Overview: 21 Fret 4001s

A Mapleglo 1970 4001 owned by Bee Gee Maurice Gibbs and used on many of The Bee Gees’s greatest hits sold at auction about a year ago for $51,450, including buyers fees. That’s crazy!

There’s plenty we could say about this guitar that could help explain SOME of this price: famous owner, used on several hit records, autographed by all of the original Bee Gees, the overall general rarity of pre 1973 4001s…but even all of those added up don’t really justify the price. But we’re not going to discuss any of those things. We’re gonna discuss something that actually probably HURTS the value of this guitar—the number of frets it has: 21.

“But 4001’s have 20 frets,” you say. That’s true, except when they don’t. So let’s talk about the 21 frets 4001s

There is a lot of contradictory info about the 21 fret 4001s out there. So let’s set the record straight. A “number” of 21 fret 4001s were made from very late 1969 to very early 1971 alongside the “normal” 20 fret guitars. This is a fact. As to WHY these exist, there is no definitive answer. But they absolutely do.

As to HOW they made them, that’s where things get messy. A quick internet search will give you a handful of incorrect explanations. Let’s run through a couple of them:

Explanation 1: The guitar is a slightly shorter scale, and as a result there is space for one more fret at the body join.

Incorrect. The scale is the same as a “normal” 4001.

Explanation 2: The guitar is a slightly longer scale, therefore the neck is slightly longer and there is room for one more fret at the body join.

Partially wrong. As established above, the scale is the same as normal…but the neck IS a little bit longer.

So longer neck, same scale…how does that even work? It’s simple, really. They moved the bridge up a bit. Look at the pictures below. Obvious now, isn’t it?

Left: 20 frets. Right: 21 frets

Here’s a bonus incorrect explanation: Leftover “long head-stock” neck blanks were used up to avoid waste.

This is almost certainly wrong. The long headstock was phased out in 1968, and the first 21 fret guitar didn’t appear until very late 69. It’s unlikely they had a bunch of unused blanks that were ONLY about 1/2” longer sitting in a pile gathering dust.

Now, you might think being rare and all they’d be worth more than a “regular” 20 fret example. And you’d be wrong. Now it is true that any pre-transitional 4001 is pretty rare in and of itself. But, given that no player of note is deeply associated with the 21 fretters—yes, Maurice Gibb owned one, but you didn’t know that before you read this, did you?—most true collectors want an archetypical example of one of these rare birds…which only has 20 frets.

Sadly, given the period these were made, many of these suffer from pretty bad glueglo. In the end, it’s just another weird transitional era Rickenbacker. But that’s cool—valuable or not. And now you know all there is to know about them.