Down the Rabbit Hole: Knob Orientation

I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: I’m a little obsessive over details. Now I know you’re all surprised to learn this, but I swear to you it’s true!

Seriously, though, you have to be at least a little obsessive to run a site like this. But every so often somebody asks me a question that is…god-tier obsessive. So obsessive that it humbles me. And here’s the thing: once that question gets asked, I need to know the answer just as bad as the person who asked me.

Yesterday I got asked such a question. So I’m going to tell you that question now, how I went about finding the answer—or as close as I could, anyway—and what the answer is. Ready? Here’s the question:

“When my Rickenbacker is standing upright, like on a stand, and all the knobs are turned to max, where on a clock face should all the dots/lines be pointing?”

I bet you never thought to ask that question, did you? I sure never did. When I get a new guitar I make sure they all align when I dime it, but I’ve never questioned or even paid much attention to the alignment point.

Still, seems like an easy enough question to answer, no? So I pulled out a number of handy guitars from different decades, dimed them all…and got a number of different answers.

There was a definite range, though, for 1970s-2020s guitars: ALL fell within a ten o’clock to three o’clock range with clear clusters at ten/eleven, noon, one/two, and three. The 1960s I just didn’t have enough data points—my “collection” focuses mostly on the 1970s-80s. Still, it was a good starting point, but more research was needed so we went deeper into the closet.

And after I’d looked at all of my guitars—and eliminated a couple that I know have been messed around with—that ten/eleven o’clock to three o’clock range for the 1970s-present was looking pretty solid. And with some pretty clear “era-specific” trends! I felt like I was on to something.

The next thing to understand was the “range of motion” of the knobs—how many degrees did they turn between zero and ten? Did I get out a protractor? No. I eyeballed it. But they all tuned about the same amount—somewhere around 75%-85% or 270 to 300 degrees. Or about “ten hours” on our clock face.

So if we assume “full on” is somewhere between ten o’clock and three o’clock and a range of a minimum of three quarters of a revolution, that means “full off” should be somewhere between twelve o’clock and five o’clock. Which means I shouldn’t find ANY guitars from the 1970s on with full on or full off between five o’clock and ten o’clock—guitars in the full off position should be around twelve/one o’clock, two o’clock, three/four o’clock, and five o’clock. To the photographic archives!

And let’s acknowledge that knobs are just about the easiest things to mess around with on a guitar. We were going to need the preponderance of data points to support my hypothesis.

Catalogs and ads and brochures and stock photography was the first place I started. I mean, those guitars are likely to be unplayed and “factory fresh”. And, by and large, they supported my initial hypothesis—on both where the knobs “should” and “shouldn’t” be.

And to be clear—and this rule held true for all my research—in order for a guitar to even be considered all knobs had to be set the same. If even one had a different setting…it was useless to me.

Next was to the register. And once again, the data seemed to support the theory that was firming up in my head. Did I find outliers—guitars that did not meet my expectations? Of course I did. Were they the majority? They were not—and by a wide margin.

And can I just say how much I appreciate Japanese dealer photos? Not every Japanese dealer dimes all the knobs before they take their pics…but most do!

So at this point we had what I felt were pretty definitive answers for the 1970s to 2020s. So we needed to circle back to the 1960s for more research. And it didn’t take long to realize that the 1960s were pretty clear, but the transition from the 1960s to the 1970s was the piece I couldn’t quite nail down no matter how hard I tried. So I’m going to have to hedge there.

So with all that said, are you ready for the answer? Do you just “have to know” like I did? Well wait no longer. I’m about to tell you what I believe to be the “stock” factory knob indicator settings from about 1957 to present. To wit:

1957 to 1967ish: seven to eight o’clock. I have a fairly high level of confidence here based on the photographic evidence.

Seven to eight o’clock orientation

1968ish to 1973ish: seven to eight o’clock OR ten to eleven o’clock. I can find numerous examples of both of these in roughly equal numbers from this period, leading me to believe both are possible.

1974ish to 1979ish: ten to eleven o’clock.

Ten to eleven o’clock orientation

1980ish to 1984ish: twelve o’clock.

Twelve o’clock orientation

1985ish to 1994ish: one to two o’clock.

One to two o’clock orientation

1995-ish to present: three o’clock. Period. That’s just how they come.

Three o’clock orientation

And there it is. Where your knobs should be set to be era-correct. I’m VERY comfortable with the timeline from 1974 to present, but a bit less so with what comes before. Especially that 1968-1973 window, given that a lot of time has passed and there have been a lot of opportunities to “mess around” with these guitars. I absolutely welcome more insight on this period.

So I think we can check this one off the obsessive question list! But do you have a question that’s probably already been answered? Check out our handy site map! Still can’t find it? Drop me a note—maybe your obsession will become my obsession!