Everybody has their favorite Rickenbacker era. Vintage (click to learn more) purists love the crushed pearl inlays and toasters of the mid 1960s. Devotees of thick tops and button-top Higains prize the guitars of the late 1970s and early 1980s. There are those who swear that the pre-CNC era of the late 1980s to mid 1990s was a new golden age.
Me? I like weird. So the transitional guitars from around 1969 to 1973 are my particular jam. Half-vintage, half-modern mongrels just do it for me.
So I am on a mission to document every possible combination of features I can find on a transitional-era 360—and it seems unlikely I’ll run out of new combinations any time soon. Here’s another one.
Yes, I have laid out a month-by-month guide (click to learn more) that lays out what you should expect to see, month by month, on guitars made between late 1969 and late 1973. But that’s all it is: a guide. Exceptions abound. That’s what I love about this era.
So what should we expect from this July 1970 360? A 24-fret neck, introduced in April, and a bound headstock, added in June. Vintage-era crushed pearl inlays, but with a new 24th-fret marker. Transitional Higains that first appeared in April. And old-style checkered binding on the back. Kinda like this:
Instead, we have this:
This one has a 21-fret neck with an unbound headstock. Transitional Higains, sure, but that neck “should” have been gone by July.
The facts say otherwise. And that is awesome.
So why are there so darn many 360s that break the “rules” from this period? You make a change, you move on, right?
Today, sure. But the Rickenbacker factory in 1970 was a different place. Today they run guitars through the factory in batches of 25 to 50 at a time. In 1970, the shop was well on its way to an all-time low of only 8 employees total. Even if they had the demand to build that many of one model at the time—which they absolutely did not—they didn’t have the manpower to do it.
Rickenbacker was only getting orders for a handful of 360s every month, and that’s all they were building. And with such a small work force, efficiency would have been key.
So let me start speculating.
At this point, 360/12s still only had 21 frets—and still had toasters. So if you had an order come in for a 360/12 or two, might as well keep the 21-fret body tooling out and use it for that 6-string order that came in at the same time?
But the spec sheet said “Higains go on 6-strings, toasters on 12-strings.” So that 6-string guitar with the “wrong” neck gets the “right” pickups.
And 56 years later we look at it and wonder what the hell happened.
This particular guitar may have a simpler answer though: look at the date codes on those CTS pots. 1966. This guitar may have been gathering dust in the back of the shop somewhere, and they slapped new pickups on it. We’ve seen stranger things
Honestly, we’ll never know. Our month-by-month feature timelines imply a degree of precision that probably never existed on the factory floor. More often than not, though, I suspect it came down to a simple question: what did they need to build, and what was the most efficient way to do it at that precise moment?
The point is this: there are a bunch of reasons this guitar could exist. Not knowing the real reason why is half the fun. And that’s why I love transitional 360s.
Want to see more weird guitars? Scroll down to the “Rare & Unusual Instruments” section in the Rickenbacker 101 Archive!
Gotta love them oddballs! Thanks for the cool article.
Just a side note to say how wonderful vintage burgundyglo looks. Especially when it darkens into eggplantglo.
Very interesting. I have a March 1971 360/6, which has its own idiosyncrasies. Great guitar. The quirks are probably explained by the factors you mention in the article. How do send a few images of the guitar?