Short Takes: The Mike Rutherford Doubleneck

Better than duct tape

Let’s begin by addressing the elephant in the room. This is not a “real” Rickenbacker. It was not built in Santa Ana. It has no official model designation. Most of its components came off a real 360 and a real 4001, but the finished instrument was a handbuilt response to a need that Rickenbacker simply had not yet anticipated.

So why discuss it at all? Because at some point in your Rickenbacker journey you will stumble across this guitar, and you will have questions. So let’s just go ahead and answer them.

One more important fact before we begin. Good pictures of this guitar are few and far between. So several of the pictures we’ll use here are of a replica commissioned by Chris Capozza of Famous Guitar Replicas. While he didn’t build this one entirely by himself, he documented the build step-by-step and has even written a book on the topic. If you really want one of your own, ask him real nice and maybe he’ll build one for you. Or maybe not. It can’t hurt to ask.

Let’s begin with the need that gave birth to this…thing. And that need came, as you might suspect from this article’s title, from Genesis bassist/guitarist Mike Rutherford. During the 1973-74 Selling England by the Pound tour, he found himself having to switch back and forth between a bass and a 12-string on numbers like The Cinema Show. A doubleneck bass/12-string was the obvious answer. The only problem was that in 1973, nobody made such a thing. So, he improvised.

Rutherford with workaround

If that looks to you like a Rickenbacker 360/12 and 4001 literally duct taped together, that’s because it is in fact a Rickenbacker 360/12 and 4001 duct taped together.

It quickly became apparent that a more permanent solution was required. So Rutherford sent the taped-together 360/12 and 4001 to British luthier Dick Knight and told him something along the lines of “Stick these two together with something better than duct tape, and make it snappy!” And that’s exactly what he got.

Rutherford with custom doubleneck

Knight harvested the necks and all the parts off the two guitars, and built a brand new instrument from scratch in less than two weeks. According to luthier Gordon Wells, who helped Knight with the build:

“Both necks, the 4001 and the 360, were cut complete from each of the instruments and a stretched body (width-wise) was produced to house both necks, none of the original bodies exist. The body was constructed from birch plywood back and front with sycamore edging and inner support blocks. The cat’s eye sound hole was added to make the guitar appear less clumsy and to make it look more Rickenbacker like. The guitar was fully assembled and checked for playability, then dismantled; the plastic binding added and sprayed black. The lacquer still being soft when collected!”

The lore around this instrument’s donor guitars is very specific—and I believe very wrong. Let’s walk through my argument. The lore clearly states that the donor guitars were a 1973 360/12—serial number ME1661—and a 1965 4001—serial number EG290. The guitar tells a slightly different story.

The guitar components don’t necessarily confirm 1973. We have a 21-fret neck with crushed pearl inlays, and toaster pickups. A 1973 360/12 could have had that, but it would likely had button-top Higains.

That said, nothing about the bass components suggest 1965. We have a neck with a bound bottom, full-width poured inset acrylic inlays, “wavy” Grover tuners, and a Higain bridge pickup. A 1965 4001 would have a neck with an unbound bottom, crushed pearl inlays, Kluson tuners, and a horseshoe bridge pickup.

Then there’s the serial numbers themselves. They line up with the dates, sure, but ME1661 is surrounded by a bunch of 1973 4001s, and EG290 by several 360/12s. And there’s a very important detail about the bass neck’s inlays. The full-width poured inlays were only produced in April and May, 1973. And what’s the two-digit serial number code for May, 1973? ME.

In other words, I think the serial numbers have simply been transposed over the years. The guitar was from 1965, and the bass from 1973. The details sure seem to bear that out. I think it’s time to update the lore.

Rutherford with custom doubleneck

So let’s have a look at a modern reproduction to get a better idea of what’s actually going on.

Chris Capozza replica

Ask me to describe it and I’d say it looks like a stretched 620/12 and a 4001 stapled together, with a slash soundhole thrown in for good measure. It’s a bit of a kitchen-sink design, with nearly every recognizable Rickenbacker styling cue thrown into the mix, and it mostly works. The overall shape is actually not too far removed from the “official” Rickenbacker doubleneck 4080 that would debut in 1975, although the 4080 swapped the neck positions.

1975 4080

Unlike most doublenecks, the Rutherford guitar gave both the guitar and the bass necks their own set of controls. Seeing how the guitar controls were shoehorned in, I suspect they got in the way whenever Rutherford ventured too close to the bass bridge. It’s easy to see why most doublenecks settle for a single set of controls.

Chris Capozza replica

Funnily enough, despite launching the 6/12 362/12 doubleneck in 1974 and the 4/6 4080 doubleneck in 1975, Rickenbacker wouldn’t get around to launching a 4/12 doubleneck until 1977’s 4080/12. Presumably Rickenbacker considered the configuration too niche—and, to be fair, they may have had a point—yet thanks to a certain high-pitched Canadian, it would go on to be Rickenbacker’s most famous and sought-after doubleneck.

Rutherford clearly believed he was on to something with his custom Rickenbacker, as he would go on to commission several more doublenecks over the years—including a Microfrets model that harvested parts from the Rickenbacker, a modular Shergold that could be split into two and a Gibson/Yamaha hybrid. At some point the Rickenbacker was modified and reassembled with modern parts, but it was retired from stage work at the end of the 1974 tour.

Reconfigured 1973 original

And now you know all you need to know about the Mike Rutherford doubleneck—a guitar born out of necessity, built in a hurry, used for barely a year, and specific enough that within a few years Rickenbacker was offering exactly the sort of instrument Rutherford had needed all along.

Chris Capozza replica

If you find yourself wondering if the Rickenbacker101 “Special Run” page is kept up to date, it absolutely is. If you haven’t checked it lately, it’s worth taking a look to see what you might have missed!