Overview: Rickenbacker and Forrest White
Everybody knew everybody
You’ve probably heard of the concept of “six degrees of separation”—the idea that almost any two people on earth are no more than six acquaintances apart from each other. It’s even become a meme centering on Kevin Bacon, where people connect actors from virtually any movie to Bacon in six degrees or fewer.
But I’d argue that in the burgeoning Southern California guitar industry of the late 1940s through the 1960s it was more like one to two degrees of separation at most.
As you research that period, it sure seems like everyone knew everyone. Engineers moved between companies. Factory workers followed former bosses. Designers borrowed ideas from old colleagues. Pull on almost any thread and before long you find yourself connected to half a dozen familiar names.
Take F.C. Hall and Leo Fender. Hall got his start in the guitar business as Fender’s sole distributor, and was even a part owner of Fender before realizing the real money was in controlling both manufacturing and distribution. So he bought his own guitar company.
Or Paul Barth. Barth helped George Beauchamp invent the horseshoe pickup. He was a founder and partial owner of Ro-Pat-In, Rickenbacker’s predecessor, stayed on as shop manager at Rickenbacker after Hall bought the company, hired Roger Rossmeisl—whose apprentice was Semie Moseley—and eventually left to build guitars for Magnatone at Paul Bigsby’s recommendation.
So while it may seem strange at first that Forrest White—the man who ran Fender’s factory during its golden years—had not one stint at Rickenbacker but two, in this context it makes perfect sense.
White started his career in the 1940s as an industrial engineer at Goodyear Aircraft in Ohio. A guitarist himself, he encountered his first Fender steel guitar and amplifier around 1948 or 1949 and was so impressed that when he visited California a year or so later he looked up Leo just to pay his compliments.
White moved to California in 1951, and struck up a friendship with Leo. At lunch one day in early 1954, Leo bemoaned the state of his business—demand was strong, but the plant was so poorly run he couldn’t keep up and was in real danger of going under. He asked White if he’d come and take a look at things and see if he could fix them.
White streamlined the processes, instituted production and quality control systems, and oversaw the growth of the workforce from a staff of about 40 to nearly 800 by the time of the sale to CBS in 1965. Over that time, he became Leo’s right-hand man—even though the two had their differences from time to time.
White stayed with Fender after the sale, but was not pleased with the cost-cutting changes CBS made. The planned launch of a solid-state amplifier line in 1966 that he deemed not up to Fender standards appears to have been the last straw, and he left Fender somewhere around late 1966/early 1967.
I have seen it mentioned in a few places that White did not get along especially well with Roger Rossmeisl (click to learn more), who had joined Fender after leaving Rickenbacker in 1962, but cannot say for certain whether it is true. I can say that it would not surprise me at all—Rossmeisl’s free-flowing style of work does not seem like it would have meshed well with White’s very structured approach.
White left California for a few years to work for Chicago Musical Instruments’ (Gibson’s parent company) Lowrey Organs division, but returned to California in 1970, where F.C. Hall hired him as a consultant to help turn around a struggling Rickenbacker.
Like I said, everybody knew everybody.
White arrived at Rickenbacker during the lowest point of the Hall family’s ownership of the company—guitar sales had absolutely cratered, while the 4001 bass (click to learn more) had not yet exploded in popularity. Rickenbacker was trying to make incremental changes to stimulate demand, but it was clear something drastic was needed. Who better to come up with something new than Leo Fender’s right-hand man?
White promptly sketched out a double-cutaway, vaguely Telecaster-ish design with a bolt-on neck—something Rickenbacker had never done before. While the very first prototype had a Fender-style six-in-line headstock, subsequent iterations would feature a traditional Rickenbacker paddle shape.
Four prototypes would be produced and shown at the 1971 NAMM Show: the 430 guitar and 3000 bass, and the double-bound deluxe (click to learn more) 470 and 3001. Both basses featured a 30.5” short scale.
Both the guitar and bass received new Fender-style single-coil pickups and redesigned bridges with Gibson Tune-o-matic-style thumbwheels for height adjustment.
Ironically, this proved to be a good enough idea that aftermarket suppliers like Winfield Vintage offer similar guitar bridges today, while Rickenbacker itself has stuck with its fiddly four-screw height-adjustment system.
While these 1971 prototypes would not make it into production, the silhouette should look familiar, as it would reappear in several different guises over the next fifteen or so years.
White’s other 1971 prototype, however, didn’t impress Hall much. But it introduced a design feature White would take with him to his next business venture—and eventually trademark.
White’s 3+1 headstock design would, of course, go on to become a defining feature of the Music Man StingRay bass. But on a Rickenbacker? It was a bit too much. Especially given that the “pointy Telecaster” body it was attached to also failed to inspire.
Ward Deaton had managed the Rickenbacker factory since 1958, when he replaced Paul Barth, and ran it with a pretty firm hand. Put two strong personalities with very different ideas about how to run a factory together, and it comes as no surprise that numerous accounts exist of him and White butting heads. That—along with seeing none of his designs go into production—likely played a role in White’s 1972 departure.
Well, that plus the fact White had begun collaborating with former Fender salesman Tom Walker—and a silent partner with the initials L.F. who still had a couple of years left on his non-compete clause—on a venture that would go on to become Music Man. But we’ll come back to that a little later.
But just because White had moved on from Rickenbacker didn’t mean his influence—most notably that double-cutaway design—had faded completely. John Hall was clearly a fan, and it would reappear several times over the years.
The first appearance would be in another prototype, 1973’s System 490.
The System 490’s party trick was interchangeable loaded pickguards with different pickup configurations. The picture above shows a double-humbucker module—the same humbuckers that would officially debut on the 481 in 1974—but there also appears to have been a “Telecaster” module as well as a standard Rickenbacker Higain module. You’ll also note that the 490 uses the same thumb wheel bridge from White’s earlier prototypes.
The System 490 was a young John Hall’s brainchild, and he blames Ward Deaton for killing it, arguing that some lingering animosity toward White was at least partially responsible.
As that was happening, demand for the 4001 was exploding. Rickenbacker was increasingly becoming a bass company, not a guitar company, and they didn’t have an entry level offering. Yes, they had the single-pickup 4000 (click to learn more), but that still utilized labor-intensive through-neck construction. They needed a cheaper instrument to build if they wanted to capture more of the market.
Luckily, White had left them an incredibly versatile—and inexpensive—bolt-on neck design. And with a few modifications, White’s basic double-cutaway design was pressed into service on two models: the 3000 and 3001 (click to learn more). Even Deaton couldn’t argue with the logic.
There were two major differences between 1974’s production short-scale 3000 and White’s 1971 prototype. The first was the pickup. Instead of White’s Fender-style single-coil, a new pickup—referred to as a “ultra-high gain single coil humbucker” (click to learn more)—was designed by lead amp designer George Cole. The second was the bridge. For simplicity’s sake, the standard 4000 Series bass bridge was employed.
For the standard-scale 3001, the body was stretched slightly, and more complex electronics with two dynamic tone controls were added. The same pickup and bridge found on the 3000 were also utilized on the 3001.
And because that White double-cutaway design was the gift that kept on giving, it finally got a production guitar model in 1975 with the entry-level 430 (click to learn more).
The 430 was clearly engineered to a price—even down to replacing the stock Higain pickups’ metal case with plastic and a matte finish that didn’t require hours of buffing to achieve a high gloss. Apart from the plastic pickup cases, all of the other parts were off-the-shelf.
The 430 only lasted two years, ending production in 1976. The 3000 and 3001 survived until 1979. So that’s the end of the Forrest White and Rickenbacker story, right?
Well, before we answer that question, let’s return to what White was doing in the meantime. Music Man’s first product entered production in 1974: the Sixty-Five amp, a hybrid tube-and-solid-state amplifier designed by Walker and the silent partner who must not be named.
But Leo’s non-compete ended in 1975, and he promptly set up a new company, CLF Research, and established a factory to build guitars for Music Man. The first two models—the StingRay 1 guitar and StingRay bass—were designed with input from all three partners: Leo, Walker, and White.
Under the arrangement, CLF built the guitars and delivered them to Music Man, where Walker and White handled the amplifiers. Quality problems with CLF led to growing animosity between Leo and Walker and White, and by 1979 the relationship had deteriorated to the point that the two companies severed ties.
Ironically, what the notoriously bad-at-business Leo Fender really needed was a Forrest White to run the CLF Research factory.
Walker and White soldiered on without Leo, who formed G&L guitars with George Fullerton in the aftermath. Music Man guitar production was handed over to Grover Jackson.
Once again, everybody knew everybody.
But despite strong sales, Music Man always struggled financially. On the brink of bankruptcy yet again, Walker and White were forced to sell Music Man to Ernie Ball in early 1984.
Which left White looking for a job again.
John Hall had developed a passion for computing in college, and spent much of the early to mid-1970s installing state-of-the-art computer systems at Rickenbacker. He left the company in 1979 to establish his own software company, but returned in 1981 as F.C. began a multi-year battle with cancer.
F.C. began talking about selling the company, and at first John worked with the prospective buyers to help them understand the value and potential the company held. But at some point in that process, he realized he didn’t want to help his dad sell the company—he wanted to buy it himself. And in 1984 he somehow scraped the money together to do just that.
The younger Hall had lots of ideas about how to do things differently—how to make the company more relevant. But to make them happen, he needed a strong right-hand man. Who better than Forrest White?
Hall held immense respect for White, and did not share all of his father’s high regard for Ward Deaton—a fact Deaton was well aware of. As soon as the employees were made aware of the impending transfer of ownership, Deaton announced his departure. And so Forrest White was hired by Rickenbacker once again—this time as factory manager.
The timing of the younger Hall’s purchase couldn’t have been better. Thanks to the college-radio-fueled rise of jangle pop, Rickenbackers were suddenly cool again and demand from an entirely new demographic surged.
At the same time, Hall was introducing the first mostly accurate reproductions of classic models, re-engaging the existing customer base.
On top of that, Hall and White were improving outdated designs and practices as they went. White completely redesigned the standard guitar bridge for the first time since the 1950s, replacing the aging lock-nut system with much easier-to-manage retaining springs.
Still no thumbwheels, though.
White also oversaw the replacement of the old hairpin truss rods (click to learn more) with dual modern single action rods. And while one can make the argument that the hairpins were a better solution, their unique design and function remain poorly understood by the majority of players and was therefore likely a net negative in the marketplace.
And of course, White’s good old double-cutaway design made yet another appearance with the introduction of the 200 Series (click to learn more) of guitars and basses in late 1984.
Just like the original 1971 prototypes, the 200 Series consisted of two basses and two guitars—with a standard and deluxe model for each.
But once again, the White-designed models would outlive White’s tenure with Rickenbacker.
John Hall says that something had changed in White. The stress of keeping Music Man afloat—and ultimately failing. The damage the Music Man experience had done to his relationship with Leo Fender. Bitterness over not being asked to be a part of G&L with his old friends Leo and George Fullerton. Some health scares along the way. It had all taken a toll. He was just a changed man.
It came to a head, literally, with White throwing a punch at longtime wood shop manager Dick Burke. The plant’s most senior employee, Dick Burke had designed the 12-string headstock, the New Style 360, the R tailpiece, and so much more. If any one person was the heart of the Rickenbacker plant, it was Dick Burke. And White hit him for telling him “that’s not how we do things here.”
Hall had no choice but to fire White. As White was someone he considered both a friend and a mentor, it could not have been an easy thing to do, but he did. And while the 200 Series guitars would last until 1995, the second and final Forrest White stint at Rickenbacker came to an end.
In 1994 White would publish a memoir of his time with Fender, Fender: The Inside Story. It’s clear reading that book that time had not healed old wounds—and equally clear how much those years at Fender had meant to him. He just never seemed able to recreate that golden period.
Forrest White died later that same year, but his legacy carries on in Fender, Music Man, and Rickenbacker guitars that never carried his name on the headstock—and perhaps that’s fitting. Forrest White’s greatest contributions were almost always behind the scenes.
And of course, he knew everybody.
If you enjoyed this piece on Forrest White and Rickenbacker, you’ll probably enjoy this one on Roger Rossmeisl:
I like the beluga-esque body shape of the ‘71 prototype. And the un-chromed and toothless aluminum bridge/tailpiece.
The 3+1 headstock arrangement has never appealed….
How about those “White” Princeton amps and lapsteels from circa 1955?