We talk about every other specification and feature that exists—sometimes in excruciating detail—but not the one feature that almost every single model has: side dots.

Because who pays attention to side dots? I mean, when you’re playing you might look down every once in a while, but as a feature of a guitar worth talking about? They’re background noise.

But there are rules, and we might as well document them on the slim chance someone wakes up at three in the morning with a burning question about Rickenbacker side dots.

So here are the rules: instruments with white binding get black dots, and instruments with no binding or black binding get white dots. Makes sense, no?

But you know what’s coming next, right? Because this is Rickenbacker, after all.

Except when they are red.

Now you’re going to have to trust me on this and be willing to squint a lot because for some reason great detail photos of side dots are few and far between. But there are two periods when red dots were the rule on guitars with white binding.

The Capri models of 1958 introduced the idea of “deluxe” models, and red side dots were one of the features that distinguished them.

You may need to use your imagination a little bit, but I promise you those are red. Note also the three dots at the twelfth fret on this prototype Capri!

And no, the red dots weren’t just a prototype thing. Here they are again in 1959:

Admittedly they’re not a Coca-Cola bright red—they do have 67 years of grime and ambered clear coat—but they’re red nevertheless.

1960, 1961, 1962…zoom in and squint and you’ll see it. They’re red. And, of course, you know about this one from 1963:

I’d love to show you a close-up photo of the red dots on George Harrison’s 1963 360/12, but who cares enough about the side dots to take a picture? Regardless, this guitar has red side dots too. I promise.

Let me prove it. Just to show how much effort they were putting into getting the 360/12C63 reissue of that guitar as close to the original as possible, consider this: when the guitar was launched in 2005, its red side dots got almost as much attention as the internal X-bracing (click to learn more).

The 360/12C63 has retained its red side dots to this day.

So why, then, did I begin this article by saying deluxe guitars with white binding have black dots? Because, all things considered, the red side dots didn’t last all that long. The black dots started appearing in late 1964, and have been the rule ever since. More or less.

Now it would be very logical and clean to say the change coincided with the launch of the new round-top 360 New Style in 1964, so of course it didn’t…exactly.

When the 6-string version of the 360 New Style launched in early 1964, it did so with the same red dots everything else had used up to that point. But when the 12-string appeared in December, it had something more than the six extra strings: black side dots.

Was that the end of red side dots? Close enough. I won’t say you won’t find 1965 guitars with red side dots…but you won’t find many.

It’s well established that during this period when the shop floor ran out of “something,” they’d grab whatever was handy. That likely explains the handful of red-dot 1965 guitars you’ll find.

The rule was established. But as always with Rickenbacker, you can never rule out the exceptions.

So, the end? Not quite. Red dots would rear their tiny little heads once again in 1974.

Sometime around May, instruments began leaving the factory with red dots. Intentionally, but not due to a spec change.

Here’s what former shop employee Dale Fortune has to say about it:

“…for some reason we used Red side dot/fret marker material when we ran out of the black stuff. Don't know why, it was in the supply room and when Dick Burke said use this, we did. It wasn't used as a special thing, but at random, mostly on the 480s as I remember.”

And here’s former employee Mark Arnquist’s recollection:

“Bill would go buy rolls of the stuff and some times the company would be out of stock of the black PVC material .

We used Blue,Red , green , Brown instead of black. In 1976 we even had a guy that kept installing three dots at the 12th fret .... these would get a blue and red dot scheme.”

There’s some disconnect between those two tellings—but let’s note that both came about 30 years after the fact and time blurs details. Regardless, there’s a common theme: we ran out of the regular stuff, so we used what was available.

Except…it wasn’t just the 480, like Dale Fortune says. It was pretty much everything made between May and August of 1974.

And mostly what they made between May and August of 1974 was 4001s. A lot of 4001s.

This is not some rare phenomenon I have uncovered. Google “red-dot 1974 4001” and you’ll get plenty of results. That said, I’m not sure it’s widely known that pretty much everything made in that window had red dots. After all, since almost everything that came out of the factory at that point was a 4001, it’s easy to miss.

But the sheer volume of red-dot instruments made in this window raises an interesting question. Who exactly ran out of the black material?

I mean, I can see grabbing a roll of red out of the storeroom to use for a week or so while you get more black in. But you had to have a lot of red rolls in the storeroom to cover a four-month window.

It sounds more to me like their supplier ran out of the black material and asked, “Will red do?”

I mean, that’s just a guess, but it fits the evidence pretty well. As to the whole rainbow of colors Mark Arnquist calls out…it hasn’t surfaced. I sure hope it does, though!

So yeah: red dots are a real thing, and frankly the only thing that makes Rickenbacker side dots worth mentioning. Because who pays attention to side dots?

You could custom-order one of those colors with “normal” white plastics and chrome hardware—and guitars so outfitted absolutely exist—but black was the default.

At the same time, you could custom-order the “other” stock finishes with black hardware and black trim. And there are a lot of “blacked out” Jetglo guitars out there. I think that looks pretty badass.

Ruby also looks pretty sick!

But then there’s Fireglo.

Could it be custom-ordered with black hardware and black trim? Absolutely. Should it be? I’ll let you make that decision.

Speaking for myself—and your results may vary—woof.

To me? It’s an abomination.

Okay, okay, that may be a little harsh, but that box wasn’t clicked many times—there are only seven BH/BT instruments on the Register—and to me it’s pretty clear why.

Black trim—but not black hardware—first appeared in 1974. It was limited to White, Mapleglo, and Walnut/Autumnglo instruments only. And that’s smart. It looks good there.

Did they offer black trim on Fireglo in the 1970s? They did not. They knew.

Look. I lived through the BH/BT era. I thought they were cool back in the day. Twenty years later I thought they looked hopelessly dated. Now I think they’re cool again.

Except Fireglo. Ouch.

This particular guitar is for sale on Reverb right now. If it appeals to you, you could make an offer…but who hurt you?

Want to see more weird guitars? Scroll down to the “Rare & Unusual Instruments” section in the Rickenbacker 101 Archive!

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!

So believe me when I say it takes a lot to genuinely surprise me. But while doing the research for our 420/425 overview (click to learn more) article, I stumbled across one of those things.

Now if you read that article, this fact is already in there. But I realize that’s a long article that not everyone is going to read all the way through, and this detail is just so…weird I felt it deserved its own quick write-up. So here it is.

Nobody looks closely at the backs of guitars. What’s there to see, really? All the interesting stuff is happening on the other side.

And in this particular case we’re talking about the 420—an entry-level model that collectors mostly ignore. So it’s not a big surprise that nobody has really talked about this before. Who would notice? Or care?

But it’s just so damn weird you need to know about it.

If I asked you to picture the back of a 420, this is what you’d probably come up with:

Now there will be a handful of “well, actually…” folks who’ll point out—correctly—that most 420s had a set neck, not a through-neck, so we should really be picturing this instead:

And, yeah, they’re not wrong. So—apart from that difference, how would you describe those two backs?

I’d wager most of you came up with the same answer I did: flat. Maybe you’d call out the slight contouring around the waist, but essentially flat. That’s what the back of a 420 looks like.

Except for about a year—from late 1965 to late 1966. Then it looked like this:

That slight contour at the waist you expected to see? It just…keeps going. Basically around the entire back.

Think that’s an isolated example? How about this?

Or this?

Or this?

Or this?

When I stumbled across the first one, I assumed it had been modified—maybe by someone trying to turn it into a 650. But then I found another one. And another one.

And the same thing kept going through my head: that’s just not right.

Now I don’t know much, but I’ll tell you what I do know.

This “feature” appears to be limited to the 420 and ES-17 (click to learn more). Set-neck 425s and 450s (click to learn more) produced during the same period have “normal” contouring on the back.

The earliest example I’ve found dates to October 1965. The last is from November 1966. By January 1967, it was gone.

In typical Rickenbacker fashion, there are also 420s and ES-17s with normal backs from inside this window because of course there are.

And that’s it. That’s all I know. And that’s because, as far as I can tell, nobody has ever noticed this—or bothered to write anything about it before. I’ve tried every search term I could think of, and they all come back empty.

I have no explanation, no insight, no grand theory. I just found this really weird thing, and I wanted you to know about it.

So now you do.

Most of the time, an idea grabs me so completely that I just drop everything and start writing.

But then there’s “the list.” Whenever I think of a topic that deserves an article but doesn’t spark my interest right then, it goes onto the list. At the moment there are more than fifty of them patiently waiting their turn. About half are partially written, abandoned when something shinier came along. The rest are simply…waiting for inspiration.

The 420/425 has been camping near the bottom of that list for well over a year.

That’s a little unfair, really. It’s an important model with a long production run, and once this article is finished I’ll probably have to go back and add links to it from dozens of other articles across the site.

But I’ll be honest—it still isn’t speaking to me. Let’s see if writing it changes that.

Few Rickenbacker models get misidentified more often than the 420 and 425. And that’s one hundred percent down to Rickenbacker screwing up the model number from the very start.

You see, there’s a rule in Rickenbacker model numbering: models that end with a 5 have a vibrato, and models that end with an 0 don’t. Yet when the 425 was introduced in 1958, it did not have a vibrato.

Now the rule was only a year old at that point, but still: how do you forget a brand new rule? Or, worse yet, why establish it only to ignore it immediately?

The 425—despite its brand new (if wrong) model number—wasn’t actually a brand new model. You could argue it replaced the Combo 400, but that’s not quite right either. If anything, it was more of a rebrand than a replacement. Let me show you why.

This is the 1956 Combo 400 (click to learn more). It was the third electric Spanish model offered by Rickenbacker after F.C. Hall’s purchase of the company in 1953, and the first Rickenbacker designed by Roger Rossmeisl (click to learn more).

Hall’s first two offerings—the 1954 Combo 600 and 800 (click to learn more)—were almost more proofs of concept than finished products, and he took what he had learned from them to develop Rossmeisl’s design brief for the Combo 400.

That brief called for a simple, scalable solidbody entry-level guitar. Which the Combo 400 absolutely was—even if it looked a little funny with its tulip-shaped top.

In 1957 the Combo 400 family grew with the addition of the Combo 450 (click to learn more)—a Combo 400 with an extra pickup. Later in the year, the Combo 450—but not the Combo 400—underwent surgery on the lower cutaway to improve player access to the higher frets.

1958 brought the model’s most dramatic visual change: the introduction of the cresting wave (click to learn more) cutaway.

But the new design is more evolutionary than revolutionary. Look closely at the new upper horn and you’ll see that the outer profile hasn’t changed at all. Instead, Rossmeisl simply scooped away the inside edge to create the distinctive cresting wave silhouette.

Now we’ve been talking about the two-pickup Combo 450, but the one-pickup model underwent the same redesign at the same time. And with that redesign came a new name: the Combo 425.

Before we talk about the guitar itself, we need to briefly talk about its name. Not the 425 bit—we’ve already established that’s wrong—but the “Combo” bit.

Rickenbacker price lists continued to refer to solidbodied guitars as the “Combo Series” through 1969. Collectors don’t. But collectors also don’t entirely agree on where the Combo name should stop.

There are two primary schools of thought. The first says the name “Combo” belongs only to the tulip-bodied guitars. Once the cresting wave bodies arrive, the Combo name dies with them.

The second school argues that the Combo era ends with the 1961 redesign, when the 425 and 450 shrank from1 5/8-inch to 1 1/4-inch bodies and gained contoured edges.

Both arguments have merit, but simply because I think it’s cleaner I’m going with “the Combo died when the tulip did” school in this article.

So back to the guitar. There were four major changes—apart from the body shape—between the last Combo 400 and the first 425.

First, while the Combo 450 had launched with Rickenbacker’s brand new toaster pickup in place of the Combo 400’s DeArmond unit (click to learn more), the Combo 400 itself was never similarly upgraded. The 425, however, launched with a toaster from the very beginning.

And not only was the pickup new, its location was too, moving from the neck to the bridge position. The pickguard it mounted to was now white plastic instead of the anodized aluminum found on the older Combo 400—and the redesigned 450.

That made sense, given the overall design language Rickenbacker was developing. At this point in the company’s history, two features consistently signified student or entry-level models: white plastics and the so-called “aluminum foil” truss rod cover (click to learn more).

The 425 was clearly positioned as Rickenbacker’s entry-level full-sized model both by the design elements we’ve discussed and by its price. At $149.50—about $1,700 today—it cost a full $100 (about $1,150 today) less than a 330. The two-pickup 450 added another $35 (about $400 today).

For comparison, the 1958 Duo-Sonic—a model that occupied roughly the same place as the 425 in Fender’s lineup—carried the exact same $149.50 price tag. The Telecaster cost $199.50 (about $2,250 today), putting it very close to the 450.

That’s almost certainly no coincidence. As Fender’s former exclusive distributor—and a part owner—F.C. Hall knew the company’s products, pricing, and market positioning as well as anyone. He clearly knew who he believed the competition to be.

Now that we’ve established the 425’s historical context and its place in the Rickenbacker lineup, let’s run through the year-by-year changes to see how the model evolved.

1958-1960

Like the Combo 400 it replaced, the 425 launched with neck-through construction (click to learn more)—which feels a little ironic given that today neck-through construction is usually associated with high-end or boutique instruments rather than entry-level guitars. The one-piece through-neck section and body wings were all solid maple. At launch, the 425 featured maple headstock wings.

Almost immediately, the maple headstock wings gave way to walnut. The 425 retained the open-geared Grover Sta-Tite tuners (click to learn more) however—another signifier of its entry-level positioning.

While the pickup and its location may have changed from the Combo 400’s, the controls did not. The 425 featured volume and tone controls, as well as a two-way switch that either did nothing or engaged an early Telecaster-style low-pass “strangle switch” for darker tones. The output jack also remained face-mounted.

The bridge was equally familiar. The 425 utilized the same bridgeplate and standard six-saddle bridge that all solidbodied Rickenbackers had used up to that point—hidden beneath a chrome “ashtray” bridge cover that clipped onto the pickguard. The serial number was stamped into the bridgeplate.

Flipping the guitar over, we can see that the thoroughly useless saxophone ring from the Combo 400 carried over to the 425—although it also had more useful traditional strap buttons. You’ll also notice two white dots in the neck-through section.

Those dots are the relics of tooling locating pins used to hold the instrument during the manufacturing process.

Usually it’s fairly easy to narrow down—if not always pinpoint—when a spec change occurred. Not so with a quartet of changes that occurred sometime over the 425’s first three years of production.

Complicating matters is the serial numbering scheme (click to learn more) in place at the time. Unlike the scheme used from 1961 onward, which tells us the year and month (or even week) of production—or the system used on other Rickenbacker models at the time, which at least identifies the production year—the 425’s serial numbers from 1958 to 1960 provide almost no useful dating information. Pot codes are our best bet—when we have them.

So here’s what we know changed over that period, even if we don’t know exactly when. My best guess is late 1958 or early 1959.

First, working from top to bottom, the Grover Sta-Tite tuners were replaced by Kluson Deluxe units with white plastic buttons.

There’s one interesting detail that the photo above—which shows a Fireglow guitar—doesn’t make obvious. Here are the colors the 425 was offered during this period:

1958: Jet Black (Jetglo), Natural (Mapleglo), and Montezuma Brown.

1959-1960: Black Diamond (Jetglo), Natural, and Fireglow (Fireglo).

On every finish except Black, the neck and headstock were painted to match the body. Black guitars, however, retained Natural-finished necks and headstocks. So if you see a Black 425 from this era with a black neck or headstock, it’s almost certainly been refinished.

The second change was arguably the most consequential: the single pickup moved farther away from the bridge, slightly mellowing the guitar’s tone.

Change number three, also shown above, saw the controls reoriented into a diamond pattern.

For change number four, we have to flip the guitar over.

The cursed saxophone ring was at long last banished from the Rickenbacker line.

Those four changes are frustratingly hard to date. Fortunately, the changes introduced in 1961 are much easier to pin down.

1961-1962

It should become clear relatively quickly why some collectors consider 1961 as the end of the Combo era. Starting in May, many of the cruder elements of the 425’s design that had carried over from the Combo 400 began a refinement process that would carry into 1962.

And thanks to the new-for-1961 year/month serial numbering system, it’s also much easier to pinpoint exactly when those changes occurred.

The first—and most consequential—arrived in May 1961, when the 425’s body shrank from 1 5/8 inches to 1 1/4 inches, and its edges became contoured for greater player comfort.

At the same time, the shape of the pickguard smoothed out slightly, with what had been angles giving way to gentle curves—a process that would continue on into 1962. The material changed as well—transitioning to “sign white” Plexiglas on all models with white plastics.

One year later, in May 1962, a number of changes brought the 425 much closer to its definitive 1960s specifications. At the top, the wings of the headstock changed from walnut back to maple, and the “aluminum foil” truss rod cover gave way to the white backpainted Plexiglas truss rod cover that was on its way to becoming the company’s standard.

A number of changes happened at the other end as well. The pickup moved even farther from the bridge—to what was essentially the exact middle position—the pickguard’s shape softened a little further still, and the bridge underwent a significant redesign.

The 425’s bridgeplate was shortened by about half an inch, and the six-saddle bridge was replaced by a floating, one-piece compensated unit. The entire assembly was neatly framed by a new pickguard cutout that also helped hold the bridge in place.

And finally, the last link to the Combo 400—the tool-locating pin holes on the back—disappeared for good.

But we can’t talk about the 425 and 1962 without discussing one of the oddest Rickenbacker models of the early 1960s: the private label Contello/Symfonia Grand (click to learn more).

Produced for the Mann Music School, the Contello/Symfonia Grand was based on the 425, but featured a number of cosmetic changes and one significant structural departure—a two-piece body with a set-neck. The model would ultimately prove an important proof of concept for a guitar that debuted the following year.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that one of the most famous—if not the most famous—425s was a 1962 model (click to learn more) bought by a pre-fame lad from Liverpool during a 1963 trip to the United States to visit his sister.

1963-1964

The Contello/Symfonia Grand proved that music schools were a lucrative market with strong demand for private-label student instruments. Rickenbacker responded with two models (click to learn more) in 1963: the ES-16, based on the short-scale 1000 (click to learn more), and the 425-based ES-17.

If the ES-17 looks like a stock 425 with a funny truss rod cover, that’s because it is a stock 425 with a funny truss rod cover. Buyers could order the guitar with their own name on the headstock or with “Electro” branding—once Rickenbacker’s primary brand, now relegated to private-label duty.

In classic waste-not-want-not Rickenbacker fashion, early ES-17 truss rod covers simply riveted an Electro lap steel badge onto a blank Rickenbacker cover. But by early 1964 Electro guitars had their own unique back-painted Plexiglas cover.

Changes to the 425 were minimal over the course of 1963 and 1964—and most were line-wide rather than model specific.

In December 1963, the headstock on all models narrowed slightly to what is commonly referred to as the “vintage” shape. The following month, in January 1964, all Rickenbacker truss rod covers had “MADE IN U.S.A.” added below and parallel to the logo at Rose-Morris’s request for the UK market.

At the same time, the neck heel on the back transitioned from square to rounded—a line-wide change that accompanied the move to the smaller “vintage” headstock.

Those small details—a slightly narrower headstock, a rounded heel—were the 425’s final substantive design changes. Well, almost.

1965-1967

In 1965 Rickenbacker finally corrected the mistake they had made back at the 425’s launch—in the worst possible way.

The 425 was officially renamed the 420. Had they left it at that, it would have been confusing enough for future collectors. But Rickenbacker couldn’t resist making things even more confusing by introducing an entirely new 425—this time with a vibrato, just as the model number had always suggested.

The new 425’s vibrato—often misidentified as a “Boyd” vibrato (click to learn more)—was a simple, off-the-shelf Japanese unit.

Hidden beneath the chrome cover was a bar that served as both the string anchor and the pivot point. Pushing or pulling on the arm rotated the bar, lowering or raising the pitch. Springs returned it to its neutral position.

While simple, its performance was no worse than the Accent vibrato (click to learn more) fitted to higher-end models—and may, in fact, have been slightly better!

A number of minor changes were made to the 425 to accommodate the new vibrato. The bridgeplate became unnecessary and was eliminated. The pickguard was reshaped to make room for the vibrato unit while also helping hold the floating bridge in place. And, for reasons that aren’t immediately apparent, the control layout was slightly altered.

The loss of the bridgeplate caused a problem that probably hasn’t occurred to you: where do you stamp the serial number?

We have an entire article explaining how the system worked here (click to learn more), but the short version is this: the production number was stamped onto the base of the vibrato cover, but not the year/month code. To narrow down a guitar’s age you have to use pot codes to estimate the year and data from the Rickenbacker Register to estimate the month. It’s less than ideal, but it is what it is.

The “new” 1965 420 was identical to the “old” 1964 425 in every way except the model number. But a significant change would begin phasing in around October 1965, and it’s going to look weird to you.

So yes, the big change is that the 420 and 425 transitioned from neck-through construction to a set neck with a two-piece maple body—probably in an effort to reduce manufacturing costs on this entry-level model. But that’s likely not what first caught your eye in the photo above.

The contour on the back now extended around the entire perimeter of the body, not just the lower bout as it had only a few months earlier. And that just doesn’t look right.

Apparently Rickenbacker thought so too. Well, probably not that—they likely realized they could save a little labor by going back to the old contours. Either way, by early 1967 the backs of the cutaways were no longer contoured.

Funnily, I have yet to come across a 425 with this contoured back—even among those built between late 1965 and early 1967 when most 420s had it.

It’s also worth mentioning that you will in fact find neck-through 420s and 425s during this era. The 450 was still neck-through, and sometimes they grabbed whatever body happened to be working its way through the shop. So don’t be surprised to flip a guitar over and find a through neck.

The last changes of note during the 1965-1967 period also appeared around October 1965. The bridgeplate reverted to the longer version that had been used prior to 1962, and the cutout in the pickguard was altered to fit. At the same time, the controls on the 420 shifted to match the layout that had first appeared on the new 425.

Although it would remain on the price list through 1974, the 425’s story appears to have ended in 1967 as I have found no documented examples built after then. But its legacy lives on to this day, continuing to confuse collectors trying to distinguish between the original 425, the renamed 420, and the new “with vibrato” 425.

1968-1984

The remainder of the 420’s life was, all things considered, relatively uneventful. Most changes were either part of line-wide changes, like truss rod cover tweaks (click to learn more), or simply brought the model in line with the rest of the product range. In several ways, the 420 had lagged behind the rest of the lineup.

For example, by 1968 the 420 and its private-label ES-17 variant—which remained in production through 1972—were the last Rickenbacker models still using Kluson Deluxe tuners with white plastic buttons. They may have been marginally cheaper, but they were also one more unique part the factory had to keep in inventory. In 1969 they gave way to the nickel button Klusons used on every other guitar.

And then there were the knobs. Along with the 4000 bass, the 420 was one of the last two-knob instruments in the Rickenbacker line. Starting in 1965, all four and five knob guitars had transitioned to the silver-topped knobs with their familiar “Treble Tone” and “Bass Volume” labels.

The 420, however, had carried on with the old black Kurz-Kach knobs—the silver-topped knobs bore labels that simply didn’t apply to a one-pickup guitar. In 1975 they were finally replaced with unlabeled silver-top knobs.

And finally there’s the pickup. The 420 and 450 were the last holdouts outfitted with toaster pickups after the rise of the Higain in the early 1970s. That ended in 1974 when the single toaster pickup was replaced with a button-top Higain.

But because Rickenbacker is gonna Rickenbacker, in 1975 the white plastic-button Klusons returned.

The 420 saw no further model-specific changes after 1975.

As Rickenbacker guitar sales slowly increased in the early 1980s and the backlog once again began to grow, an entry-level model whose sales had never been stellar became more of a distraction than an asset. After John Hall bought the company from his father in 1984 he ruthlessly pruned the product line. The 420 did not appear on the 1985 price list.

1999 Postscript

In 1999 John Hall announced two new special run guitars: the 425V63 and 450V63 (click to learn more). A limited ordering window was opened, and only as many guitars as were ordered during that period would be built.

Inspired by George Harrison’s 1962 425, both models were fairly faithful reproductions of the 1962 guitars—the only obvious anachronism was the longer bridgeplate. The guitars were offered in Jetglo and Burgundyglo—a finish that didn’t exist in 1962.

The guitars also marked the debut of the new scatterwound toaster pickups, the most faithful reproductions yet of the original vintage units. 84 425V63s were produced in Jetglo and 34 in Burgundyglo.

And that’s everything you could ever want to know about the 425/420—the little entry-level guitar that could.

I’ll admit it took me a while to get into this one, but here’s the thing I love about this process: researching this article connected a pair of dots that had always been right in front of me, yet I had never seen before. I had always thought of the 1963 reduction in headstock width and transition from square to rounded heels as two separate events. They’re not. They are directly related—you don’t get one without the other.

So now I have a whole bunch of Timeline articles to go update…along with adding a ton of links back to this one.

That worked pretty well until a couple months ago when I came up with an article that didn’t fit any of those headers—a piece that traced my thought process and research methodology to answer the question: did this guitar fragment come from an instrument smashed by Pete Townshend? Thus was born “Detective Stories”

But while I was working on my piece on the New Capris, another idea lodged itself into my brain. I wanted to follow it wherever it led. And so I did. And the farther I went, the more I realized that none of our categories—including Detective Stories—really fit.

So I’m introducing “Think Pieces.” Will it last? I don’t know. Does it feel appropriate? It does. So let’s get philosophical!

The very first modern Rickenbacker electric Spanish guitar was the Combo 600.

And every Rickenbacker since is also a Combo 600.

Well…not every single one, obviously, but most of them are.

Technically I could say every Rickenbacker is a Combo 600, a 4000, or a Forrest White—with a couple of oddballs thrown in. But the overwhelming majority of them are Combo 600s.

Don’t believe me? Let me prove it. In chronological order.

This is a Combo 600 (1954):

And this is a Combo 800 (1954):

But it’s really a Combo 600 with a humbucker pickup.

Here is a Combo 400 (1956):

But it’s really just a Combo 600 with a tulip top.

This is where I should probably stop for a minute and explain what I mean. Because obviously, that’s not a Combo 600.

Or is it? Ignore the upper half for a minute. Look at it from the waist down. Now compare it to a Combo 600.

Same outline.

Above the belt? Sure. That’s new.

Below the belt?

It’s a Combo 600.

Let’s continue.

Here’s an early 1957 1000:

That’s a short-scale Combo 400 with a slightly tweaked tulip top.

And a Combo 400 is really a Combo 600.

Here’s a 900 (1957):

That’s a 1000 with a slightly different treble cutaway and more frets, and a 1000 is a Combo 400 with a tweaked tulip top.

And a Combo 400 is really a Combo 600.

Here’s a 950 (1957):

A 950 is a 900 with two pickups. And as we’ve established above, a 900 is a 1000, which is in turn a Combo 400.

And a Combo 400 is really a Combo 600.

Let’s look at something completely different from all those short-scale solidbodies. This is a Combo 850 (1957).

But it’s really just a Combo 600 with a new upper cutaway.

Here’s an early 1957 Combo 450:

But it’s really a Combo 400 with an extra pickup.

And a Combo 400 is really a Combo 600.

Here’s a Combo 450 from later in 1957.

The upper cutaway was reshaped to improve access to the upper frets. But you already know that underneath it all it’s really a Combo 400.

And a Combo 400 is really a Combo 600.

1958 saw the introduction of the Capri line of semi-hollowbody guitars. The first of these were the short-bodied guitars, like this 325 Capri:

The 325 is really a short-scale, semi-hollowbody Combo 850 without a German carve.

And the Combo 850 is really a Combo 600.

Here’s a prototype 325 from 1958:

This prototype 325 is really a stretched-out production 325, which is really a Combo 850.

And a Combo 850 is really a Combo 600.

Here’s a full-size Capri from 1958, a 330 Capri:

At this point you’re probably going to say there’s no way this is a Combo 600. But I’d argue you’re wrong.

Because what is the Capri other than a widened version of that long-body 325 prototype?

And that long-body 325 prototype is really a stretched-out version of the short-scale Capri, which is itself really a Combo 850.

And a Combo 850 is really a Combo 600.

1958 also saw the introduction of the new cresting-wave 425 and 450:

Looks brand new, right?

Nope. It’s really the late 1957 Combo 450 with the upper “tulip” horn scooped out to form the cresting wave. And a Combo 450 is really a Combo 400.

And a Combo 400 is really a Combo 600.

There was a last-minute addition to the 1958 line, the full-size F-body jazz guitars like this 330F:

The F-body guitars are not really a Combo 600.

1961 saw the appearance of the New Capris, like this 1961 375 New Capri:

And what is a New Capri but a Capri with bigger horns and a lower, more pinched waist? And if we walk it back, a Capri is really a Combo 850.

And, of course, a Combo 850 is really a Combo 600.

In 1962, we saw the first 625:

The 625 was really a 450 with deluxe appointments (click to learn more) and a different deck height (click to learn more). And you see where this is going, right?

It’s really a Combo 600.

In 1963, the New Capris morphed into the modern 330 and 360OS, like this 1963 365OS:

The modern 330 and 360OS are really just slightly smaller New Capris with white plastics, and we’ve already traced those step by step back to the Combo 850.

Which is really a Combo 600.

1964 saw the introduction of the New Style 360:

The New Style 360 is really a 360OS with rounded horns and a rounded-over top. Which…you know.

It’s really a Combo 600.

And then there’s the 1967 6000 Bantar:

I’ll give you that one. The Bantar is the anti-Combo 600.

And maybe—maybe—I’m stretching it a bit with the 1968 6006 and 6005 Banjoline twins:

But really, squint and what do you see? A slightly misshapen New Style 360 with a German carve. And what, really, is a New Style 360?

It’s a Combo 600.

But there’s no stretching it with the 1969 381:

That’s a big 360OS with a German carve. And there’s no question what a 360OS is.

It’s a Combo 600.

1970s new models were almost entirely 4000s and Forrest Whites. I’m not saying the fact that they’re not Combo 600s is the reason they’re not still around, but I’m not not saying that either.

We did get the doubleneck 362 in 1974:

The 362 is a double-wide flat-top New Style 360. There are a ton of steps in this one’s lineage: New Style 360/360OS/New Capri/Capri/long-body 325 Capri prototype/325 Capri/Combo 850.

And that makes it a Combo 600.

1983 brought us the 350:

This one’s easy. The 350 is a full-size 325 Capri, which is a Combo 850.

And that’s a Combo 600.

But we’ve now more or less covered all the branches of the family tree, right? Well, John Hall launched a couple of modern models during his time, like the 650 in 1992:

But of course, the 650 is a 24-fret 450, which is a Combo 450 which is a Combo 400 which is a…

Combo 600.

And last but not least is what is probably the most underappreciated model of the John Hall era, 1995’s 380L Laguna:

I don’t even need to say it, do I? You know what it is.

Ok, maybe I’m reaching a bit with this whole “everything is a Combo 600” shtick. But there’s a real kernel of truth in there: all of these guitars can directly trace their design lineage back to the Combo 600, a mostly forgotten model from the very start of the modern Rickenbacker story.

When I wrote my article on the Combo 600 and 800 (click to read), my basic thesis was that those guitars were basically placeholders while F.C. Hall figured out how to run a guitar company. And I stand by that.

But it turns out they’re a lot more important than I gave them credit for.

How could they not be when everything’s a Combo 600?

Yet there very clearly are guitars that aren’t the old-style Capris but aren’t quite modern 330s/360s either. Collectors needed some way to talk about them without explaining all of that every time, and so the term “New Capri” was born.

So let’s talk about the New Capris. And to do that, we have to start with the plain old Capris—the granddaddies of the modern semi-hollowbody Rickenbackers.

We’ve discussed here many times the astounding creative output of Roger Rossmeisl (click to learn more) between 1957 and 1958, but it’s worth a quick refresher on the flurry of activity that resulted in the Capri guitars. I promise we’ll go quick.

The 1954 Combo 600 & 800 (click to learn more)—which Rossmeisl didn’t actually design himself—was the starting point. In early 1957, Rossmeisl took that silhouette, reshaped the upper cutaway, and exaggerated the German carve (click to learn more) to create the Combo 850.

That shape lives on today in the 325C64 (click to learn more) and 350 (click to learn more). But the Combo 850 was a solidbody, unlike its semi-hollow descendants. In early 1958, Rossmeisl took the Combo 850 shape and carved out the back to create the “Polynesian” prototype (click to learn more)—the first modern Rickenbacker semi-hollowbodied guitar.

This would quickly be simplified—losing the time-consuming German carved top—to create the foundation for the short-scale Capri models.

Rossmeisl would then take the small body and stretch it slightly.

And with a couple of final tweaks—widening the body and adding a slash soundhole—the 24.75-inch-scale Capri was born.

You can certainly see the family resemblance with the modern 330 (click to learn more), but the design still wasn’t quite all the way there yet.

Still, it was enough to build a brand identity around. The “Capri Series, Thin Body” launched in 1958 with twelve models: four in “3/4 scale” and eight “full size.” Rickenbacker, as we know it today, had arrived.

It took a year or so for the specs to finalize—three-piece maple bodies, 6 1/8 inch slash soundholes, four knob/one switch controls, split-level pickguard, trapeze tailpiece or Kauffman Vibrola (click to learn more)—but once they did, the template was set. That’s not to say the Capri models didn’t see some changes over the years: the backs changed from plywood to solid maple, and the Kauffman was replaced by the Accent vibrato (click to learn more). But the basic shape and electronics remained.

To easily differentiate these early guitars—including the short-scale models—we refer to the model number, followed by Capri. So the guitar above is a 335 Capri. Use that exact term, and everyone knows exactly which 335 you’re talking about.

About that name: Capri. When every single source gives you the same explanation, it’s either really right or really wrong. I could tell you the guitars were named to evoke the glamorous Italian island of the same name, or the ancient Greek word “kapros,” meaning wild goat, which may be where the island got its name. But every single source says it was named after the Hall family cat, Capri. I expect that’s right.

By 1960 “Capri” had disappeared from the price list, with the models being referred to simply as “310-375 Series, Thin Body.” Why did the Capri name get dropped? We’ll likely never know. But in collector-speak, that original silhouette would remain a Capri forever.

After the 1958 product line was finalized, with no more suggestions or requests coming from F.C. Hall, Roger Rossmeisl found himself without much to do except build guitars. He played around with some acoustic models which never made it into production. Bored, with friction building with shop manager Ward Deaton, Rossmeisl probably knew his time with Rickenbacker was coming to an end. But he had one last masterpiece up his sleeve.

In mid-1961, Rossmeisl took the existing Capri body and enlarged the horns, lowered and pinched the waist slightly, and reduced the body depth from 2 inches to 1 1/2 inches. The New Capri had arrived.

Now you may look at that shape and say, “that looks like a regular old 330 or a 360OS.” You’re absolutely right—it does. Mostly. So what sets it apart and makes it a New Capri?

Less than you might think. It’s the plastic bits—gold plastics (click to learn more) and cooker knobs carried over from the original Capris. That’s it.

Almost. The other difference isn’t easy to spot: the lower body bout on the New Capri is 15 1/4 inches wide, compared to the modern guitar’s 15 inches.

The New Capris did introduce one additional new feature designed to address one of the biggest complaints players had about their predecessors—imbalanced pickups.

Until 1984 or so, most two or three-pickup Rickenbackers featured a .0047µF high-pass filter—referred to today as the “vintage tone circuit” (click to learn more)—on the bridge pickup that significantly reduced the pickup’s bass response and output.

The New Capri introduced the fifth, “blend” knob (click to learn more) to allow the pickups’ levels to be equalized.

Not a lot of New Capris exist. They didn’t appear until mid-1961, 1962 production was relatively low thanks to the factory’s move from Los Angeles to Santa Ana early in the year, and by the end of 1963 the New Capri was no more.

What killed the New Capri? I won’t say it was this particular guitar, but it’s as good a “time of death” as any.

Rickenbacker had introduced white pickguards on solidbody models as early as 1958, and by 1961 all solidbodies were so equipped—although they still featured gold truss rod covers. Those would be replaced by white in 1962, leaving only the New Capris still wearing gold plastics.

So by 1963 gold plastics’ days were numbered—as was the slightly larger body. Harrison’s guitar, built in December, wasn’t the very first semi-hollowbodied guitar to get the same white plastics, black Kurz-Kach knobs and slightly smaller body, but it was a very early example.

There are no short-scale New Capris for two good reasons. First, the original short-scale Capri was not redesigned along with the full-scale models. And that’s because—reason number two—the short-scale Capris had been a flop. None were produced after 1960. If a certain guitarist hadn’t bought the very same V81 325 we saw F.C. Hall holding earlier in a Hamburg music store in 1960, Rickenbacker may very well have never built another semi-hollowbodied short-scale guitar.

So we have guitars made for a relatively short period, with a unique set of features and no official factory designation. That’s just begging for a collector classification. Ergo, the New Capri: no longer the old Capri, but not quite the modern guitar either.

After 1963 the 330 is just a 330, and the 360 is an Old Style/OS (click to learn more) or a New Style/NS—or, when the distinction doesn’t matter, just a plain old 360. But that’s a whole separate story.

And that’s how the New Capri became Rickenbacker’s own Schrödinger’s cat—simultaneously existing and not existing at the same time. Which only seems fair given the Capri’s original namesake.

They built a lot of Rose Morris 1996s in between, though, with sizeable special runs in 2006, 2008, and 2014. So it’s almost understandable what happened…but it’s still unfortunate.

Okay, this is going to be super-inside baseball, but it’s also one of those “once you see it you can’t unsee it” things. There were two different f-holes used on the 1996 over its lifetime. Here’s the first one, the so-called “2 o’clock” f-hole:

That’s what the f-hole looked like on the short-scale Capris from their launch in 1958 up through June of 1964—including the first several production batches of the Rose Morris 1996.

We refer to it as a “2 o’clock” f-hole because…well, imagine a clock face. Where is the upper end of the f-hole pointing? About 2 o’clock.

In July 1964 they changed it to “1 o’clock” to match all the other Rose Morris models.

Only there was more to the change than just slightly rotating the template. It was, in fact, a completely different template. Let’s inspect both of those f-holes closely.

At the top we have our 2 o’clock hole; at the bottom is our 1 o’clock. Look at the “points” in the middle of the f-hole. They’re in completely different places!

Let’s look at them side by side.

If you look at our 2 o’clock 1996 on the left, you’ll see that those two “points” are more or less level when the guitar is held upright. If you do the same with the 1 o’clock 1996 on the right, the “point” on the outside is a little bit higher than the one on the inside. This is how the f-hole appears on all Rose Morris guitars with a 1 o’clock f-hole.

But, just for fun, let’s take our 2 o’clock f-hole and rotate it to 1 o’clock.

Burn that image into your memory. It’s going to be important in a minute.

Okay, that was a lot of setup. Let’s move into the payoff.

Remember, Rickenbacker made zero production guitars with a 1 o’clock f-hole between 2002 and 2014. But in 2012 they built two special runs—one for the UK market, and one for the US market, and they wanted to do something different. Something that wasn’t a Rose Morris reproduction, but had a Rose Morris f-hole. Here’s the UK offer (click to learn more):

And here’s the US offer:

I mean, both of them have so much going on you might not notice it at first, but look at those f-holes.

Somebody grabbed the wrong template.

Here’s where it gets even more embarrassing. A few months earlier they built a bound Rose Morris 1998 and a 1993—one of less than ten 1993 reproductions built since the 1960s originals—for Tom Petty to take out on the road. Did they use the right template on those?

They did not. Whoever built those guitars appears to have introduced the wrong template—and nobody noticed.

At least one more guitar turned up with the wrong template—a 2013 Sea Green 330S/12 sold through the Rickenbacker Boutique. And before you ask, no, it wasn’t a leftover/overrun from the 2012 special runs—those had 21 frets and this one had 24.

When the collector community spotted the anomaly, they named it “the upside-down f-hole” because the “points” appear backwards from the correct 1 o’clock template. The highest “point” is on the outside on the correct template and the inside on the wrong template. But “upside-down” isn’t what’s really going on here. It’s just the wrong template.

Somebody at the factory finally noticed by 2014. That year, a special run of 24-fret 330-Fs was built for UK distributor Rosetti with the correct 1 o’clock template. From that point on, it’s all been good.

If you didn’t already know about this little oopsie, you probably would have never noticed if I hadn’t pointed it out. But now that I have, I promise you can’t unsee it!

Well, let’s not be so hasty. Dig into it and it won’t take you long to find sources that say it stands for “Special Pickup Configuration” or “Special Paint Color.” And for the very first applications that may be true—but that certainly isn’t what it means today.

Today it just means Special—although it’s a very specific kind of “Special.” So let’s run through the history to see how we got there—and what came before.

Rickenbacker first began adding an “S” for “special” to model numbers internally with the Rose Morris guitars in 1964, both for prototypes—like the 360S/12—and production guitars. A Rose Morris 1997, for example, appeared in factory records as a 335S: it was essentially a 335 with a special f-hole. When the same guitar was sold domestically, it carried the Model 335S designation to differentiate it from a standard 335.

That’s where the 4001S came from. The 4001 had binding and triangle inlays; the 1999 built for Rose Morris had neither—it was “special.”

That’s why we refer to Paul McCartney’s famous left-handed 1964 Rickenbacker bass (click to learn more) as a 4001S, not a 1999—it was made for him, not for Rose Morris.

And while none of the other Rose Morris models made it into the domestic lineup, the 4001S did. In fact, the domestic version went on to outlive the Rose Morris version by almost twenty years. The “S” even outlived the 4001 itself—still in use on its 4003S successor.

Despite living on to this day, the “S” never appeared on any non-Rose Morris-derived guitar. So how were “special” guitars internally coded prior to the introduction of the “SPC” designation?

I honestly don’t know. I don’t have access to the factory records that might answer that question, but the fact that nobody else seems to know either feels telling.

To be fair, up until the John Hall era, factory-built “special” guitars weren’t really a thing. There were a handful of oddball custom orders in the 1970s and early 1980s, but they were few and far between. Maybe there wasn’t a special code at all.

So when did SPC first show up? The first guitar I can find this designation attached to is, fittingly, the 1987 Rose Morris reissue 1997SPC.

Now you’re going to count the pickups and say, “three pickups means it’s a 1998, not a 1997.” And technically, you’re correct.

Let’s jump ahead a couple years and take a look at the 1989 price list—particularly the options list—to shed a little light on the matter.

Let’s home in on the last three items, starting at the bottom and working our way up.

“Custom pick-up charge” meant “replace the stock Higains with toasters,” and guitars so equipped were given a “VP” suffix for “Vintage Pickup” at the factory.

“Vintage vibrato” meant “add an Accent vibrato,” and guitars so equipped were designated “VB” for “Vibrato.”

And then there’s “Guitars which can be special ordered with three pickups.” At this point in Rickenbacker history, there were no production three-pickup 340s, 370s, or 1998s. They simply didn’t exist.

But you could order a 330, 360, or 1997 and tick that box to add a third pickup. That didn’t make it a 340, 370, or 1998, though. It made it a 330SPC, 360SPC, or…1997SPC.

I cannot find any factory literature that definitively tells us “SPC” stands for “Special Pickup Configuration.” Maybe that document is out there somewhere. Or maybe, over the years, people simply found a tidy way to make the letters fit the VB and VP pattern.

And while the 1997SPC appeared first, in 1987, 360SPCs and 330SPCs followed shortly thereafter. But while the SPC suffix appeared on internal documents and warranty cards for these guitars, it never appeared in catalogs or price lists. And when it did first appear on a price list, in 1989, it was for something completely different.

The 4003S/SPC Blackstar didn’t have a special pickup configuration—it had standard 4003 Higains. It did, however, have a distinctive body-colored painted fingerboard. This is where “Special Paint Code” enters the chat.

People want things to make sense. We invent patterns where none exist to give us that sense of order. I’m not saying that’s what happened here…but I’m not saying it isn’t either. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Or sometimes SPC just means “Special.”

The “add a third pickup” option disappeared in 1992, and the 370 and 370/12 returned to the price list the same year. The 1997SPC officially joined the price list the following year. If you wanted a 340? Too bad.

From 1993 to about 2001, the 1997SPC was really the only place you saw the SPC suffix apart from a handful of special runs, like the 1994 Norman’s Rare Guitars 1993SPC (click to learn more). But that changed in 2003, when the “modern” meaning of SPC began to take shape.

So what is that modern meaning? That’s a great question. It means special—that much we can all agree on—but beyond that? The rules for when it applies seem…flexible—yet still oddly specific.

There’s one thing it definitely doesn’t mean: it doesn’t mean only a special color. A special color can be part of what earns a guitar the SPC designation, but it has to be paired with at least one other special feature.

Here’s the first “modern” SPC model I can find—a 2003 4003SPC produced for the Japanese market:

So what makes this guitar an SPC? It’s not the color—it’s a “boring old” Jetglo. It’s the checkered binding and toaster neck pickup.

A production 4003 from 2003 had plain white binding and a Higain in the neck position. And that seems to be the key to what makes a guitar an SPC: something beyond color that sets it apart from the production model.

But not, at this point, “just” pickups or a vibrato. Those could still be ordered as options on most guitars—and either could also be easily added after the fact. Checkered binding couldn’t be—it had to come from the factory that way. So for this particular bass, it’s the combination of the binding and the pickup—both different from the production 4003—that earns the SPC designation.

And that brings us to an important distinction. You only find the SPC suffix on guitars that were part of a special run (click to learn more) or were built “just for fun” by the factory.

An individual customer orders a 360 with toasters? 360VP.

An individual customer orders a 360 with an Accent? 360VB.

A dealer orders a batch of 360s featuring some nonstandard combination of specs? The factory builds something weird just because they can? Now we’re in SPC territory.

SPC isn’t really describing any particular feature. It’s telling you that the guitar itself is a factory-created special variant—and remember that color alone isn’t enough. The unusual features are what make it special, but they aren’t necessarily what the letters themselves encode.

This 2014 Ruby 620 has normal pickups and normal binding, but was part of a special run for Japan that featured a mirrored pickguard and truss rod cover. It’s a 620SPC.

This 2025 1996 built for the Rickenbacker Boutique has a crazy Coralglo Pearl finish. Does that make it an SPC? Not by itself, no. But it also has Hofner teacup knobs, which are standard on zero Rickenbacker models. That makes it a 1996SPC.

Lately, just to make things even more confusing, Rickenbacker has begun adding to their special guitar designations.

That’s a weird one, right? We have two bridge pickups and a teardrop pickguard in the style of the 4003AC Al Cisneros Signature Limited Edition (click to learn more), plus a Montezuma Brown finish with checkered binding. 4003SPC for sure, right?

Partially. That’s a 4003 CB—for Checkered Binding—SPC, because why not?

Are there guitars that break the rules—guitars you’d expect to be designated SPC that aren’t, or vice versa? Sure. Rickenbacker’s gonna Rickenbacker. But that’s easier to reconcile when you start thinking of SPC as a classification, not a specification.

And once you do that, the modern meaning of SPC becomes clear: here’s a weird thing we made on purpose. The end.

I try to make every article as complete and accurate as I can before I hit publish, but I also want this site to be the most reliable Rickenbacker resource out there. That means treating it as a work in progress rather than a finished product.

While recently refreshing my articles on special runs (you can read Part One here and Part Two here), I came up with this turn of phrase that perfectly sets up today’s story:

The frustrating thing about special runs is that you almost have to know they exist in order to know they exist. They don’t show up in catalogs, don’t appear in price lists, and often survive only as rumors until enough examples emerge to prove they were actually a thing.

I’ve tried my best to capture them all. I keep a running list of guitars that I think belong to special runs but need more evidence before I’m willing to call them one. But sometimes I discover a special run that has been hiding in plain sight all along.

For example, I’d known for years that there was a 2009 run of Montezuma Brown 310C64s built for the Japanese market. In fact, it’s been listed in my special runs article almost since the site launched. But today I discovered there were actually two 2009 Japanese-market 310 special runs. Montezuma Brown, as already established, and Jetglo.

The 310 was an unusual choice for a special run. I’m not saying Rickenbacker built almost as many 310s in 2009 as they had in the previous fifty years…but that’s probably not too far off the mark.

The short-scale Capris introduced in 1958 came in four variants: the two-pickup 310, the two-pickup 315 with vibrato, the three-pickup 320, and the three-pickup 325 with vibrato. Obviously, thanks to John Lennon’s adoption of the 325, that model is by far the most famous today.

The two-pickup versions never really caught on—almost certainly because Lennon made the 325 the iconic short-scale Rickenbacker—and today both the 310 and 315 are quite rare.

But then again, that’s the whole point of a special run. They’re supposed to be a little unusual. And few production Rickenbackers are more unusual than the humble 310.

So where does the C64 designation come from? Is there a specific 1964 guitar this model is attempting to recreate? Not really. Instead, it’s simply a tip of the hat to the donor 325C64 (click to learn more) platform on which this guitar was based—a highly (but not completely) accurate reproduction of John Lennon’s second 325, built for him in 1964.

In fact, add a third pickup and replace the “R” Tailpiece (click to learn more) with an Accent vibrato (click to learn more) to this guitar, and you’ve essentially got a 325C64.

Well…almost. The 310C64 does have one unique feature of its own. Instead of the Kluson Deluxe-style tuners fitted to Lennon’s 1964 325, it wears reproductions of the Grover Sta-Tite tuners (click to learn more) found on his original 1958 325.

And here’s a quick aside: there have been three “vintage” series of Rickenbacker reissues: the B-Series (click to learn more), V-Series, and the C-Series. We know the “B” stands for “Beatles” and the “V” for “Vintage,” but what about the “C”?

Ask Google’s AI and it will confidently tell you it stands for either “Copy” or “Circa.” While I’ve never seen an official press release or a quote from John Hall explicitly answering the question, the headline on the C-Series overview page at rickenbacker.com reads “Classic Rickenbackers.” That seemed like a likely answer to me—but John Hall has since weighed in in the comments below to let us know we still don’t have it right!

To be fair, I’m not sure it’s entirely accurate to call this a “separate” special run from the Montezuma Brown 310C64s—they were all built in September 2009, so it’s probably more accurate to say it was a single special run offered in two colors. Either way, the Jetglo guitars were news to me.

24 Jetglo and 36 Montezuma Brown examples were produced in commemoration of Japanese dealer Shinseido’s 60th anniversary. There are a number of examples of both colors listed on the register…I simply have no idea how I kept missing the Jetglo guitars. But I sure did.

As I’ve said, I have a number of potential special runs out there that I’ll keep chasing down. But I seriously doubt any of them will be as easy to validate as this one was. And yes, I’ve already added the 2009 Jetglo 310C64 to my post on special runs.

Want to learn about another really unusual special run? This 2011 Pearl White 1997 is really…something!

“So what?” you say. “It’s just a bunch of boring old 330s.”

But look again and count the tuners. Count the strings. Those aren’t guitars. They’re basses.

So yes, these things are indeed exactly what they look like: a 330 bass. 330 body, 330 24.75 inch neck, but only four strings. Most “short-scale” basses clock in around 30 inches—including the Rickenbacker 3000 (click to learn more) and 4030 (click to learn more)—just to give you an idea of how unusual these things are. I’ve looked hard for a shorter-scale production bass—and, yes, I’m ruling out the 18 inch Guild Ashbory bass because it had weird silicone strings—and I can’t find one.

The components almost all come from the Rickenbacker parts bin: 330 (click to learn more) husk and pickguard/control panel, four-string bridge and “R” tailpiece (click to learn more) from the 4005V (click to learn more), and the “hot” toaster pickups that have appeared on a number of special runs and one-offs. The only components that I believe are unique are the Schaller M4-style tuners—probably made by Gotoh—which haven’t been regularly used since the 4004 (click to learn more) was discontinued in 2017.

To be fair, there’s no way the standard Rickenbacker Kluson-style Gotohs would have fit on the back of that narrow paddle-shaped headstock.

How do you even find strings for a 24.75 inch scale bass, you may ask? Luckily the almost five inches of “dead space” between the bridge and the “R” tailpiece allows the use of standard short-scale strings—La Bella Low-Tension Flats in this case.

Five each in Fireglo, Mapleglo, Jetglo, and Walnut were produced and offered directly through the Rickenbacker.com boutique. The price was a reasonable $2,149—the same as a new donor 330. They sold out in two days, but there have been hints that more may follow.

Now there are two interesting things about what I just said that I want to highlight. First, as we’ve often seen with Boutique and dealer special run guitars, a number of these immediately showed up for resale on Reverb. However, thanks to the hints of more to come—which were dropped only after the models sold out—prices ended up being slashed, with at least a couple selling for not much more than the original Boutique price.

But the second item is more interesting. I’ve been reluctant to point out what appears to be a new business strategy, but I believe I have enough data points now that it bears mentioning.

Ben Hall has for quite some time used the Boutique to indulge in flights of fancy—a Coralglo doubleneck 620, a 350-based bass, and any number of unusual color/pickup combinations. All interesting in their own way, but for the most part, one-offs.

Since the late 1980s, Rickenbacker has reserved a portion of its capacity for some form of “special production”. From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s it was the Signature Limited Edition models (click to learn more); those were replaced by the Color of the Year models (click to learn more) in the early 2000s, and since the mid-2000s it’s been dealer special runs (click to learn more).

This year—2026—Rickenbacker has started doing something new: producing its own special runs and selling them directly to consumers via the Rickenbacker Boutique.

Other manufacturers like Gibson have been doing this for a while, and while dealers certainly can’t be happy about being cut out of the transaction, they are at least used to the concept. And as long as Rickenbacker sticks to special runs and not mainline product, it’s probably low risk—especially if they continue to offer important dealers their own special runs as well.

From Rickenbacker’s standpoint it’s about as close to free money as you can get: dealer price is usually roughly half of MSRP, and now Rickenbacker gets to sell at list price and keep the difference for itself. So why not do it?

So far this year we have seen Boutique-exclusive special runs of the Noir 4003 (click to learn more), a Midnight Purple 1993Plus, and now these 3030s. Add to that the planned fifteen 4002SPCs that have begun trickling out—four thus far—and the Boutique is looking less like an outlet for boredom-killers and more like a potential key piece of the overall sales strategy. Especially if—like with the 3030 and 4002SPC—the Boutique focuses on selling not just instruments with special features but models you literally cannot get anywhere else.

Is this a new strategy? A proof of concept? Or maybe it’s just a coincidence that I’m reading too much into. Time will tell. But if more 3030s show up—and only in the Boutique—I may just be onto something.

As regards the 3030 itself? There have been a handful of other 24.75 inch scale basses made over the years. The fact that you probably can’t name any of them should tell you a lot. I’ve spoken to people who have played the 3030, and they say the basses sound nice and thumpy, while the strings don’t feel “loose” like I suspected they might—that gap between the bridge and the tailpiece means the total length of string under tension is more or less the same as on a “normal” 30 inch short-scale bass.

It’s certainly a scale guitarists will be comfortable with. Is there a large enough market to put this bass into the line full-time? I seriously doubt it. But as an easy-enough-to-build special run for the Boutique every so often? That makes perfect sense. I mean, they did sell twenty of them in less than two days…

(And yes, I have an article coming on the 4002SPCs. I just haven’t gotten to it yet!)

Take the question: “What was the first left-handed Rickenbacker?” Here’s Google’s confident response:

“The earliest known left-handed Rickenbacker instrument is the 1964 Rickenbacker 4001S gifted to Paul McCartney.”

Except that’s not true. McCartney’s 1964 4001S (click to learn more) isn’t even the second lefty Rickenbacker. It’s—at best—the fourth.

To be fair, that was the conventional wisdom until about 15 years ago, when older lefties began surfacing. Luckily, Google’s AI model seems to trust me, so let’s see if we can help them set the record straight as we take a look at the history of left-handed Rickenbackers.

While today’s left-handed Rickenbacker fans may justifiably complain about the paucity of lefties—it doesn’t appear that Rickenbacker has made any since 2022—left-handed guitars have spent much of their history as special-order guitars.

But there’s special order and special order. By the first I mean “tick an option box on the order form”, and by the second I mean “pick up the phone and convince somebody at the factory to actually build it”.

For Rickenbacker, “tick the box” wasn’t an option until 1973. Meaning that the earliest left-handed Rickenbackers weren’t the result of a standardized left-handed program. Those early guitars required the factory to figure out how to build a left-handed version in response to a specific customer request. And it didn’t happen often.

Around ten to fifteen percent of the world’s population is left handed. And for most of the guitar’s history, lefties have had limited options. They could learn to play right handed; flip the guitar over and play it “backwards;” or flip it over and restring it—which also required replacing or adjusting the nut and bridge. As long as guitars were symmetrical, those options were mostly good enough.

But in 1939, Gibson introduced the first modern cutaways on the Super 400 Premier and L-5 Premier, giving guitarists unprecedented access to the higher frets. Suddenly, just flipping the guitar over wasn’t going to cut it anymore for lefties.

Matters only got worse with the rise of the electric guitar. Now lefties had volume and tone controls directly under their forearm, pickup selector switches in awkward places, and asymmetrical bodies that simply didn’t work upside down. What had already been less than ideal was becoming increasingly impractical.

If you had the means, you could commission a custom-built instrument—assuming you could find a builder willing to do so. When it came to the hollowbodied guitars of the day, creating a left-hand version wasn’t as simple as flipping the body upside down. New tooling and jigs often had to be made, and for a market representing just ten to fifteen percent of the population—most of whom were already making do with right-handed guitars—the payoff didn’t seem worth the expense.

Solidbodied electric guitars changed that equation, though. Suddenly manufacturers really could just flip the body upside down.

The first lefty Telecaster dates to 1951, only a year after the model’s debut. Multiple left-handed Les Pauls were built in 1952, the same year the model launched. To be fair, these weren’t cataloged models or standard options—they were still custom orders. But in both cases Fender and Gibson basically said “sure, no sweat.”

Which brings us back to Rickenbacker. It took the company a while to climb aboard the lefty train. Whether that’s because nobody ever asked or because the answer was simply “no” when they did, we’ll probably never know. But several years passed between the 1954 launch of the Combo 600 & 800 (click to learn more), Rickenbacker’s first modern electric guitars, and the company’s first left handed instrument. And no, it wasn’t McCartney’s 4001S.

So if not McCartney’s bass, what then was the first left-handed Rickenbacker? As of today, the honor belongs to this Jetglo 450 (click to learn more), dating to January 1961:

And it makes perfect sense that a 450 would be first. Building a left-handed 450 was relatively straightforward—all Rickenbacker really had to do was glue the body wings on backwards. They didn’t even bother modifying the headstock or the truss rod cover on this first lefty. Unlike the cover on McCartney’s later 4001S, the standard truss rod cover is simply mounted as-is, leaving the logo upside down on the finished guitar. The headstock wasn’t modified either.

The second known left-handed Rickenbacker was also a 450, this one dating to 1963. This guitar was later modified to accommodate a real Boyd Vibrato (click here to learn more)—the Japanese unit on mid-1960s 425s is often misidentified as a Boyd, but it is not.

For this guitar, however they did make the effort to reverse the logo on the truss rod cover (click to learn more)—but not the cover itself or the headstock. Baby steps.

This truss rod cover, however, differs from the “final design” that would appear the following year. On right-handed guitars, the arch of the logo mirrors the shape of the truss rod cover. Here, the logo was merely inverted, so the arch bends the wrong way. It gives the whole thing a slightly unbalanced appearance.

At least one more left-handed 450 was produced before the January 1964 4001S that Google insists was Rickenbacker’s first left-handed instrument.

Funnily enough, unlike the 450s that preceded it, the first left-handed 4001 wasn’t built to satisfy a specific customer’s request. Instead, it was intended as a gift for a man who had suddenly become the world’s most famous bass player and just so happened to be left-handed.

Even more funnily, McCartney took a pass on the bass when it was presented to him in New York in February 1964. Given another opportunity a year later, however, he changed his mind—and the rest is history.

You’ll notice that, on this reproduction of that guitar above, the arch of the logo has been reworked to follow the contour of the truss rod cover. This would become the standard left-handed truss rod cover design—and it remained so until a true left-handed version was finally introduced—much later than you might expect.

So by early 1964 we can document left-handed versions of just two models—the 450 and the 4001. What came next?

The next model—and the first documented semi-hollowbodied left-handed Rickenbacker—was based on the “New Style” round-top 360 (click to learn more), with the earliest known example dating to 1966.

Note how the Accent Vibrato (click to learn more) on this guitar has attachment points for the vibrato arm on both sides. This may well be a prototype unit, as later examples use dedicated left-handed versions.

That, however, was a relatively minor change to make. Flipping the “R” tailpiece (click to learn more) around, on the other hand, would be a much more significant undertaking. So Rickenbacker simply didn’t bother, condemning left-handed players to upside-down “R” tailpieces for perpetuity.

Since the 4005 bass (click to learn more) shared the same design language as the New Style 360, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that a left-handed 4005 soon followed. In fact, the record today even includes an extremely rare 6-string 4005/6.

Now I need to take a moment to address some other guitars you may encounter from this era. I have seen purportedly left-handed 330s and 1996s, but I do not believe these to be factory-built lefties for a couple of reasons.

First, neither of these guitars is a “true” left-handed instrument. Instead, they appear to be right-handed guitars that have had their controls and soundholes reoriented.

Secondly, like the guitar above, the examples I have seen have been refinished in Jetglo, which would conveniently hide any repair work that might reveal an original control cavity.

And in the case of this particular guitar, it has a Rose Morris serial number, yet there is no evidence that any left-handed guitars were produced for Rose Morris. Moreover, with the pickguard removed you can see traces of the original right-handed f-hole.

Is it possible that guitars like this left the factory this way? Sure. Do I think it’s likely? No.

The only other model that I feel confident Rickenbacker developed a left-handed version of in the 1960s is the 360OS (click to learn more), with the first example I have seen dating to 1969.

While it is certainly possible that other models got the left-hand treatment during this period, no documented examples currently appear in the register. As with so much early Rickenbacker history, the absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence—but for now, the list appears to be surprisingly short.

Remember, up to this point left-handed models didn’t even appear as an option in catalogs or price lists. That changed with the 1973 price list.

Now, all bets were off. Any model could be ordered left-handed for a $50 upcharge. And the market went crazy…for left-handed 4001s (click to learn more). I mean, nobody was buying right-handed Rickenbacker guitars in the early 1970s, so it only stands to reason nobody was buying left-handed ones either.

It may be hard to understand in today’s world of “order anything online and have it arrive in two business days”, but for most of their history left-handed models—from all manufacturers—have truly been special orders.

Until fairly recently, there were no massive online retailers, no niche dealers with a national reach thanks to the internet, and not even particularly large national chains. There were local—and perhaps regional—music stores that served their immediate markets and only hung on the wall things they were reasonably certain would sell quickly. And left-handed guitars did not fit that criterion. The idea that you could simply walk into a store and buy a left-handed guitar off the rack was, for all practical purposes, a fantasy.

So while Rickenbacker may have been late to the game, their approach was really no different from anybody else’s. Order it, and we’ll make it. Period.

Except…

There are a number of models that don’t appear to have ever been built in left-handed form—including some, like the 480 (click to learn more) and 481 (click to learn more) where you would absolutely expect there to have been demand. In fact, the only other two models I can confidently say saw left-handed production in the 1970s are the 330 (click to learn more) and 3001 bass (click to learn more).

So why no others? I suspect it has to do with Rickenbacker’s manufacturing process. Not only did somebody need to request a left-handed guitar, enough somebodies had to ask for one to make it worth the effort on Rickenbacker’s part. And given the company’s anemic guitar sales during much of the 1970s, reaching that critical mass was probably a challenge.

The early 1980s saw left-handed versions of the 320 and 620 (click to learn more) finally appear, and with those two models the entire core model lineup was at last accounted for. Left-handed production remained low—less than five percent if register entries are any guide. That figure, however, is actually pretty typical and not out of line with most other major manufacturers.

The late 1980s to the early-2000s was about as close to a golden age for left-handed Rickenbacker fans as we’re ever likely to see. Modern instruments like the 4004 bass (click to learn more) and the 650 were available in left-handed form, as were most Signature Limited Edition models (click to learn more) and V and C Series instruments. Lead times were long—years in some cases—but if you wanted a left-handed Rickenbacker you could order pretty much anything in the catalog and, eventually, it would arrive.

And during this “golden era”—1989, to be specific—Rickenbacker finally gave left-handed models proper left-handed headstocks and truss rod covers. For the first time, the entire guitar was truly a mirror image of its right-handed counterpart.

Well, almost.

The “R” tailpiece stubbornly remained upside down.

The years from 2005 to 2007 saw a significant reduction in left-hand guitar production. And when production returned to more normal levels in 2008, it appeared to come with a new strategy: a renewed focus on core models only.

This shift was hinted at in the 2009 price list. While the special order section still offered “Left-hand, available all models” for a $200 upcharge, it came with a caveat: “orders for this option subject to acceptance”.

By all appearances, if your requested model wasn’t a 330, 360, or 4003 the answer was almost certainly going to be “no”.

The language hasn’t changed since, and neither—it appears—has the policy. Funnily enough, the W-Series (click to learn more) 330W and 4003W launched in 2014 appear to qualify as “core models”, but the 360W doesn’t. None have ever been made.

In late 2022 Rickenbacker announced they would be pausing left-hand production for a while to catch up a bit on the right-hand backlog. As of mid-2026, that pause is still ongoing.

On the one hand, there are instruments on the used market. If someone really wants a lefty, they’re certainly out there. On the other hand, effectively abandoning the market for almost four years—and counting—seems like a…questionable decision.

Perhaps that’s fitting. The history of left-handed Rickenbackers has always been a little strange. They’ve survived upside-down logos, improvised solutions, decades of special orders, and years-long lead times before.

In other words, perhaps this strange little pause is just Rickenbacker being Rickenbacker.

In hindsight, it’s obvious that a guitar like this had to exist; it had simply never occurred to me that it would. But here it is: a transitional 460. Go figure.

And that’s not even the biggest surprise. That would be the fact that this transitional 460 suffers from a bad case of Glueglo (click to learn more), despite lacking the very thing that everyone “knows” causes it: checkered binding. Let’s break it down.

We’ll start with the whole “transitional” bit. While we have talked a lot on this site about the early 1970s transitional era (click here to learn more)—Rickenbacker’s evolution from “vintage” 1960s specifications to “modern” 1970s specifications—it’s almost always been in the context of models like the 360 (click to learn more) and 4001 (click to learn more). In reality, though, every model went through the same process. The 460 included.

Picture the 460 in your mind and you’ll probably see one of two guitars: most likely a 1960s model with crushed pearl inlays and toaster pickups, or perhaps a 1970s/80s model with inset poured inlays and button-top Higains—although those are few and far between. This one falls right in between.

This guitar, from 1972, has the vintage crushed pearl inlays (click to learn more), but also the transitional threaded-rod-polepiece Higains (click to learn more) that began replacing toasters across the line in 1970 before being replaced themselves by button-top Higains in 1973. In other words: extra-transitional.

And while that’s unusual enough to catch my eye, it doesn’t hold a candle to the Glueglo that’s afflicted this guitar.

So here’s what virtually every explanation of Glueglo and its cause—including my own on this very site—is going to tell you: from early 1971 to late 1972, Rickenbacker changed the way they applied binding, and that change had unintended consequences.

Instead of using a paste made from binding scraps dissolved in acetone to help the new binding adhere to the wood body, Rickenbacker used straight acetone. That acetone broke down the black colorant in the checkered binding, which then leached into the wood, creating the Glueglo “sweat ring” around the guitar’s perimeter. Makes sense, right?

Here’s the problem with that: the 460—including this particular guitar—never had checkered binding.

And, just in case you think there’s some weird anomaly with this particular guitar, here’s a different 1972 460 with Glueglo and, again, no checkered binding.

And maybe I’m getting too excited about all this, but this feels like a big deal. Clearly something about the story we’ve all accepted is wrong.

So I did what I always do: I went down the rabbit hole to see if I could find another explanation. Let me take you along for the ride.

If you ask Google’s AI assistant what could cause this type of discoloration, it points to an interaction between acetone and binding dyes. Sounds good, right? Until you realize that my article on Glueglo is one of the primary sources cited. So we can’t rely on AI—we’re going to have to go old school.

But the basic theory—that some chemical reaction occurred between the straight acetone and the binding, leaching “something” out of the plastic and into the surrounding wood—still makes perfect sense. So perhaps we were just looking at the wrong culprit. Maybe it wasn’t the black dye at all. Maybe it was something in the white bits of the binding.

That seemed like the most logical next step, so I chased that theory down for a bit. I ultimately rejected it for two compounding reasons.

First, the use of acetone wasn’t new—it had always been a part of the “paste” method. And Glueglo simply has never appeared outside the “straight acetone” era.

Of course, that doesn’t completely rule out acetone as the issue. The concentration was obviously much higher during the Glueglo era, and that could have been a factor. But many builders have used the straight acetone method for applying binding over the years, and none seem to have developed a Glueglo-type problem.

Put those two facts together, and acetone starts to look a lot less like the sole culprit.

At this point, I got stuck. Then I asked myself a question: how do we know Rickenbacker switched to straight acetone during this period?

Turns out, that’s a pretty good question. Because I pulled pretty hard on that thread and couldn’t find any verifiable documentation. Instead, I kept coming back to some variation of: “employees from the period say…”

That is still evidence. But memory is a funny thing. There are things I remember as clear as a bell that later turned out to be only partially true—or in some cases, complete inventions. I’m not “lying.” I just remember them wrong.

Did something change during this period? Clearly. Do we know exactly what changed? I’m not convinced we do. And that opens up a lot of new avenues to explore.

I’m not going to bore you with all the rabbit holes I went down—solvents and adhesives and glues, oh my! Suffice it to say I can’t point to any one of them and say “that’s it.”

But I did come away with one clear conclusion: our current theory for what caused Glueglo is—at best—incomplete. These guitars prove it.

And I need to go update my article on Glueglo now.

The Rickenbacker price list exploded from just 11 models in 1957 to thirty-six in 1958. Everyone agrees that a number of those models never really existed. Maybe a prototype or two was built, but more than a few of those models never actually made it into production. Take the Model 394—“Capri Series, Thick Body. Three Pickups, Vibrato Unit, Full-Sized Body With Hand-Carved Top and Back.” There’s no controversy there. Everyone agrees it never existed.

But then there’s the Combo 650, which first appeared on the 1957 price list alongside the Combo 850.

Here’s how the 1957 catalog shown above describes it:

“The Combo 650 Spanish guitar has the new extreme cut-away body allowing the player to use all frets on the neck with equal ease. This feature has been accomplished without detracting from Rickenbacker’s distinctive styling. Separate volume and tone controls with an additional tone-control switch produce full bass and treble tones. This model is available in a natural hand-rubbed maple finish or Turquoise Blue.”

The accompanying photo, however, is of a Combo 850.

In referring to the Combo 850 and 650, the Smith book tells us the “two guitars were identical except for the number of pickups and their electronics.” The Smith book has photos of the Combo 850…but not the Combo 650.

Fair enough—the Smith book is almost forty years old now. What does Martin Kelley say? “A one pickup Combo 650 featuring the new body design and a single horseshoe pickup near the bridge was also offered, although only four or five examples are known to have been completed.” And he has a contemporary picture of one. Now we’re getting somewhere!

This is the point where I’d normally send you off to read our overview of the Combo 850 for some important context. Unfortunately, I haven’t written it yet. And since we can’t really understand the Combo 650—which I am not yet conceding actually exists—without first understanding the 850, we’re just going to have to cover both.

For starters, the Combo 850 pictured in the catalog page above—and in the 1957 trade show photo below—isn’t the Combo 850 that ultimately went into production.

“Aha!” you say. “Only one pickup! That’s a Combo 650!” Not so fast. We’ll get there.

The Combo 850—and, theoretically, the Combo 650—was an evolution of the Combo 600 and 800 (click to learn more). And the earliest prototypes—the ones you photograph for catalogs and take to trade shows—were different from the production model.

The shape is familiar today—it lives on in the 325C64 (click to learn more) and 350V63 (click to learn more)—but unlike its modern brethren, the Combo 850 had a solid body with a German carved top (click to learn more).

That shape in itself came directly from the Combo 800, with a dramatically reshaped upper cutaway.

Here’s where the production Combo 850 differed from the prototype. The Combo 800 featured the “Multi-Unit Pickup” (click to learn more)—two side-by-side coils underneath the horseshoe magnet that could be individually selected. Technically, it was the first commercially available humbucking pickup, as well as the first coil-splittable humbucker. But Rickenbacker didn’t quite understand what they had created; they thought of the two coils as two individual pickups.

The Combo 600, on the other hand, had only one coil hiding below the horseshoe magnet. The easiest way to tell the difference between the two models at a glance is to count the switches: the Combo 600 had one, while the Combo 800 had two—one for the same tone presets as the Combo 600, and one to select coils.

So if we return to our prototype Combo 850 and count the switches, we come up with two. Which tells us this prototype borrowed its electronics package directly from the Combo 800. That’s not what the production model got.

The production Combo 850 got the same single-coil horseshoe pickup at the bridge as the Combo 600 had, plus the brand-new toaster pickup at the neck. So what did the theoretical Combo 650 get?

Just the single-coil horseshoe pickup. I’d show you a picture, but I can’t find one. And believe me, I have tried. Apart from the lone contemporary picture in the Kelley book, photographic proof of the Combo 650 does not exist.

I mean, there are two Combo 850s in this 1958 trade-show photo, along with several prototype models that never actually made it into production. Even the very 1958 325 John Lennon would buy a couple of years later in Hamburg is sitting right there in this picture. But there’s no Combo 650.

Ultimately that’s the problem. We have photographic proof that at least one guitar—probably a prototype—was built. The production data in the Smith book, which we know are problematic, indicate that a total of six were produced between 1957 and 1959. But none of them have ever surfaced. Not one.

And let’s be clear about what has never surfaced: an instrument with the Combo 850 body and a single horseshoe pickup in the bridge position. Not even the prototype we have photographic proof of has ever turned up.

My theory? It was reworked at the factory into a Combo 850. My evidence? I’ve looked at every Natural 850 I can find and identified one 1957 example whose wood grain matches the prototype’s remarkably closely. Is it conclusive? No. Is it close? Very.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a digital copy of the prototype photo to show you. But trust me—it’s close.

Nor would such a reworking be unprecedented. We know, for a fact, that several 1957 and 1958 prototypes were reconfigured at the factory before they shipped. Even Lennon’s 325 only has two knobs in the photo above—but it had four by the time he got it.

It’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it.

Now, I’ve laid out all the reasons I think the Combo 650 is a phantom—little more than vaporware. Here’s why some people disagree.

This is one of the so-called 1958 Combo SPC (for “special”) guitars. The generally accepted theory has been that five of these guitars were built for a trade show—and indeed, at least one of them appears in photographs from a 1959 show. As six examples have now been documented, however, it appears that theory may need revision.

They differ from the production Combo 850 in a number of important ways:

• Three-piece maple/walnut/maple necks with a paddle-shaped headstock, compared to the production model’s one-piece maple neck with Combo 600/800-style “swoosh” headstock.

• Multi-piece flamed maple “butcher block” bodies.

• Two toaster pickups rather than the production model’s toaster-and-horseshoe combo.

• Six-saddle bridge and trapeze tailpiece rather than the bridge and bridgeplate combo found on the production model.

• Teardrop pickguard with four knobs/one switch rather than the production 850’s pickguard with two knobs/one switch.

So what do these not-Combo 850s have to do with the Combo 650? Well, several of them have this penciled in the truss rod adjustment rout:

I realize that’s a little difficult to make out, but if you look closely you’ll see it reads “650.”

Surely that’s not the sum of the evidence? It’s not. Three of them, including the one below, show no evidence of ever having had a neck pickup.

And then there’s the most conclusive piece of evidence: the serial numbers (click to learn more). The serial number scheme Rickenbacker used for solidbody guitars in the 1950s told us a little bit about the guitars themselves. They included a “C” for Combo, then 4 for the 400, 6 for the 600, and 8 for the 800. Usually the number came first, followed by the letter, but sometimes it was reversed. Two of these guitars carry serial numbers beginning with “C6.”

Seems pretty conclusive to me. I will absolutely concede that some of these Combo 650 SPCs were built. But I think that we can all agree that these guitars—both the 650 and 850 versions—are not the production models. They’re…specials.

But a production Combo 650? The fact is that there is absolutely no evidence for one apart from the questionable data in the Smith book.

And I’m not just waving away the Smith data. If you count prototypes and SPC models, you get mighty close to six. Close enough, in fact, that I suspect the figure may simply be counting things that perhaps shouldn’t be counted together. Could there be one or two “real” Combo 650s lurking out there somewhere? Of course there could. But does building one or two examples really make something a production model? I’d argue no.

So why do the books and community accept its existence? I think “must” is doing a lot of work here.

Look: everyone knows that the Combo 600 and 800 are real. Period catalogs and price lists describe both the Combo 650 and 850, and everyone knows that the Combo 850 is real. Add to that the fact that the community spent significant effort investigating and proving the existence of the Combo 650 SPC guitars, and it just feels inevitable that the production Combo 650 must also be real. It’s an entirely reasonable conclusion.

Except I just don’t think it is.

To be clear, I am not arguing that no guitar called a “Combo 650” ever existed. Clearly, some did. I am arguing that there is no evidence that a production model matching the catalog description was ever built.

Case closed. For now.

If you didn’t click the link above to read about the first modern Rickenbacker guitars—the Combo 600 and 800—here’s a second chance.

The 481 built on the 480’s better-than-expected success, but was a more thoughtful and deliberate take on the basic idea of “what if 4001, but guitar?” So let’s take a brief moment to remind ourselves of what the 480 got right—and wrong—to help us better understand the 481.

In 1972, Rickenbacker’s guitar sales were dismal, but 4001 (click to learn more) demand was beginning to boom. Hoping to capitalize on the latter to help with the former, Rickenbacker slapped a guitar neck onto a 4001 body to create the 480.

In a bid to keep costs down, all of the 480’s parts—apart from the new bolt-on neck—came straight from the Rickenbacker storeroom. Which caused a pretty significant geometry problem.

In order to both mimic the look of the 4001 with its pickguard-mounted pickup and accommodate the tall stock Rickenbacker 6-saddle bridge, the bolt-on neck had to be set at an angle that proved to be less than ideal.

The strings just barely cleared the polepieces of the top-mounted bridge pickup and could even buzz against them when playing high up the neck. Meanwhile, the pickguard-mounted neck pickup couldn’t be raised close enough to the strings, leaving it far too quiet in the mix.

On top of the geometry problems—and despite them—because it used the new transitional Higain pickups, it still sounded like a Rickenbacker. Which was, in itself, a problem.

The primary reason Rickenbacker guitars had fallen out of favor by the early 1970s was the very same clean, chimey sound we love them for today. Rock music had gotten heavier and dirtier. Rickenbackers hadn’t. The new Higains were intended to be a step in that direction—thus the name—but they were a baby step at best.

That said, the 480 quickly became the highest-volume guitar in the Rickenbacker lineup. So they were clearly on the right track. The question then shifted from “what if 4001, but guitar?” to “what if 4001 guitar, but different?” The answer came in 1974 with the 481.

There were two clear problems with the 480: the geometry and the pickups. The 481 tackled both head-on.

We’ll start with the pickups, because they helped solve both problems. First, the 481’s “Super Humbucker” pickups were an all-new design—and Rickenbacker’s first proper humbucker. While not aggressively overwound like some of today’s designs—typically measuring between 7 and 8k ohms—they nonetheless gave the guitar a much wider sonic range.

You’ll notice I hedged a bit about this being Rickenbacker’s first humbucker. 1954’s Combo 800 (click to learn more) featured a two-coil horseshoe pickup that is arguably the very first humbucking pickup ever made—but Rickenbacker never bothered to patent it or even lean into the idea, leaving them out of the Gibson/Gretsch “who was first” debate.

You’ll note in the photo above the gap between the coils, a somewhat unusual feature for a humbucker. I haven’t been able to find any explanation for this design decision, but it does make the pickup noticeably larger than most other humbuckers, as the picture below highlights.

You’ll also notice the Phillips-head screw polepieces. Are they important? Do they make any difference? No. They’re just an unusual and distinctive feature.

The pickups had originally been designed for the 1973 System 490, a John Hall prototype based on a Forrest White (click to learn more) design that featured the nifty party trick of preloaded, interchangeable pickguards with different pickup combinations. Sadly, the System 490 never made it past the prototype stage, but the pickups were already there, just looking for a home.

To further expand the 481’s sonic palette, the addition of a mini-toggle switch to the standard Rickenbacker wiring harness allowed the bridge pickup to be put out of phase, producing a quacky, cutting lead tone.

The new pickups—and the way they were mounted—also helped solve the 480’s geometry problems. While the neck angle did not appreciably change, the new pickups were taller than the Higains they replaced. That allowed the neck pickup to remain mounted below the pickguard while still sitting much closer to the strings.

The bridge pickup also moved from being top-mounted to pickguard-mounted, allowing it to sit farther from the strings and eliminating the buzzing issues found on the 480. Both pickups could then be set at roughly the same distance from the strings, resulting in a much more balanced mix.

And “set” is the correct word, because if you look closely at the photo above, you’ll notice that what appear to be height-adjustment screws have no slots. After 1975, pickup height was set at the factory and could not be easily adjusted.

It could be, of course, but doing so required removing the entire pickguard and adjusting small nuts on the ends of the headless “adjustment screws”.

The pickups weren’t the only difference between the 480 and the 481. The 481 got the “Deluxe” (click to learn more) treatment, with a bound top, triangle inlays (click to learn more), and Grover Rotomatic tuners (click to learn more). It did not, however, gain the Rick-O-Sound (click to learn more) stereo wiring found on most Deluxe Rickenbacker models.

Ironically, one of the features the 480 and 481 adopted to appeal to the “modern” player is now one of their more divisive. Rickenbacker fretboards maintained what we’d now consider a decidedly vintage 7.25” radius until the mid 1980s. The 480 and 481 instead featured a completely flat fretboard while maintaining Rickenbacker’s relatively narrow neck width, a combination many players find cramped and ill-suited to string bending.

And yes, we have to talk about the slanted frets.

Rickenbacker first began experimenting with slanted frets (click to learn more) in late 1969, and the option officially appeared on the 1971 price list.

In theory, the option was available on “most Spanish guitars.” In practice, it seems to have only been available on the 360.

What even was the point of slanted frets anyway? Contemporary factory literature claimed that “this slight slant of the frets across the finger board eliminates the long chord reaches, reduces stretch length, and matches precisely the natural angle of the fretting fingers.” If you look at how your index finger falls as you barre a chord, you can kind of see the point.

So, does it actually work? The consensus today seems to be that it neither helps nor hurts—you really can’t tell the difference when playing. It can, however, be somewhat disorienting if you look closely at your fingers, but look away and you stop noticing.

That said, it didn’t exactly catch on. And while the “Slanted Frets” option remained on the price list through 1984, the factory appears to have stopped producing slanted-fret 360s by 1972.

So naturally, when the 481 launched in 1974, it came standard with slanted frets.

The 481 could be custom-ordered with “standard”, non-slanted frets, but using Register entries as a guide, it appears that box was ticked less than 10% of the time.

It can be surprisingly difficult to tell from photos whether a guitar has slanted or standard frets—the camera angle can dramatically affect your perception. For example, does this guitar have slanted frets?

Viewed from another angle, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

If all else fails, a photo of the end of the fingerboard can settle the question: slanted fret guitars have the patent number stamped on the binding.

Changes over the 481’s life were minor, with the pickup covers being the most obvious. 1974 models featured a textured black plastic cover with only one set of polepieces visible. These early guitars also retained the aforementioned pickup height-adjustment screws

In 1975 the covers changed to chrome-plated plastic, with both sets of polepieces visible. While the height-adjustment screws remained early in the model year, the adjustment feature itself disappeared by year’s end.

The final evolution came in 1976, when “Rickenbacker” was debossed into the center of the chromed plastic covers. This is how the pickups would appear for the remainder of the model’s run.

The other change of note came in early 1976 and was part of a line-wide evolution rather than something specific to the 481. The model had launched in 1974 with a back-painted Plexiglas truss rod cover (click to learn more) that, unlike high-volume models such as the 480, did not carry the model number.

In early 1976, the 481 transitioned to the raised-letter, injection-molded truss rod cover that had become the company standard. By then, however, the 481’s production volume had earned it a model number stamped on the cover.

Which brings us neatly to the model’s reception and sales. It was…fine? By 1976 it had surpassed the 480 as the top-selling Rickenbacker 6-string model. But while the 480 and 481 had helped the company regain some market share, guitar sales remained only a fraction of what they had been in the 1960s. Luckily for Rickenbacker, 4001 demand showed no sign of slowing.

1977 was the peak for the 481, and production fell off a cliff afterwards. It remained on the price list through 1984, but only a handful were produced after 1979, with the last example I have found dating to 1982.

I won’t say the 481 failed—it more or less did what it was supposed to do. It offered the market a Rickenbacker that didn’t sound like a Rickenbacker and helped the company sell some guitars at a time when it needed to. But in the long run, it didn’t leave much of a lasting mark on the lineup.

Except I think it taught Rickenbacker a valuable lesson—or at least tried to, even if the company failed to take heed. By the mid-1970s the market had already decided what a Rickenbacker “was”, and it wasn’t especially interested in having that definition challenged. Neither the 481 nor any subsequent attempt has really shifted the needle. The lesson was simple: the market ultimately has a larger say in what a Rickenbacker “is” than the company that makes them.

Want to learn about another model that tried to change what a Rickenbacker could be? You might be interested in this article on the 380L Laguna:

The first widely available extended-range bass guitar was the 6-string Danelectro UB-2, introduced in 1956. Unlike modern instruments, the 30” scale UB-2 was tuned E-A-D-G-B-E, just like a guitar, but with the low E at E1, the same as a conventional bass. It was designed primarily for studio musicians, allowing guitarists to double on bass without learning an entirely new fingerboard.

Fender took the idea—same scale, same tuning—upmarket with the Bass VI in 1961. Rickenbacker even got into the 6-string game in 1966 with the 4005/6 (click to learn more), although theirs featured a the standard Rickenbacker 33 1/4” scale.

But another Fender model, 1965’s Bass V, was the first proper extended-range 5-string bass, with its 34” scale and standard bass tuning. The fifth string, however, was tuned to a high C rather than the low B we associate with 5-string basses today.

By the mid 1970s, all of these models had disappeared from production. The extended range bass had, by and large, proven to be a commercial dead end.

The market may have spoken, but a handful of innovative musicians and boutique builders kept the idea alive. What is often cited as the first low-B 5-string bass guitar was commissioned by “father of the (modern) six-string bass,” jazz/funk great Anthony Jackson, in 1974. Ironically, Jackson had actually asked for a 6-string. Unhappy with the string spacing on the instrument built by luthier Carl Thompson—best known today for making Les Claypool’s favored instruments—he had it converted to a 5-string. In the end, however, Jackson declared the instrument unplayable, and went back to Thompson in pursuit of the 6-string he had envisioned all along.

The next low-B 5-string was also a custom commission—this time built by Alembic for studio ace Jimmy Johnson. Funnily enough, this bass also didn’t start off as a low-B instrument—Alembic had already built a high-C 5-string bass like the Bass V, and Johnson asked them to take that design and convert it to low-B. And so in 1976 Alembic delivered Johnson what is very likely the first purpose-built low-B 5-string bass.

Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, 5-string basses remained firmly in the realm of high-end boutique builders. That began to change in the mid-1980s, as major manufacturers finally started bringing the format to the mass-market.

Most sources agree that the 1984 Yamaha BB5000 was the first mass-market low-B 5-string bass. Some argue that Steinberger’s 1982 L2-5 deserves that honor, but at that point Steinbergers were still handbuilt in Ned Steinberger’s Brooklyn workshop—making him not exactly a mass-market manufacturer yet.

A number of Japanese makers followed in late 1984 and 1985, including models like the Aria Pro II RSB 2 Deluxe 5, Washburn B-5, and Ibanez RB885. The first major American manufacturer to jump on the bandwagon, in 1986, was—of all companies—Rickenbacker.

The first 4003S/5—because there would be a second one—was little more than a lightly modified 4003S. For starters, the headstock was subtly modified to accommodate an extra tuner—although smaller Schaller M4 units were still used in place of the larger standard Kluson-style tuners found on the 4-string version.

Believe it or not, the two headstocks above are exactly the same overall length. The extra room for the fifth tuner was created by pulling the bass-side shoulder closer to the nut, while leaving the treble side unchanged.

The standard Rickenbacker bass bridge and tailpiece were also modified to handle five strings. A new 5-saddle bridge dropped into a tailpiece redesigned to anchor five strings. The spacers between the strings in the mute section were also removed.

On the electronics side, the 4003S/5 featured a standard toaster pickup at the neck, and a custom-built 5-polepiece Higain pickup at the bridge.

An extra string requires extra neck width, right? Kind of. In what would prove to be the 4003S/5’s Achilles heel, the neck width was widened…by just one millimeter.

The resulting cramped string spacing would prove to be the 4003S/5’s defining weakness. It remains, by far, the most common complaint owners have about the model. While Rickenbacker had been among the first to the market, the cramped string spacing meant the bass never really found a market beyond a handful of the Rickenbacker faithful.

And so, while the overall market for 5-string basses continued to grow—with the 500-pound gorilla known as Fender finally joining the fray with its first 5-string Jazz Bass model in late 1989—Rickenbacker’s annual sales of the 4003S/5 never did. Not only did Rickenbacker fail to gain market share, they actually lost it despite maintaining relatively steady production throughout the product’s life. What had begun as a niche product became an increasingly niche product. Rickenbacker finally pulled the plug on the 4003S/5 in 2002. Or at least the first version.

That isn’t to say the seventeen-year run wasn’t without its highlights. There were fretless 4003S/5s:

Color of the Year (click to learn more) 4003S/5s:

Several BH/BT (click to learn more) 4003S/5s:

And even a handful of painted-fingerboard Blackstar (click to learn more) 4003S/5s:

Enough to make them interesting collector’s pieces today, but not enough to drive sales. So when Rickenbacker decided to try again in 2018, they knew they needed a different approach.

While the silhouette may have been familiar, the second 4003S/5 was a ground-up redesign. A new bridge. New pickups. And, perhaps most importantly, a neck width designed to meet the expectations of modern 5-string bassists.

Three millimeters wider than the first version—and four millimeters wider than the standard 4003—the new neck’s string spacing was immediately praised for being “just right” by those who played it. At last, the original 4003S/5’s biggest weakness had been solved.

The bridge was an off-the-shelf—yet top-of-the-line—Schaller BD-5 with roller saddles. Rather than reinvent the wheel, Rickenbacker went the proven-technology route. The pickups, however, are where the new 4003S/5 got really interesting.

Dubbed the “TriPower” by Rickenbacker—and quickly nicknamed the “Dorito” by the Rickenbacker community—it was Rickenbacker’s first all-new pickup design since the HB1 in 1989. And while its space age appearance was somewhat divisive, it was unlike anything Rickenbacker—or, really, anyone else—had produced before.

At the TriPower’s heart are two bar magnets that angle outward toward the low B string, giving the pickup its distinctive triangular shape. Despite the two magnets, however, it isn’t a humbucker. Instead of two separate coils, a single coil surrounds both magnets. The idea was that widening the magnetic field beneath the B string would produce a stronger, fuller low-end response.

Buyers could choose between two versions of the new 4003S/5: the traditional maple-bodied, rosewood-fingerboard 4003S/5, or the oil-rubbed walnut, maple-fingerboard 4003S/5W. The overwhelmingly successful launch of the W Series (click to learn more) in 2014 had already proven there was a sustained market for basses with both finished and unfinished fingerboards.

There was one very minor change to the 4003S/5 early in its production run. For the first three months of production—April to June 2018—the neck pickup was mounted beneath the pickguard, just like a standard 4003.

Starting with the next production batch in August—and for the remainder of the model’s run—the neck pickup would be mounted to the top of the pickguard.

Why? No official explanation was ever offered, but people who have compared both versions have suggested that due to its lower location, the neck pickup on the under-pickguard-mounted models sits too low in the mix. For a model designed to emphasize lower frequencies, that seems less than ideal. It therefore seems likely that Rickenbacker raised the pickup closer to the strings to make it more prominent. But we’ll probably never know for sure.

The initial reaction to the 4003S/5 was overwhelmingly positive, as were sales. Ironically, while the redesigned neck earned widespread praise, the biggest complaint centered on the instrument’s sound. Not that it sounded bad—its low B response in particular was widely praised—but it didn’t sound like a Rickenbacker.

Rickenbacker pulled the plug on the second 4003S/5 at the end of 2022, and it’s not entirely clear why. Sales remained very strong—if anything, they appear to have been growing slowly—and Register data suggests that only the 330, 360, and 4003 consistently outsold it over its lifespan. So why discontinue it?

I wish I had a good answer. I don’t. But I do have an observation that makes the discontinuation ever more puzzling.

Go look for information on the second 4003S/5 in the usual Rickenbacker forums. You won’t find much. Rickenbacker fans love to nitpick and obsess over every little detail, but when it comes to the 4003S/5…they mostly don’t.

There are really only two conclusions you can draw from that. Either the 4003S/5 was so quietly good at doing what it was supposed to do that nobody felt compelled to pick it apart, or it wasn’t the usual Rickenbacker crowd who were buying it.

If the first 4003S/5 succeeded at being a Rickenbacker but failed at being a 5-string bass, maybe the second version succeeded at being a 5-string bass but failed at being a Rickenbacker.

That still doesn’t explain why you would discontinue a bass that was selling well—especially if it was broadening your customer base. Still…that answer just kind of feels right, doesn’t it?

We’ll probably never get the real answer—which is likely something as prosaic as “the pickups were too hard to make at a time when post-Covid demand was still through the roof.” What we do know is that, across its two generations, the 4003S/5 tells a fascinating story: first of a company that entered the 5-string market ahead of almost everyone else, but with the wrong product, and then of a company willing to completely reinvent its own design in pursuit of getting it right. And if you take a step back, it’s clear that few Rickenbacker models illustrate the tension between tradition and innovation as cleanly as the 4003S/5.

Want to learn more about basses with too many strings? You might enjoy this article on 8-string Rickenbackers.

The item in question is this:

The fragment is currently offered for sale on Reverb. Here’s the key parts from the description:

“Extremely rare, investment-grade piece of rock history.

Offered here is an original Rickenbacker 360/12 12-string electric guitar famously stage-smashed and hand-signed by Pete Townshend of The Who during the band’s 1972 German tour, which included their Munich appearance on September 4, 1972.

This is not simply a signed guitar — it is a surviving example of Townshend’s legendary on-stage destruction ritual from the height of The Who’s early-’70s power.

During the 1972 German tour, Townshend played and ultimately smashed this Rickenbacker 360/12 on stage in true Who fashion. The remains were recovered and preserved, later signed by Townshend, and have since been carefully maintained as a display artifact.”

The fragment is accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity from Julien’s 2021 Music Icons auction and a letter from the family of the original owner.

According to that letter:

“My uncle, Heinz Stapfel (aka Heino), was tour leader for The Who concert tour of Germany in 1972. My uncle collected the fragment…from the stage after Pete Townshend smashed the instrument…either at the concert in Essen or Munich. I don’t know for sure which of these two it was as my uncle has passed away. The fragment of the guitar was signed by Pete Townshend for my uncle in the group’s hotel after the concert.”

The letter also includes a few photos, one of which turns out to be particularly useful. We’ll come back to it shortly.

The fragment sold for $15,360, plus a 27% buyer’s premium—$19,507 out the door—and is currently being offered for $39,999. So is it worth it?

That’s obviously a subjective question, and I won’t try to answer it. And it’s an incomplete question. The better question is “is it worth it…if that’s what it really is?” Because I’m pretty certain it’s not. Let me tell you why.

Let’s begin with the evidence that makes the story plausible:

1. Pete Townshend is a noted Rickenbacker player.

2. Townshend is known for smashing guitars—including Rickenbackers—as part of The Who’s stage act.

3. Townshend did own at least one Mapleglo 360/12 from roughly the same period as this fragment

4. The Who toured continental Europe from August through September of 1972, including stops in Essen and Munich.

5. The signature resembles Townshend’s, and has what appears to be a personal inscription.

Let’s dive into those a bit more.

Pete Townshend and smashed Rickenbackers go together like peanut butter and jelly in most people’s minds, and with good reason. Townshend’s habit of smashing Rickenbackers began as an accident before evolving into a gimmick that played a significant role in building The Who’s early fame and notoriety.

That said, he didn’t smash nearly as many as you probably think. The total death toll from those early years was probably only seven or eight guitars—although several were taped or glued back together multiple times so they could be smashed again.

Importantly, though, all of those seven to eight guitars were Rose Morris export models—mostly 1998s and 1993s—all of which came with a Fireglo finish. One notable exception is the 360S/12 prototype you can read about here—but it too was Fireglo. Whatever this fragment is, it’s not one of these guitars.

But Townshend did own at least one Mapleglo New Style 360/12 similar to the fragment in question. It appeared on stage extensively from mid-1966 through early 1967. Here he is with it in early 1967:

Remember I told you the photos in the owner’s letter would be important? Here’s where they come in. We can’t read the serial number in those photos, but we can still tell something very important from them. Up until roughly March 1966, Rickenbacker serial numbers were stamped in a single line across the bottom of the jackplate. Beginning around March 1966, the two-letter date code moved to the top while the production number remained on the bottom.

On this fragment, there is no date code on the top of the jackplate. That means it was made before March 1966—as was the guitar we know Townshend owned and played.

Corroborating points four and five are straightforward enough. The Who did perform in Essen and Munich during the 1972 tour, and the signature certainly looks like Townshend’s.

But after that, the story starts to fall apart.

Let’s go back to early 1966. By then, Pete’s guitar smashing had become an expected part of The Who’s stage show, but the cost was nearly bankrupting the band. Remember, because of import duties, Rickenbackers were extremely expensive in the UK—around $5,000 in today’s dollars. And while several of Townshend’s guitars were reassembled to be smashed again, Rickenbacker’s semi-hollowbody construction made that much more difficult.

So beginning in early 1966, toward the end of the show Townshend would put his Rickenbacker away and pick up a cheaper—and much more easily repaired—Fender Telecaster or Stratocaster for the grand finale. Townshend’s last documented Rickenbacker smashing from this period came in November 1966—and that was for a promotional film.

Add to that the fact that as The Who’s sound grew heavier the Rickenbackers didn’t, and by mid-1967 Townshend had stopped using them on stage entirely. He played a variety of Gibson and Fender models through late 1967 and early 1968 before settling on the Gibson SG Special, which he would play more or less exclusively on stage through late 1971.

But those SG Specials—many more of which were destroyed than Rickenbackers—started getting hard to find after Gibson discontinued them in 1970. And so in late 1971 Townshend began supplementing his dwindling stock of SGs with several Gibson Les Paul variants, including the Les Paul Deluxe, which would completely supplant the SG in 1973.

Notice what we didn’t mention: Rickenbackers.

And there’s the biggest problem with the story. There is simply no documented evidence of Townshend using a Rickenbacker during the 1972 tour or, frankly, on stage at any point between 1967 and 1980—where he briefly pulled out a refinished Rose Morris 1993 in, ironically enough, Essen and Zurich.

It’s also worth mentioning that by the 1972 tour—likely at least partially due to the limited availability of Townshend’s preferred SG Specials—guitar smashing had become relatively rare. While not comprehensive, The Who superfan Irish Jack Lyons’ book The Who Concert Files identifies the Rome show—which came after both Essen and Munich—as the “first smash” of the tour.

So let’s talk about the last bit: the signature. Now I am not by any means a handwriting expert, but here’s what jumps out at me.

First, it absolutely resembles other verified Townshend signatures. Looping the top of the “P” back across the upstroke to both create the crossbar of the “T” and cross the “t” in Pete is a defining element of his signature.

As Townshend has gotten older, he has simplified his signature. So not only do I believe this could be his, I also think it’s likely an older example. That, too, would tend to support the story.

That leaves the “Heino” bit of the story. Here’s the details of that inscription:

To me, it looks like “Hi nore”, but that’s just one interpretation. The “Hi” certainly appears to be a separate word. I think the most honest thing we can say is that the inscription is open to interpretation, and neither proves nor disproves the provenance.

This whole thing would be a lot easier if we knew what happened to Townshend’s Mapleglo 360/12. Sadly, we don’t. We have no record of it being smashed or, if it wasn’t, what happened to it or where it is today. Believe me, I’ve tried to find the answer to that question.

So where does that leave us? I feel very confident saying that the story as presented is not true. I absolutely do not believe it was collected by a stage hand named Heino after Pete Townshend smashed the guitar during a 1972 performance in Germany.

Is it Townshend’s 360/12 bearing his signature? We simply can’t rule it out. There are enough consistencies to say it’s possible. But when the provenance is almost certainly incorrect, it inevitably casts doubt on everything else.

And this is where I have to be a little hard on Julien’s. A certificate of authenticity should not simply certify that an object exists and came with a story. The whole point of a certificate of authenticity is to test that story against the available evidence. In this case, even a modest amount of research should have raised serious questions about the claimed 1972 provenance.

So is it worth $39,999?

If the provenance were solid, perhaps. Rare pieces of genuine rock history can command extraordinary prices—even if you or I personally wouldn’t pay that much.

But based on the evidence currently available? Absolutely not.

Case closed. For now, anyway.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

You might call them a special run, but that generally implies a fixed number of guitars built for a specific dealer or market. Not that either. And while “Limited Edition” removes some of that customer-specificity, it still tends to imply a predetermined quantity. These weren’t that, either.

So what, then? What do you call a reissue-style guitar that had a limited ordering window, but where every guitar ordered during that window—for any customer—would be built?

Well, whatever you call them, Rickenbacker called them the 425V63 and 450V63. So what exactly were they? And why were they?

The first question is easier to answer than the second, so let’s start there. At a macro level, they are close reproductions of the entry-level solidbodied 425 and 450 (click to learn more) as they appeared in 1963—thus the V63. And some of the attention to detail was impressive.

But before we jump into that, a quick note on the “425” part of the 425V63’s designation. Astute readers may have already noticed a potential problem: Rickenbacker models ending in a -5 are generally equipped with a vibrato of some sort. The 425V63 does not.

Oddly enough, neither was the original 425 introduced in 1958. Why then did it get a -5? There’s no telling. It just did.

In 1965, however, the designation began to make sense when the 425 received a vibrato—specifically a Japanese unit commonly misidentified as a “Boyd vibrato” (click to learn more). At that point, the existing non-vibrato model was redesignated the 420, and that is how it remained until production ended in 1981. The vibrato-equipped 425 itself disappeared about 1968.

All of which is to say that because the 425V63 was intended to recreate the guitar as it existed in 1963, calling it a 425—even without a vibrato—is entirely correct.

Recreating a 425/450 body for the first time since 1984 required more effort than you might expect. The old jigs and tooling were long gone—by 1999 Rickenbacker had been using CNC manufacturing for several years. Borrowing the 610’s (click to learn more) body wings was simple enough, but the neck-through center section and top routs were unique to the 425 and 450, requiring new programs to be written. And rather than taking shortcuts with a giant swimming pool rout that could be used on either model, both got their own unique top routing pattern.

They needed a different neck section pattern because despite sharing the same outline, the 400 and 600-Series are structurally quite different. The fingerboard on a 610 and 620 sits about 3/4” over the body—similar to a 330 or 360—while a 425 or 450 sits only about 3/8” proud of the body, much like a 4003.

Consequently, the neck blank is smaller and a different CNC program is required. As there were no similar guitar necks currently in the line, a special program would have to have been created.

The contemporary 650 neck came close, sharing the lower deck height (click to learn more), but its neck was wider, extended to 24 frets instead of 21, and featured a heel designed for improved upper-fret access. Close wasn’t close enough, so a dedicated program was needed. And with the exception of a few Boutique one-offs, I’m fairly sure it hasn’t been used since.

And yes, that square heel is correct. While “square heels” have become a generic “vintage” signifier on many Rickenbacker reissues—even when not technically correct—the original 425 and 450 didn’t transition from square heels to rounded until 1964.

The headstocks reveal another nice detail. As new in 1963, the student model 425 featured white plastic button Kluson Deluxe tuners. The entry-level 450 had nickel-plated button Kluson Deluxe. The 1999 reissues nailed this differentiating detail.

But while we’re looking at the headstock, there’s one detail they didn’t get quite right: the truss rod cover (click to learn more). The “MADE IN U.S.A.” imprint was added below the Rickenbacker logo in 1964 at Rose Morris’s request, making it technically anachronistic on these 1963-inspired models. Were Rickenbacker to remake these guitars today, they could simply borrow the 360/12C63’s “correct” truss rod cover. But that part wouldn’t exist until 2005.

The wiring on the one-pickup 425V63 was also absolutely correct—a fact that confused more than a few people when it first appeared. The switch is only a two-way switch—which was apparently a difficult part to source in 1999—with a low-pass filter “strangle” or “dark” setting in one position, and a standard volume/tone setting in the other.

And here’s one more absurdly specific detail tied directly to those hard-to-source switches: the switch tip.

Everyone knows that the Switchcraft 3-way switch that has appeared on pretty much every Rickenbacker model ever (almost) always has a black switch tip. But the 2-way Switchcraft switch used on one-pickup models in the 1950s and 1960s usually had a chrome switch tip. And so it does on the 425V63.

One area they got it just plain wrong—but also unfortunately right—was the bridgeplate and bridge. You see, Rickenbacker has used two lengths of bridgeplates over the years. From 1954 to 1962—and then again from mid 1965 to 1981—they used a “long” bridgeplate.

But from 1963 to mid-1965—the period these guitars were trying to emulate—a shorter bridgeplate was used, with a correspondingly smaller cutout in the pickguard to accommodate.

The 425V63 and 450V63 used the “incorrect” longer bridgeplate. Why? We’ll probably never know, but I’d wager there were a couple boxes of long bridgeplates left over from 1984 sitting on a shelf somewhere in Santa Ana. If we know anything about the Hall family, it’s that they don’t throw anything away.

Ironically, the bridge itself was historically correct—and that’s probably the one thing modern players wish wasn’t.

In 1962, Rickenbacker changed the bridge to a floating one-piece, height-adjustable intonated bridge. And given when it was introduced, it was intonated for a wound G string as was commonly used at the time. But by the end of the 420 and 450’s lives, most players had switched to plain G strings—which do not intonate correctly at the same place as wound G strings. Yet Rickenbacker never updated the design.

And so the 425V63 and 450V63 used the “correct” bridge—probably found in a box on the same shelf as the bridgeplates—dooming modern players to perpetually out-of-tune G strings.

But these guitars came with a saving grace that excuses a number of minor sins: Rickenbacker chose the 425V63 and 450V63 as the debut platform for the reproduction scatterwound toaster pickup.

The vintage toaster pickup had been completely phased out and replaced by Higain pickups by late 1974, and it did not appear on any models until the launch of the B-Series guitars in 1982.

But while those B-Series toasters were more than mere cosmetic replicas, neither were they accurate reproductions of the vintage pickups that had first appeared in 1957. They were wound much hotter than the originals—typically to around 12k ohms, hotter even than contemporary Higains—and consequently sounded quite different than the pickups they were meant to emulate.

In preparation for what would become the C-Series of vintage reproduction models, John Hall spent over a year analyzing and deconstructing vintage pickups in order to build the most accurate replica possible—even down to randomizing the bobbin winding pattern to mimic the inconsistencies introduced by the original hand-winding process. Thus the “scatterwound” designation.

But the 425V63 and 450V63 got the pickups first. And while I tend to avoid the subjective here, I’ll just say that I own a 450V63, and when I want to explain to someone what a Rickenbacker “sounds like”, that is always the guitar I grab. Hall nailed it.

So we have two fairly accurate replicas of somewhat obscure models, made for a very limited time. Why? Well, there was a third model offered at the same time that might make it a little bit clearer: the 325/12V64 (click to learn more). Which, of course, recreated the one-off, rarely-played 12-string 325 built for John Lennon in 1964.

And while I assume everyone here already knows this, on a 1963 visit with his sister in the US before Beatlemania took hold on our side of the pond, George Harrison bought himself a Fireglo 1962 425—his first Rickenbacker—which he had painted black to match Lennon’s 325.

So we have a limited-time offering of two “minor,” rarely-used Beatles guitars. And if there is anything true in this world it is this: Beatles fans will buy anything related to the Fabs.

That explains the 425V63 and 325/12V64. How do you explain the 450V63? I honestly think the answer may be as simple as, “why not?” They were already making the husk, so why not offer an “add a pickup” option for anyone who might want one?

Although to be fair, Harrison’s 425 was later modified to add a second pickup—effectively making it a 450. That said, the guitar did not appear in that configuration during its brief period of onstage use in late 1963 and early 1964, so that connection is probably best viewed as incidental.

Both models were offered in Jetglo and Burgundyglo—and yes, they added the “-glo” suffix that had quietly been dropped from the catalog in 1976 back to the Burgundy (click to learn more). Jetglo makes perfect sense, but why Burgundyglo? It wasn’t even available in 1963. Somebody at the factory must have liked it.

Actually, the buying public did too. Final production numbers on the 425V63 were 84 Jetglo and 36 Burgundyglo, for a total of 120. On the 450V63, final numbers were 61 Jetglo and 80 Burgundyglo, 141 total. It seems like “might as well offer a 450 while we’re at it” was a solid idea.

There’s one lingering mystery we haven’t addressed yet: why were the models “V63s” when the ostensible inspiration was a 1962 model?

That’s a great question, and it raises a larger one: most of the Beatles “V” models were a year “late”. 325V59? Based on a 1958 325. 360/12V64? Based on a 1963 360/12. I could keep going, but you get the idea.

In this particular case it doesn’t really matter—the specifications on the 1962 and 1963 425 and 450 were virtually identical. But why Rickenbacker used this convention—which they “fixed” with the C-Series reissue models—in the first place? I’ve never come across a satisfactory answer.

We’ll end on one ironic note. Original 425s and 450s have long represented some of the least expensive opportunities to dip your toes into the vintage Rickenbacker market. But because the 425V63 and 450V63 were only offered for a short period and built in relatively small numbers, they now find themselves in the unusual position of often being worth more than the guitars they were designed to reproduce.

Which means Rickenbacker must have done something right, right?

In 1977 Norlin, Gibson’s parent company, sued Ibanez over their use of Gibson’s “open-book” headstock. That case was settled out of court, yet it became attached to an entire generation of Japanese-made guitars—many of which were made long before the lawsuit was filed, and many more after.

“Lawsuit Era” is a convenient misnomer. It’s a shorthand we all use to describe a period when Japanese manufacturers went from building inexpensive copies of American guitars to building instruments that could compete with—and in some cases surpass—the originals they were copying. The lawsuit is part of that story, but only a small part. So what really are Lawsuit Era guitars, and what was the Lawsuit Era itself?

And before you ask, while yes, we tend to picture Fender and Gibson copies when we think of the Lawsuit Era, there were also Rickenbacker copies—some of them shockingly good. Nothing like today’s cheap Chinese-made “Chickenbacker” counterfeits. These guitars proudly wore their own brand names on their headstocks and made no attempt to pass themselves off as genuine Rickenbackers. They were simply well-made, reasonably priced replicas of guitars that people actually wanted.

Which is why, ironically, Lawsuit Era Rickenbacker bass copies abound, while guitar copies are comparatively rare: the peak of the Lawsuit Era aligns almost perfectly with the nadir of demand for Rickenbacker guitars.

But before we talk about the history of the Japanese guitar industry and the rise of the Lawsuit Era, we should have a brief conversation about intellectual property. Because if you think that questions about what is and is not protected were settled during the Lawsuit Era, Fender’s attorneys would like to have a word.

Broadly speaking, there are four basic pillars of protection of intellectual property: patents, trademarks, trade dress, and copyrights.

A patent protects an invention, and grants its creator exclusive rights to that invention for a fixed period of time. When a patent application is filed, the Patent Office asks three basic questions: Is it new? Is it non-obvious? And is it useful? If the answer to all three is yes, a patent is generally granted.

Plenty of things that are just part of the electric guitar landscape today began life protected by patents. Like Gibson’s P.A.F.—“Patent Applied For”—humbucking pickups. Or the Stratocaster’s “Original Countour Body”, beneath which the words “Pat. Pend.”, “Patent”, and eventually nothing at all have appeared over the years.

That’s the important thing to know about patents: they expire. After seventeen to twenty years—depending on when the patent was filed—the patent expires and the invention enters the public domain, available for anyone to use.

And by the heart of the Lawsuit Era, all those early patents were expiring. The coming battles would not be about how guitars worked—they would be about what they looked like.

This brings us neatly to our second and third protection pillars, which overlap quite a bit: trademarks and trade dress.

If patents are meant to protect inventions, trademarks and trade dress are meant to protect brands.

Trademarks have evolved over the years. Originally, they were largely limited to things like names, logos, and slogans that were indelibly linked to a particular product or company. Appearance wasn’t really part of the equation.

But over time, the idea that shapes—or even colors—could have that same connection to a brand took hold. These visual identifiers, which we now refer to as trade dress, can be protected just like more traditional trademarks. The shape of a Coca-Cola bottle and even the specific shade of red associated with the company’s branding are both protected examples.

To receive trademark protection, a company generally must show that a name, logo, slogan, or other identifier is distinctive and helps consumers identify the source of a product. Put another way, when consumers see it, they immediately know who made it.

Trade dress falls into that “other identifier” bucket. The difference is that instead of protecting a name or logo, it protects the visual appearance of a product when that appearance has become closely associated with a particular brand.

Importantly, trademarks and trade dress have no fixed expiration date as long as they remain in commercial use and are actively defended.

Copyright is a bit different from our other three protection pillars. Rather than protecting inventions or brands, it protects creative works such as books, paintings, photographs, and music.

Historically, copyright had little relevance to the guitar industry. Few people would argue that a Stratocaster was a book, a painting, or a song. But in recent years some courts have become more receptive to the idea that industrial designs can also be artistic works deserving of copyright protection.

Which is why, nearly fifty years after the Gibson-Ibanez lawsuit, Fender’s attorneys are once again arguing over who can legally build a Stratocaster-shaped guitar. Their recent victory in Germany came when the defendant failed to show up in court, so we still don’t know how that strategy will fare when someone decides to fight back.

So that’s our whirlwind tour of intellectual property. Now let’s talk about Japan. Because to understand the Lawsuit Era, you need to understand what was happening there after World War II.

The war left much of the country’s industrial base devastated. Rebuilding it became a national priority. During the 1950s and 1960s Japanese manufacturers rapidly modernized, investing heavily in new machinery, manufacturing techniques, and export-oriented industries.

At first, many of the products flowing out of Japan were inexpensive consumer goods aimed at foreign markets. Cameras. Radios. Televisions. Tape recorders. In the United States, “Made in Japan” was often shorthand for “cheap.”

But there was a catch: Japanese manufacturers were getting better. Much better.

Companies that had begun by competing on price increasingly found themselves competing on quality. By the late 1960s and early 1970s Japanese firms were producing cameras, audio equipment, motorcycles, and automobiles that could stand alongside—and often surpass—their American and European competitors.

Now take everything I just said and replace “cameras” or “motorcycles” with “guitars“.

Early Japanese guitars were mostly inexpensive beginner instruments exported under dozens of different brand names. They were affordable, widely available, and often featured…interesting designs that would never be mistaken for a Fender, Gibson, or Rickenbacker.

Despite the bewildering array of brand names, much of the industry’s output came from a relatively small number of factories, including Fujigen, Matsuoka, Guyatone, Matsumoku, and Teisco.

And the more guitars these factories cranked out, the better they got. Meanwhile, back in the US, Fender had been sold to CBS in 1965 and Gibson to Norlin in 1969. And in both cases, the new owners were generally more focused on profitability than product. Quality began to suffer.

It should come as no surprise, then, that in the early 1970s the Japanese manufacturers began making very faithful reproductions of golden era Fenders and Gibsons for the notoriously picky Japanese domestic market.

And some of the copies were really quite good. In some cases, the fit and finish were even better than the guitars coming out of the US factories. And even in the pre-internet age, word got around.

Since Ibanez found itself at the center of the lawsuit that gave the Lawsuit Era its name, let’s take look at how its product line evolved over this period.

By the late 1960s, Ibanez was already exporting inexpensive guitars to the United States. Like many Japanese instruments of the era, they were affordable, widely available, and often featured designs that would never be mistaken for American guitars.

That changed in 1970 when Ibanez moved production to Fujigen—one of Japan’s premier guitar factories. Almost overnight, the catalogs transformed.

No more crazy body shapes. No more weird pickups. Instead, the 1971 catalog is full of credible Les Paul, Stratocaster, SG, and Jazz Bass replicas.

They weren’t exact replicas…yet. The woods were a little cheaper, the necks on the Gibson-style guitars bolted on, and the electronics remained somewhat crude. But they looked the part, were well made, and sold for a fraction of the price of the American originals.

It took a few years for the large American companies to really notice. But once they did, they realized they were in trouble. Let’s return to our intellectual property pillars of protection. We’ve already established that the patents had all expired. But what about the trademarks? What about the protected trade dress?

Brand and model names had all long since been trademarked. But the idea that the shape of a guitar might itself be protectable intellectual property was still in its infancy.

If we go back to our Coca-Cola bottle, it had received one of the earliest “non-traditional” trademarks in US history in 1960, making it one of the first products whose shape alone enjoyed legal protection. Could the same concept apply to guitar shapes?

Over 1974 and 1975 both Gibson and Fender issued a blizzard of trademark applications in an attempt to protect their designs from these Japanese imitators. Who were getting better all the time, it must be noted.

And while we’ve singled out Ibanez since they would become Gibson’s first target, they were far from alone. Brands like Burny and Greco and Univox and many more were cranking out increasingly faithful copies of Gibsons and Fenders…and even Rickenbackers.

Over the course of 1974 and 1975 the trademark approvals started rolling in. They weren’t everything Gibson and Fender had hoped for.

Remember our rough test of “when consumers see it, they immediately know who made it”? The Patent and Trademark Office determined that, given the age of these designs and the fact that they had been copied since almost day one, that test simply wasn’t met when it came to things like the shape of a Les Paul or a Stratocaster body.

Headstocks, though, were a different story. Those passed the test. Those received trademarks.

And with that, we arrive at the lawsuit that would give the Lawsuit Era its name.

On June 9, 1977 Norlin Group—Gibson’s parent company—filed suit in Philadelphia against Elger Company, Ibanez’s American distributor, over Ibanez’s use of Gibson’s trademarked “open-book” headstock and several inlay designs that had also received trademark protection.

Notice what’s missing from that list: Les Paul bodies, SG bodies, and virtually every other aspect of the guitars themselves.

The case did not go to trial. Faced with Gibson’s trademark registrations and a legal landscape that appeared increasingly unfavorable, Elger and Ibanez settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, and agreed to stop using Gibson’s trademarked designs.

Ironically, Ibanez’s reputation for quality had grown so strong by this point they had already begun moving away from the copies and towards selling original designs before the lawsuit was even filed.

Honestly, the Lawsuit Era should more properly be called the “Cease and Desist Era.” Once Gibson had demonstrated a willingness to defend its trademarks, most manufacturers saw little reason to pick a fight they were unlikely to win. A sternly worded letter was usually all it took.

The copies didn’t disappear overnight, and they continued to be sold for years in regions beyond the reach of the American courts. But the US was where the volume was, and manufacturers understood that if they wanted access to that market, they had to play by its rules.

Which brings us, at long last, to how Rickenbacker fits into this story.

Rickenbacker did not follow Gibson and Fender’s lead and spend the mid-1970s filing trademark applications. John Hall himself admitted “my dad never filed a trademark in his life”. So from the perspective of the Japanese manufacturers, Rickenbacker still appeared to be fair game even after the Ibanez settlement.

But if you page through those earliest Lawsuit Era Ibanez catalogs—or the catalogs of any other Japanese brand—you won’t find any Rickenbacker models. Remember, in the early 1970s hardly anyone was buying Rickenbacker guitars, and the 4001 bass had not yet exploded in popularity. That would change in 1973.

Of course, those were not be the first Japanese Rickenbacker copies. In the wake of Beatlemania a variety of Rickenbacker copies began appearing in the US and Europe during the mid-to-late 1960s. Many were made by Teisco and wore names like Coronet, Idol, and Fandel.

These weren’t what you’d call faithful reproductions. “Rickenbacker-inspired” is probably the kinder description.

Such guitars even got a whiff of respectability when, amid growing frustration with Rickenbacker’s delivery delays, UK distributor Rose-Morris comissioned a line of guitars from Teisco to be sold under the Shaftesbury brand (Shaftesbury Street being the location of their main showroom).

But these crude imitations really weren’t seen as a serious threat, and aren’t the guitars we’re talking about when we discuss the lawsuit era. Which takes us back to 1973.

You have to hand it to Ibanez and Fujigen: they were watching the market closely. As soon as demand for the 4001 began to explode, they were right there with an offering of their own.

And we’re bringing Fujigen into the discussion because, while Ibanez was the primary US brand, these guitars weren’t exclusive to Ibanez. Fujigen would happily sell them to anyone who wanted them as a private-label instrument.

Offered in both set-neck and neck-through versions, these first 4001 copies used a number of off-the-shelf components—most notably Gibson-style “mudbucker” pickups—that kept them from being exact replicas.

Other details, however, were remarkably faithful. The bridge and crushed pearl inlays were essentially copied outright. The bass bridges even develop tail-lift over time!

By 1975, the copies had gotten much closer, with Rickenbacker-style pickups and bridge pickup surrounds—probably sourced from Maxon. They had even changed the full-width crushed pearl triangle inlays to inset poured acrylic, just as Rickenbacker had.

To be fair, there were still differences beneath the surface that helped to keep prices down. The bodies were often multi-piece, multi-layer constructions—with clear poplar tops and backs. Other savings came from inexpensive Japanese tuners, lower value potentiometers, and generic hardware. And, of course, they all featured a single truss rod.

Nor was Fujigen alone. Matsumoku was producing similar copies for brands like Electra and Univox, while Tokai supplied Fernandes and others. But as far as I can tell, only Fujigen offered neck-through copies—all other producers stuck with bolt-on construction.

The one brand we haven’t discussed yet is perhaps the most highly-regarded of them all today: Greco.

By the early 1970s, Greco had largely retreated from export markets to focus on Japan’s domestic market. And if there is one thing we’ve established so far, it’s that Japanese buyers were demanding customers.

And so they got the best of the best.

Would it surprise you to learn that the first “reissue” Rickenbackers weren’t made by Rickenbacker? They were made by Fujigen for Greco.

In 1979—three years before the B-Series guitars—Greco introduced the JLG-85, modeled after John Lennon’s 325s, and the PMB-800 (bolt-on) and PMB-1000 (neck-through) basses, modeled after Paul McCartney’s Wings-era 4001S.

Fun fact: Greco model numbers tell you quite a lot about the product. JLG stands for John Lennon Guitar, and PMB stands for Paul McCartney Bass. The number indicates the original list price—two digits for guitars, three for basses. So the JLG-85 retailed for ¥85,000 and the PMB-1000 for ¥100,000 in 1979—not exactly budget territory.

And that’s really the point. By the end of the Lawsuit Era, the best Japanese manufacturers weren’t simply building cheap copies. They were building serious instruments in their own right.

We have focused on 4001 copies, but starting in 1977 Greco offered Rickenbacker guitar copies as well—320, 330, and 480 replicas.

One of the most impressive details on the Greco copies is the tailpiece—and it’s further evidence that they weren’t trying to pass these guitars off as genuine Rickenbackers. They copied the distinctive Rickenbacker harp shape almost exactly, but replaced the famous “R” with a Greco “G”. They weren’t just selling a Rickenbacker copy. They were proudly proclaiming that the guitar was built with Japanese quality.

By 1979 Ibanez and most other established brands had stopped selling “Lawsuit Era” guitars in the US, although some retailers were still buying grey market guitars from Fujigen and Matsumoku. For Gibson and Fender, the Lawsuit Era was largely over.

Rickenbacker, however, still hadn’t moved to protect its intellectual property. So its Lawsuit Era would last a little longer.

It may seem ironic today, given how vigorously Rickenbacker would defend its designs during the John Hall era, just how late to the trademark game Rickenbacker actually was. Even after Hall bought the company from his father in 1984, it would still be years before he began filing trademark applications. And in the meantime, Greco kept making guitars for the Japanese market.

By the early 1980s, the quality of the Japanese manufacturers had become impossible to ignore on the global stage—even if shipments to the US had largely dried up. Fender and Gibson eventually adopted a variation of the old maxim: if you can’t beat them, join them.

In 1982 Fender partnered with Fujigen to produce official Fender instruments for the domestic Japanese market. Gibson followed in 1988 with the launch of the Fujigen-built “Orville by Gibson” brand for Japan. Rather than fighting the Japanese manufacturers, they had decided to work with them.

Despite not having the same legal protections as Gibson and Fender, Rickenbacker still benefited from the climate those companies created. Ibanez, for example, stopped selling copies of all American guitars in the US market—including Rickenbackers—and most of the other major Japanese brands soon followed suit.

But Matsumoku and Fujigen were still making them, and they were still finding their way into the United States—usually under private-label brand names sourced directly from the factories.

To be fair, John Hall had plenty of other things demanding his attention. After purchasing the company in 1984 he had immediately set about overhauling both the product line and the manufacturing process—just in time for a college-radio-fueled resurgence in demand to swamp the factory. The famous Rickenbacker backlog was back with a vengeance.

And realistically, the bootleg private-label guitars finding their way into the US were more of an irritation than a crisis. The bigger problem was the Grecos being sold openly in Japan. Dealing with those would be more complicated.

While the same basic principles around trademarks and trade dress hold true in Japanese law, the standards surrounding product shapes have been much more stringent. This is a gross oversimplification, but once a design has been copied by multiple manufacturers for an extended period, convincing a court that consumers uniquely associate that shape with a single company becomes much harder.

Which meant that by the time Fender and Gibson were securing trademark protection in the United States, seeking similar protection in Japan was already a much steeper climb.

Rickenbacker finally jumped aboard the trademark train in the early 1990s, starting with the easy stuff: their brand name and logo. Then came the headstock shapes. The truss rod cover. And finally, by the early 2010s, even the body shapes themselves—one of the hidden benefits of not being widely copied during the Lawsuit Era.

Being unfashionable at exactly the right moment turned out to be an advantage decades later.

That largely solved the new guitar gray-market issue. But even guitars that predated those trademarks weren’t necessarily safe. Hall became notorious for aggressively defending those trademarks, and over the years countless eBay listings for older Ibanez, Aria, Electra, and other Rickenbacker copies would find themselves on the receiving end of a takedown request—often initiated by Hall himself.

But the trademarks still didn’t solve the Greco problem, though, and that was even more vexing.

This wasn’t a matter of a few copies being sold halfway around the world. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Japan was flush with cash and had become one of the American guitar industry’s most important export markets.

Vintage ‘burst Les Pauls and pre-CBS Fenders were disappearing into massive Japanese collections. Japanese players embraced vintage-style American guitars, and demand for Rickenbackers was stronger there than almost anywhere outside the United States.

So having a high-quality, locally produced alternative available was a real problem. Especially when there was no viable legal strategy to fight them with.

Greco had expanded its line of Rickenbacker copies since Hall had taken over from his father—further proof that the demand was real.

Since there was no practical legal solution, Hall chose a commercial one: flood the zone.

A shortage of authentic product had given Greco a reason to continue producing the copies. Eliminating that shortage by flooding the market with authentic Rickenbackers would remove that reason, Hall must have calculated.

The effect is easy to see in the Rickenbacker register. In the mid-1980’s Japanese entries only account for 6-7% of annual registrations. By the mid 1990s, that figure climbs to over 20%.

For most of the John Hall era, the backlog was a very real thing. Demand simply exceeded the company’s ability to supply it. As a result, every additional guitar ordered by Japan grew that backlog, increasing delivery times to all markets. It appears that was a tradeoff Hall believed was worth making.

Rickenbacker pushed every guitar they could into Japan. And the strategy worked. By 1996 Greco had discontinued their Rickenbacker copies.

And that was pretty much that. The irony is hard to miss. The company that spent years without trademark protection ultimately ended its Lawsuit Era without a lawsuit. It ended it by doing what had prompted the Lawsuit Era in the first place—making the guitars people really wanted available.

Rickenbacker’s Lawsuit Era had finally come to an end—twenty years late.