“Legacy” guitar brands like Gibson, Fender, and yes, Rickenbacker have a problem. The guitar-buying public has already decided what those brands are—and, more importantly, what they aren’t.
To be fair, they largely have themselves to blame. These companies—especially Gibson and Fender—created the template for the modern electric guitar. Almost every guitar built since can be traced, one way or another, back to a handful of designs they created in the 1950s and early 1960s.
The Les Paul. The Stratocaster. The Telecaster. The SG.
Those guitars are so fundamental to our idea of what an electric guitar is that it’s almost impossible to imagine a world before them. They don’t feel novel. They feel inevitable.
I think there’s only been one real addition to that pantheon in my lifetime: the PRS Custom/Standard. That was another guitar that, in retrospect, feels less like it was designed than revealed.
So how do you top those designs?
You probably don’t.
There are only so many universal truths to go around.
And once you uncover one—or, if you’re extraordinarily lucky, a handful—you eventually become that universal truth. A bug frozen in amber.
From that point forward, the market mostly lets you make variations on a theme, and that’s it
Fender and Gibson understand this. If you go the Fender website and select “Shop By Model,” there are 94 Stratocasters and 98 Telecasters to choose between. Gibson has 69 SGs and 310(!) Les Pauls for you to sort through.
Yes, of course both companies have launched new designs over the years, but none since about 1964 have become fundamental to those brands in the way those foundational models are.
It’s not that they’re not innovating—there are 310 different Les Pauls available to buy today, for God’s sake—but they’ve learned to innovate inside the box they’ve been given. They’re not trying to reinvent their lineup; they’re trying to reinvent the reasons to buy one.
Innovate or die may be less true for legacy companies with foundational models than it is for companies still working to define themselves—or to be defined by the market—but it’s still true.
John Hall absolutely got that memo when he took over the company in 1984. He spent twenty years trying to come up with a modern guitar that would break Rickenbacker out of its niche. It took him longer to realize that he, too, was a bug stuck in amber.
That’s bad news for Rickenbacker—at least on the guitar side of the portfolio. They simply cannot break out of that “60s jangle” corner their absolute ownership of that sound painted them into. The market just won’t let them.
But basses are a different story. Rickenbacker basses have been—and continue to be—equally at home on stages from arena rock to alt-country to death metal. There’s nowhere, seemingly, a Rickenbacker bass can’t go.
And I think Ben Hall instinctively gets that. If you look at the models that have launched since he began taking a larger role within the company, all but one have been basses.
The redesigned 4003S/5 (click to learn more) The Al Cisneros 4003AC Signature Limited Edition (click to learn more). The 4005 XC (click to learn more). The 4030 (click to learn more). The 4005V (click to learn more). The 3030 (click to learn more). And the 4002 SPC (click to learn more).
That’s a lot of basses.
But with the exception of the 4003S/5–and maybe the 4005V—few of them seem designed to answer a need the market was clearly expressing.
And believe me—not all of the 310 Les Pauls available are bringing something new to the table. Gibson and Fender both have basically a set of building blocks—price, electronics, neck size, pickups, finish—that they can snap together in an almost infinite variety to give a slightly different spin on the same story.
Rickenbacker could do something similar—they have many of the same building blocks Fender and Gibson do—but they are constrained by their much smaller production capacity. They have a hard enough time keeping up with demand for one version of each core instrument—let alone 310 of them.
The strategy behind Fender and Gibson’s seemingly endless options is “a Stratocaster/Les Paul for everyone.” You like the way a Strat looks but not the way it sounds? We’ve got options. You don’t want a baseball bat neck on your Les Paul? We’ve got options.
Rickenbacker says “you can have it in Fireglo, Jetglo, or Mapleglo.” The end.
And for guitars, that’s probably enough.
But probably not for basses.
And again, Ben Hall seems to recognize the opportunity. But for the most part, what Rickenbacker has offered over the past few years has fallen more on the side of “cool” than “useful.” It gives the faithful something new to buy, but it doesn’t convince someone new to add Rickenbacker to their consideration set.
Novelty is not a strategy.
And to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with novelty. I like weird guitars. I like limited runs. I like seeing Rickenbacker build things I haven’t seen before. And judging by how quickly these models disappear, plenty of other people do too.
But selling something isn’t necessarily the same thing as expanding your market.
A limited-edition bass can be wildly successful at giving an existing Rickenbacker owner a reason to buy another Rickenbacker. That’s valuable. But it’s a fundamentally different proposition from giving someone who has never owned one a reason to buy their first.
The 4003S/5 did that. It opened up a whole new category for Rickenbacker. And it was well received, sold well enough…why it was discontinued is not clear to me. That model made sense.
I can even concede that while the 3030 will never be a high-volume model, it is unique enough—a 24.75” scale bass!—that it fills a gap in the market. A tiny gap perhaps, but a gap nonetheless.
Now to be fair, expanding your market is not a huge priority when demand oustrips supply—and this has been true for Rickenbacker since the mid 1980s. As I said in my article on F.C. Hall (which I realized as I was giving this article its last read-through I haven’t actually finished, so here’s a sneak peek!), one of the most consequential decisions in Rickenbacker’s history was the elder Hall’s decision not to expand in order to chase volume during the boom of the mid-1960s.
I posit in that article that Hall watching Leo Fender almost lose his business in the mid 1950’s after burning all his cash to expand production as demand rapidly grew—and having to rely on a loan from Hall to keep things afloat—likely played a role in his decision not to do the same. The result was a business that wasn’t equipped to take advantage of the peaks when they appeared, but also was able to weather the troughs.
And there have been troughs. Many companies couldn’t have survived the collapse in demand Rickenbacker experienced in the early 1970s…but they did.
You know what else makes weathering the troughs easier? A more diverse product line that appeals to a broader clientele. And as we’ve established, basses are where that opportunity exists.
And it’s clear that Ben gets that on some level. But here’s the thing: it’s been about forty years since Rickenbacker last experienced a significant trough. Forty years of operating with a not-insignificant backlog. Forty years in which finding enough customers simply hasn’t been the problem.
But the guitar market writ large is in a pretty significant slump right now. Fender has seen significant layoffs over the past year—even before they drew the market’s ire with their legal shenanigans. Used guitar prices have dropped significantly. Dealer inventory is up. Right this minute on Reverb you can buy a brand new 4003, 4003S, 4003SW, 325V63, 360, 360/12, 360/12C63, 330, 330/12, 330W, 350V63, 660, 660/12, 620…almost the entire line and almost all of them in any color. Do you know the last time that was true? Neither do I…but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this type of availability. I’m not saying we’re entering one of those historical troughs…but we’re a hell of a lot closer than I’ve ever seen.
Rickenbacker is making some smart strategic moves that may or may not be inspired by this downturn. The Boutique is moving from an outlet for one-off boredom-busters to carrying dedicated special runs available only from the Boutique. When you consider that dealer price is roughly half as much as MSRP, that means that when Rickenbacker sells these guitars directly at MSRP—or more, given most of these guitars’ special features—their revenue is at least twice as much on each guitar. That’s smart.
Now, this is a very small percentage of their total sales, but more revenue per guitar is a good thing. The problem is that the Boutique seems primarily designed to give existing customers another reason to buy, rather than attracting customers who haven’t considered Rickenbacker before. It’s not really a strategy for finding the next generation of Rickenbacker buyers.
There have been several smart, strategic moves designed to broaden the 4003’s appeal. A single truss rod. An improved bridge. A redesigned bridge pickup surround that eliminated the frankly pointless pickup cover. That last one may have angered some of the true believers, but it also removed one of the biggest objections of the non-believers. Smart, strategic moves.
And those moves were made to improve the 4003. A bass. The piece of the market where there’s a real opportunity for growth. Let’s get even more serious about that opportunity.
Bring back the 4003S/5. Introduce a 4003 with active electronics. Hell, introduce a 5-string model with active electronics. See what’s consistently selling in the broader market and offer a Rickenbacker to meet that need. We know the market will be willing to consider Rickenbacker, so give them one to consider.
And a down market is the ideal time to do that. You need to give people a compelling reason to buy something new when used instruments are dirt cheap. And even famously capacity-constrained Rickenbacker can probably find the capacity to work something new in. Even when the backlog has been huge they have always found a way to reserve capacity for something special—Color of the Year, Signature Limited Editions, Anniversary models….use that capacity to expand the product line in a way that makes sense instead. In a way that makes the line stronger if the trough gets worse.
That’s not novelty, that’s strategy.
Which brings me, at long last, to the 4002 SPC that this article is ostensibly about. Here’s where I’ve landed: it looks nice enough, and they sell immediately. As a limited run it’s a hit. It’s not a 4002, but it’s a hit. I begrudgingly don’t begrudge Rickenbacker making instruments like that. Don’t stop doing those things. Serving fans is always a good call.
But I believe there’s a real opportunity to grow the bass line and market share—and help future-proof the business in the process. Why not do that too?