Overview: The B-Series Guitars
Do they really deserve the hate?
“I had nothing whatsoever to do with the B-Series. It was something cooked up by a numbnutz during the one year I was not with the company, sometime from '79 to '80. Had my dad been in better health, and not commuting each week to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, he sure wouldn't have approved this. (But by the same token I might not have returned to the company either.)
One of the first things I did when I returned was dump the nimrod that was responsible for this series. He went to work for the Salvation Army instead, a much better fit for his talents.
It took me a little longer to get rid of the guitar, but I ultimately replaced it with the V-Series in 1984.
It never appeared in a catalog, only on a separate data sheet; thank goodness for small favors.”
-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.