Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker International Corporation is a string instrument manufacturer based in Santa Ana, California. The company is credited as the first known maker of electric guitars – a steel guitar in 1932 – and today produces a range of electric guitars and basses.[1]
For other uses, see Rickenbacker (disambiguation).Company type
1931
Worldwide
Adolph Rickenbacker
George Beauchamp
Electric, acoustic, lap and console steel guitars, basses, amplifiers, electric violins, electric mandolins, electric banjos
History[edit]
Founding[edit]
Adolph Rickenbacher and George Beauchamp founded the company in 1931 as the Ro-Pat-In Corporation (ElectRo-Patent-Instruments) to sell electric Hawaiian guitars. Beauchamp designed his instruments in collaboration with Paul Barth and Harry Watson, who had been active in the National String Instrument Corporation.[1] The Ro-Pat-In brand name would eventually transform into the 'Rickenbacher' brand, and ultimately the modern 'Rickenbacker’ was adopted. Early examples bear the brand name 'Electro'.[1]: 12
The early instruments were nicknamed "frying-pans" because of their long necks and small circular bodies. They are the first known solid-bodied electric guitars, though they were a lap-steel type. They had a single pickup with two magnetized steel covers, shaped like horseshoes, that arched over the strings. By the time they ceased producing the "frying pan" model in 1939, they had made several thousand units.[2]
Electro String also sold amplifiers to go with their guitars. A Los Angeles radio manufacturer named Van Nest designed the first Electro String production-model amplifier. Shortly thereafter, design engineer Ralph Robertson further developed the amplifiers, and by the 1940s at least four different Rickenbacker models were available. James B. Lansing of the Lansing Manufacturing Company designed the speaker in the Rickenbacker professional model. During the early 1940s, Rickenbacker amps were sometimes repaired by Leo Fender, whose repair shop evolved into the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company.
Early history[edit]
George Beauchamp was a vaudeville performer, violinist, and steel guitarist who, like many acoustic guitarists in the pre-electric-guitar 1920s, was looking for some way to make his instrument cut through an orchestra. He first conceived of a guitar fitted with a phonograph-like amplifying horn. He approached inventor and violin-maker John Dopyera, who made a prototype that was, by all accounts, a failure. Their next collaboration involved experiments with mounting three conical aluminum resonators into the body of the guitar beneath the bridge. These efforts produced an instrument that so pleased Beauchamp that he told Dopyera that they should go into business to manufacture them. After further refinements, Dopyera applied for a patent on the so-called tri-cone guitar on April 9, 1927. Thereafter, Dopyera and his brothers made the tri-cone guitars in their Los Angeles shop, under the brand name National. On January 26, 1928, the National String Instrument Corporation opened, with a new factory located near a metal-stamping shop owned by Adolph Rickenbacher and staffed by experienced and competent craftsmen. The company made Spanish and Hawaiian style tri-cone guitars as well as four-string tenor guitars, mandolins, and ukuleles.[3]
Adolph Rickenbacher was born in Basel, Switzerland in 1887 and emigrated to the United States to live with relatives after the death of his parents. Sometime after moving to Los Angeles in 1918, he changed his surname to "Rickenbacker". In 1925, Rickenbacker and two partners formed the Rickenbacker Manufacturing Company and incorporated it in 1927. By the time he met George Beauchamp and began manufacturing metal bodies for the "Nationals" being produced by the National String Instruments Corporation, Rickenbacker was a highly skilled production engineer and machinist. Adolph Rickenbacker became a shareholder in National and, with the assistance of his Rickenbacker Manufacturing Company, National boosted production to fifty guitars a day.[3]: 5–6
Unfortunately, National's line of instruments was not well diversified and, as demand for the expensive and hard-to-manufacture tri-cone guitars began to slip, the company realized that it would need to produce instruments with a lower production cost to remain competitive. Dissatisfaction with what John Dopyera felt was mismanagement led him to resign from National in January 1929. He subsequently formed the Dobro Manufacturing Corporation, later called Dobro Corporation, Ltd, and began to manufacture his own line of resonator-equipped instruments (dobros). Patent infringement disagreements between National and Dobro led to a lawsuit in 1929, with Dobro suing National for $2 million in damages. Problems within National's management, as well as pressure from the deepening Great Depression, led to a production slowdown at National. This ultimately resulted in part of the company's fractured management structure organizing support for George Beauchamp's newest project: development of a fully electric guitar.[3]: 8–9
By the late twenties, the idea for electrified string instruments had been around for some time, and experimental banjo, violin, and guitar pickups had been developed. George Beauchamp had experimented with electric amplification as early as 1925, but his early efforts, which used microphones, did not produce the effect he desired. Beauchamp also pursued the idea, building a one-string test guitar out of a 2X4 piece of lumber and an electric phonograph pickup. As problems at National became more apparent, Beauchamp's home experiments became more rigorous, and he began to attend night classes in electronics and collaborate with fellow National employee Paul Barth.[1] When they finally developed a prototype electric pickup that met their satisfaction, Beauchamp asked former National shop craftsman Harry Watson to make a wooden neck and body to hold the pickup. Somebody nicknamed it the "fry-pan" because of its shape, though Rickenbacker liked to call it the pancake.[3]: 9–10 The final design Beauchamp and Barth developed was an electric pickup consisting of a pair of horseshoe-shaped magnets that enclosed the pickup coil and completely surrounded the strings.[1]
Acoustic guitars[edit]
Rickenbacker has produced a number of uniquely designed and distinctively trimmed acoustic guitars. Although a small number of Rickenbacker acoustics were sold in the 1950s and were seen in the hands of stars like Ricky Nelson[12] and Sam Cooke,[13] the company concentrated on their electric guitar and western steel guitar business from the early 1960s onward. From about 1959 through 1994, very few Rickenbacker acoustic guitars were made.
In 1995, an effort was made to re-introduce Rickenbacker acoustics, with factory production beginning in their Santa Ana manufacturing facility in 1996. Four models of flat top acoustic Rickenbackers were depicted in factory literature (maple or rosewood back and sides, jumbo or dreadnaught shape). Each of these four models was also available in both six- and twelve-string configurations, yielding a range of eight distinct instruments.[14] (The 760J "Jazzbo", an archtop model, was only built as a prototype, with three examples known to exist.) It is estimated that fewer than 500 Rickenbacker acoustic guitars were built before the factory shut down the acoustic department in mid-2006.
In late 2006, Rickenbacker gave a license to build Rickenbacker-branded acoustics to Paul Wilczynski, a luthier with a workshop in San Francisco, California. He continued to offer all eight models of the Rickenbacker flat top guitar line, building each instrument to order, until his license expired on February 1, 2013.
Pickups[edit]
Rickenbacker manufactures three pickups for their current standard models: high-gain single-coil, Vintage Toaster single coil, and humbucking. All three pickup designs share the same footprint, so they can retrofit into most current or vintage models. The tone varies from one style to the next, partially because of the types of magnets used[15] but also due to the amount of wire wound around the pickup's bobbin.
Most contemporary models come with single-coil high-gain pickups as standard equipment. Many post-British-Invasion players such as Peter Buck, Paul Weller, and Johnny Marr have used instruments with these pickups. Rickenbacker's HB1 humbucker/dual coil pickup has a similar tone to a Gibson mini-humbucker pickup, and comes standard on the Rickenbacker 650C and 4004 basses. Vintage reissue models, and some signature models, come with Toaster Top pickups, which resemble a classic two-slotted chrome toaster. Despite their slightly lower output, Toasters produce a brighter, cleaner sound, and are generally seen as key to obtaining the true British Invasion guitar tone, as they were original equipment of the era.
In addition to the standard pickups, vintage reissue bass models are equipped with Horseshoe wrap-around style pickups, very similar to the pickups on the earliest Rickenbacker Frying Pan models.[16]
