George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacher founded Electro String in 1931 to manufacture what everyone would soon call “Rickenbacker” guitars. Success came early and their lap steels set standards of quality, performance, and tone. On the other hand, the company’s electric bass viols and violins excited segments of the industry but never sold well. Same for the novel Bakelite standard guitars. While it’s true Rickenbacker set the stage for modern electric guitars, after World War II, the company languished as others, like Fender, capitalized on them.
F.C. Hall, who was a partner with Fender Sales, knew the market well. When he bought Electro String in 1953, he immediately started remaking it, and soon, everyone would call the company “Rickenbacker.”
Adolph Rickenbacher had come to guitars with a background in industrial arts. He liked to work with cast aluminum, Bakelite, and stamped metal, which led to many of the company’s early innovations, but also limited its designs. Hall moved the factory toward finely crafted wood, the more-traditional guitar material for good reason – it worked better.
The solidbody Combo guitars and 4000 basses followed, but had only limited success. The latter’s neck-through-body would prove to be the other way to make solidbody basses (compared with Fender’s). Though the idea would later sell in the thousands and influence numerous high-end builders, nobody knew that in 1957.
Rickenbacker’s final break with the ’30s came when Paul Barth left the company and Hall hired master builder Roger Rossmeisl.
A German handy with a French curve, he revamped the solidbody line and created the new acoustic/electric Capri Series. In visual terms, Rossmeisl’s guitars were among the most-appealing electrics ever produced.
By ’58, Rickenbacker produced both Deluxe and Standard double-cutaway acoustic/electric models. The Deluxe 360 and 370 had triangle-shaped fretboard inlays, bound necks, and bound bodies. Moreover, they came with a Rick-O-Sound jack after mid 1960; hooked up with a special junction box, it divided signal from the pickups to produce a quasi-stereo effect through two amplifiers. The standard models 330 and 340 had dot inlays and no bindings. The 3/4-sized 310, 315, 320, and 325 had Standard features, as well (Rickenbacker designated vibrato with a 5 as the last digit in a model number).
By ’63, Hall must have been frustrated, having created all these beautiful six-strings, yet he still had no blockbuster. The 360 and 365 sold well, but not like Fenders and Gibsons, which had the solidbody market locked tight. While Danelectro and Gibson did turn out earlier 12-strings, Hall still sensed an untapped market. A Rickenbacker, he believed, had potential if designed correctly and played by musicians looking for a new sound. Since Rossmeisl had by then moved to Fender, Ward Deaton developed ideas at the factory, including what would become Ric’s highly regarded headstock design. Crowded but with just enough room to turn easily, 12 closed-back Klusons were snuggled.
Three 12-string prototypes were made – two 360/12s and a solidbody 625/12. An inventory sheet mentions a back-ordered 360F/12 (single-cut), but there is no evidence the factory made it. The company displayed the first 360/12 at the ’63 summer trade shows. It had gold-backed Lucite pickguards, TV-style control knobs, and a double-bound Fireglo body. The flat tailpiece resembled those on other non-vibrato Capri models. Triangle fretboard inlays and an unbound slash-shaped sound hole rounded out the design. Like all of 360 Deluxe models made after June of 1960, the 12-string normally had Rick-O-Sound stereo. The first prototype went to Suzi Arden, a country/western lounge singer in Las Vegas.
The second 360/12 also sported a double-bound body with a Fireglo finish, slash sound hole, triangle inlays, and a flat tailpiece. But while Arden’s guitar had conventional stringing, by the end of ’63, Hall had devised a novel way to make his 12-string play easier and sound even more distinctive – he reversed the traditional string setup. The 12th string became the low E and the 11th string became the octave. Strumming down, the lower-pitch string was hit before its octave counterpart. Since the second prototype was the first with this stringing, Hall always called it the first Rickenbacker 12-string. The factory also substituted double-white pickguards and black control knobs for the earlier Lucite guards and TV knobs. This guitar went to George Harrison in February ’64.
Rounding out the saga of ’63 prototypes, the first 625/12 traveled to a few trade shows, but Rickenbacker made a more-economical solidbody 450/12 instead. In the ’70s, Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers bought the original 625/12 used for $125, having no idea what he’d found. Petty holds the guitar on the cover of Damn the Torpedoes, which sparked a 12-string revival and pushed the 625/12 into production.
Back in the ’60s, though, while the first 625/12 was still in limbo, Harrison made good use of the 360/12 on “You Can’t Do That,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” and “Eight Days a Week.” Certainly, no one at Rickenbacker worried about the next big thing for awhile. Because of increased demand, the factory (by then situated in Santa Ana) could barely keep up. The 12-strings became production items, though the features remained in flux through the summer. The 360/12 displayed at the ’64 NAMM show had white pickguards, a double-bound body, triangle inlays, and an f-shaped sound hole. Its flat tailpiece and controls were the same as George’s earlier model, but the show guitar had chrome-top knobs.
In ’63, a new body design for the Models 360 to 375 hit the drawing boards. The factory shipped the first known example, a Model 365, on June 1, 1964. The new form featured rounded edges on the face. Hall described the look in a press release, saying, “The smooth roundness avoids all that is harsh and yields flowing lines for smooth, easy playing.” The new design did not allow for binding on the top/front edge. Instead, bound sound holes became standard. All other Deluxe features remained.
360/12 models made after the summer of ’64 had the new body style, which used a cast/chrome-plated R tailpiece. A lack of this part delayed production for several weeks. Roger McGuinn, after seeing the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night, bought one of the first off the rack and later had the factory add a middle pickup and special wiring (three-pickup models were in the 370 series). Meanwhile, Rickenbacker struck a deal to produce an export line for England’s Rose, Morris Ltd.
The export line, with its own numbering scheme and features, quickly caught on with British Invasion groups. Pete Townshend perfected his guitar-smashing skills with the 12-string Model 1993. It sported a double-bound body, f-shaped sound hole, and dot inlays. The factory equipped it with a flat tailpiece and a mixer control.
After the introduction of the new-style 360/12 and the Rose-Morris 1993, the factory still made a number of the old-style double-bound 12-strings for the domestic market. This included a few guitars identical to the Rose-Morris – the American version was the 330S/12. On the double-bound 360/12, the factory added the suffix O.S. (old style). Later, this changed to “WBBS” (white binding both sides) and then just WB, as in 360/12WB.
The standard finishes for Rick 12-strings were Fireglo and Mapleglo (natural), both remnants of Rossmeisl’s reign. Factory invoices described a new “lighter shade of Fireglo” in late ’64, and the other colors listed were standard for all Rickenbacker guitars in ’68 – Azureglo, Jetglo, and Burgundyglo. Though not listed, other finishes from this period included orange, shaded blue, shaded green, walnut, and cherry red. Like Fender and Gibson, the factory painted custom colors at an extra cost. Satin finishes were available beginning in the mid ’70s.
It has been six decades since Rickenbacker’s crystalline 12-string overtones first filled the airwaves. Old yet new, these guitars have become an essential part of post-modern guitar playing in which the best sounds of different decades combine to create the sounds of today. Ricks, especially the 12-strings, still play a key role in defining tone and design in a way George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacher never could have imagined. Pioneers, they set the stage for modern electric guitars, and F.C. Hall stood on their shoulders.
The original version of this feature appeared in the February ’01 issue.
This article originally appeared in VG’s April 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
