being the most likely story—the correct one.

Putting that aside, we’ll jump forward to 1945 and the end of the war. Wenzel is discharged, Hirsch has been displaced from Schönbach—landing in Bubenreuth, like many German-speaking instrument makers from Czechoslovakia—and Roger returns home to Berlin with certification as a “Gitarrenbaumeister” (Master Guitar Builder). But the Berlin they return to—and Germany itself—has been divided by the conquering Allied forces.

Wenzel spent about nine months working for Arnold Hoyer in Bubenreuth, where he helped develop Germany’s first double-necked Hawaiian steel guitar. The money he made from Hoyer went to Hirsch to fund the construction of components, which were then sent to Roger in Berlin for final assembly.

But by mid-1946, Wenzel didn’t really need Hirsch any more. Roger was more than capable of building guitars on his own, and had his own flair for design. From that point on, Roger became the technical and creative core of the business while Wenzel focused on sourcing materials and keeping the business growing.

The problem with growing the business, however, was getting the materials needed to build guitars in the first place. Postwar Germany—and especially Berlin—was a pretty grim place, with much of its industry and infrastructure destroyed. Shortages were everywhere, and money was scarce.

Then there were the complications created by Germany’s post-war division. The Rossmeisl home and shop were located in American-controlled West Berlin, which was completely surrounded by the Soviet-controlled zone that would later become East Germany.

Now this was before the Iron Curtain descended, and Wenzel could still travel fairly freely between Berlin and the Soviet sector. But getting things from the East to the West—and vice versa—was complicated. Legally, anyway.

As happens in any time of shortages, the black market exploded. Out of necessity, Wenzel became a player. Not to become rich, but simply to acquire the supplies he needed to keep his business running.

The “Roger” guitars’ most notable design feature, once Roger took over the design and production, was its pronounced German carve (click to learn more). The design would later show up in his work with both Rickenbacker and Fender. Roger didn’t invent this technique—it was a hallmark of German violin design, and several of Hirsch’s “Roger” guitars feature a modest German curve—but he pushed it further, adapting it to take advantage of the constraints presented by the materials available to him.

All the “Roger” guitars produced by Hirsch were true arch-tops, with tops and backs hand-carved from a slab of at least 25mm thickness. But tonewood of that thickness was simply not available in post-war Germany.

Despite not being a luthier himself, Wenzel came up with a workable solution. He was able to procure tonewood of 7.5mm thickness—prewar slabs meant for piano soundboards. By gluing three slabs together—with the grains aligned to avoid infringing on existing plywood patents—he could approximate the needed thickness.

Roger could then apply an exaggerated German carve to the edges, creating the visual appearance of a carved archtop while the instrument itself remained essentially flat-topped.

Demand for the “Roger” guitars grew to the point that by 1948, two additional employees had been hired and a larger workshop was required. The business moved to a new West Berlin location, but Wenzel had even larger plans.

Around the same time as the Berlin move, Wenzel leased the workshop of instrument maker Peter Harlan—and acquired its stock of tonewoods and its experienced craftsmen—in Markneukirchen, in the Soviet sector just across the Czech border from Schönbach. The second production line began producing “Roger” guitars later that year at a much lower cost thanks to the relative value of West and East German Marks—a bold expansion that would soon prove far more complicated than expected.

During this period Roger would continue to refine his design language, and the Berlin workshop would become as much a laboratory as a factory. Style elements that first showed up here would later appear on Rickenbacker models. In 1950 he passed his master craftsman exam, and received the title of Zupfinstrumentenmacher-Meister—master luthier, plucked instruments—the highest certification Germany’s luthier’s guild offered. All looked bright for Roger and Wenzel. But by the following year, the risks Wenzel had been taking were no longer sustainable, and it would all start to fall apart.

In spring of 1951, Wenzel was arrested by the East German Stasi on his way to a trade fair in Leipzig. He was charged under the Foreign Exchange Act—his black market activities and the smuggling of materials between his two workshops had finally caught up with him. He was sentenced to four years in prison, and the Markneukirchen workshop along with all its inventory was seized.

This left Roger alone in Berlin, and as good as he was at designing and building guitars, he was terrible at running a business.

Roger was quite fond of wine, women, and song—along with fast cars. Without Wenzel controlling the purse strings, he began to overindulge in all of the above. Yet “Roger” guitars became the toast of the town, with increasingly elaborate custom-built guitars finding their way in the hands of all of Berlin’s biggest players.

Unfortunately, many of these guitars were leaving the workshop for little—and often no—money, at a time when production capacity had already dropped sharply following the seizure of the Markneukirchen workshop. Demand was there, but supply—and cash flow—were not.

In mid-1953, with creditors closing in, Roger began forming an escape plan. He wrote to Gibson president Ted McCarty in the US and asked for a job. Impressed by Rossmeisl’s portfolio and “Gitarrenbaumeister” certification, McCarty made him an offer—including paying for his passage to the US.

Within two weeks of hearing back from McCarty, Roger quietly left Berlin in September, bound for Kalamazoo—leaving his mother to clean up the financial shambles he had left behind.

It became clear fairly quickly that Roger wasn’t a good fit at Gibson. German archtop guitars had much thicker tops than was common in the US, and in McCarty’s own words Roger’s guitars looked “clumsy” in comparison. His exaggerated German carves looked radical to Gibson’s more conservative eyes, and there was still significant anti-German sentiment in the US—and on the Kalamazoo shop floor.

In early 1954, he told McCarty he needed a vacation. Instead, he signed on as a Hawaiian steel guitarist aboard a cruise bound for Hawaii from Los Angeles. He never returned to Kalamazoo.

How Roger ultimately ended up interviewing with Rickenbacker shop manager Paul Barth after returning to Los Angeles is unclear. Some sources say he first went to Fender, where Leo may have pointed him towards his former business partner, F.C. Hall. More likely, as an avid steel guitarist, Roger was already familiar with the brand and simply decided that applying at a guitar company with a German name was worth a shot.

However it happened, his timing was perfect. Hall had acquired Rickenbacker in 1953—then still primarily a manufacturer of Hawaiian steel guitars—and was looking to develop a line of Spanish guitars. He needed a designer, and someone with hands-on experience building them. After meeting Roger, Paul Barth knew immediately that he was exactly who Hall had been looking for.

Hall had already hired an outside industrial designer to develop what would become the Combo 600 & 800 (click to learn more). Barth and Roger refined the design—adjusting the headstock shape and adding Roger’s signature German carve to the top ahead of its launch later that year.

Rickenbacker’s first modern electric Spanish guitar may not have been designed by Roger, but his fingerprints were all over it. From that point forward, every new guitar Rickenbacker introduced between then and 1963 would be a Roger Rossmeisl design.

Roger spent most of 1955 building guitars, not designing them. He brought Barth apprentice Semie Moseley onto his team, training him to help apply the labor-intensive German carves to the Combo 600 and 800—a design feature Moseley would later carry with him when he left Rickenbacker to found Mosrite.

Back in Germany, Wenzel had been released from prison the year before, and spent much of 1954 and 1955 cleaning up the mess Roger had left behind. Despite everything, father and son remained in close contact until Wenzel’s death in 1975, regularly corresponding and continuing to share ideas. “Roger” guitars resumed production in 1956 under Wenzel’s guidance, in Mittenwald this time. And while their design would evolve over time, they remained rooted in Roger’s earlier work.

California suited Roger’s playboy style, but he seems to have balanced work and play relatively well at this point. His first original design for Rickenbacker came in late 1955 with the Combo 400 (click to learn more), which went into production in early 1956. F.C. Hall’s brief—a simple to build, entry level guitar—may have been a disappointment to Roger, but he met it nonetheless…with some tulip-shaped flair.

The path from that first design to the absolute blizzard of creativity Roger unleashed in 1957-58 isn’t entirely clear, but what followed was a two-year burst of output that many designers don’t match over an entire career.

What didn’t Roger do over that two-year stretch? The tulip-bodied Combo 400 lost half its tulip (click to learn more), and then morphed into the cresting wave (click to learn more) 425 and 450 (click to learn more). That cresting wave language had already appeared on Rickenbacker’s first bass guitar, the 4000 (click to learn more), which debuted a few months earlier.

The Combo 600 and 800 body shape was modified to create the Combo 650 and 850, which then was carved out from the rear to create Rickenbacker’s first semihollowbodied guitar, the Polynesian prototype (click to learn more).

The Polynesian would be simplified for production into the small-bodied, short-scale Capri models, which were then first lengthened and then widened to create the full-size 330 Capri (click to learn more) and 360 Capri (click to learn more).

In other words, this was the foundation for pretty much the entire Rickenbacker line as we know it today. Not to mention the design elements these guitars introduced—the guitar paddle-style headstock, the bass cresting wave headstock, the cat’s eye soundhole, the tailpiece “ramp”, triangle fingerboard inlays (click to learn more), and the teardrop pickguard—that continue to be used on almost all Rickenbacker guitars to this day.

Let’s put it another way: Rickenbacker’s 1956 price list had three Spanish guitars listed. The 1957 price list had eleven, plus a bass. By 1958, the list had exploded to thirty-eight guitar models, a bass, and three mandolins—virtually all from the mind and chisels of Roger Rossmeisl, apart from the original Combo 600 and 800, which he had only helped to bring to their final form.

To be fair, not all of these models made it into production, and many were simply variations—pickups, tailpiece, or trim changes built on the same “base” guitar. But it was still a lot, with prototypes built of almost every base design. It was an astonishing output.

And in the middle of all that, he somehow managed to marry Kunigunde “Mickey” Feldbauer in late 1957—a fellow German émigré he’d met at a party the year before. Mickey would give birth to their only child—a son they named Roger—in October 1958.

Hall’s confidence in Roger’s ability was high enough that the 1957 catalog offered “Custom built guitars…made to your own specifications, including design, layout, and colors.” Roger produced a number of “sample” custom instruments in 1957 and 1958 that appeared at trade shows—including acoustics and the wild “El Toro” guitar—but the program was short-lived. His time was simply too valuable to the company.

As many new ideas as Roger had during this period, there is comfort in familiarity. Whether he was homesick or simply wanted to prove to himself that he still could, he produced two guitars—one each in both 1957 and 1958—officially designated as the Model 390. But in truth, they were “Rogers” in all but name.

As the final 1958 lineup took shape, Hall realized one key thing was missing: a dedicated jazz guitar. Roger’s last major effort from this incredibly productive period would fill that gap with the F-Body guitars (click to learn more).

Ward Deaton replaced Paul Barth as the factory manager in 1958. Roger was, to paraphrase John Hall, something of a loner who preferred to work independently, and Barth had largely allowed him to do just that. Roger had staff assigned to him to work on whatever struck his mood that day—though at times that meant they simply stood by while the hands-on Roger did the work himself.

Deaton’s mandate was to improve efficiency and increase output, and Roger’s method of working didn’t fit his vision. Inevitably—but slowly—friction began to build between the two.

The product line Roger had spent the past two years building was largely complete. Hall stopped sending suggestions—the company finally had the lineup he felt it needed. Roger, in turn, began spending more time building guitars than designing them. Under Deaton’s increasingly watchful eye.

He would have one last burst of creativity in late 1960/early 1961—adapting the entry-level 450 into the 615/625, building several prototypes for a proposed acoustic guitar line that went nowhere, and finally, there was the New Capri.

Roger 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 definitive semi-hollowbody Rickenbacker shape, still in use today on the 330.

In 1962, Hall moved the Rickenbacker factory 30 miles south to Santa Ana, leaving behind the Los Angeles workshop the company had occupied since the 1930s. Whether it was the commute, friction with Deaton, or simply a sense he had nothing left to contribute at Rickenbacker, Roger didn’t make the move. With that, the Rossmeisl era at Rickenbacker came to an end.

But Roger still had plenty of guitars left in him. When he approached Fender for a job, he was hired on the spot by Leo himself, who was under pressure from his sales team to deliver an acoustic line. Roger, Leo believed, was just the man for the job.

Roger would go on to design a number of guitars for Fender as the head of Acoustic Guitars R&D. The Fender Concert and King (renamed the Kingsman in 1966) acoustic guitars launched in 1963, followed by the Coronado series of semi-hollowbodies in 1966 and the Thinline Telecaster in 1968. He even designed—but did not build—the rosewood Telecaster played by George Harrison during the Beatles’ rooftop concert.

But by the late 1960s, things were beginning to unravel for Roger. His drinking—which had always been heavy—had become a serious problem. His marriage to Mickey ended badly, and he was involved in a serious automobile crash that left him partially disabled—and deeply in debt. And yet, he still had one last great guitar left in him.

Fender wanted to make a “statement” jazz guitar line to compete with Gibson—and who better to design and build it than Roger? He drew up two models—the Montego, and the super-deluxe LTD.

Roger outsourced the Montego bodies to a German workshop, but the LTD models were handbuilt in Fullerton by Roger and his apprentice, Phil Kubicki. The two models shared a silhouette, European spruce tops and flamed maple backs and sides, and special electronics designed by Freddy Tavares.

The LTD, however, replaced the Montego’s arched top and back with exactly what you’re expecting: Roger’s signature German carve. Where else could his story as a luthier end than with one final “Roger”? Only 36 were made.

Roger left Fender in 1971, penniless. It is unclear whether he left of his own accord, or was let go due to his drinking problem. Either way, word had spread, and no other guitar company would hire him. In the end, his mother had to buy him a ticket home to Germany.

Unfortunately, Wenzel retired and closed his business around the time Roger returned to Germany. As he was no longer a German citizen, Roger struggled to find steady work, and spent the last years of his life working in a department store in Berlin. He died in 1979, at the age of 52.

In the end, Roger Rossmeisl’s story didn’t close with the LTD—it just faded out. But every German carve that followed carried a piece of him with it. In a way, he never stopped building “Rogers.”

Keep that in mind.

One of the many benefits of being Geddy Lee is being able to call Ben Hall and say “Rush is going to go on tour for the first time in 11 years and I’d like something special to take out on the road”—and that’s what you get.

Whether the callback to 4001 number one was Geddy’s request or Ben’s idea, the result is something genuinely special.

While I’m not yet sure what this guitar’s official designation is—it just went up on the socials today without that crucial detail—I’m just going to go ahead and call it a 4001 because…just look at it.

Apart from the turquoise finish, it’s a dead ringer for that 1961 guitar. Well—almost. Check the back…

At Geddy’s request the neck is unfinished, but a stinger was added at the base of the neck to give it a little flair—a further callback to a handful of Combo 850’s that were so equipped.

Underneath it all is almost certainly a stock 4003 body, but almost everything else—toaster and horseshoe pickups, pickguard, bridge and cover—are unique to this guitar and dead ringers for that 1961 original. Ironically, while Rickenbacker has put their new crushed pearl inlays on this guitar, the original had poured resin.

Between this and a 360F we got a sneak peek at a few weeks ago, there are some interesting things brewing in Santa Ana. I’d wager they could sell more than a few of both if these turned into special runs. Here’s hoping.

If you want to learn more about that first 4001—and all the ones that followed—check out our timeline of the evolution of the 4001. For everything else there’s always our handy site map.

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 Rickenbacker designer Roger Rossmeisl (click to learn more) 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 (click to learn more) 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.