Couldn't find anyone to do it, so I bought "the" book at Amazon and did it myself. Lots of work, but VERY happy with the outcome! I had a plastic fabricator make me both black and white pickguards because I couldn't decide which I liked better. I still have the original black pickguard, but the holes for the giant Rickenbacker humbuckers were incompatible with any common replacement pickups. Thanks to all for the encouragement and advice!
Rickenbacker 481 project finished!
- Thread starter T.Rex
- Start date
Bagman67 said:
Thanks! I will probably finish the black pickguard at some point, and load it with some Filtertrons or an internal Roland GK pickup perhaps. Swappable! This one uses Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates (Bridge) and '59 (neck). It sounds and plays just fantastic. The angle was from Rickenbacker's idea of using slanted frets, etc.. It does contribute to the look though, IMHO. :headbang:
Ddbltrbl said:Nice job! I think I like the white on white better too. Thanks for show this!ccasion14:
I actually ran a little poll on Facebook of friends/family on the pickguard color. The white got the edge by a fairly wide majority. The black Rickenbacker 4003 wielding bass player in my band liked the white with black pickguard!
Cagey said:
I've wanted one since I was a teenager in the mid-1970s. A friend bought one, and I wanted one ever since. One of the odd things about this project was with the original electronics being kind of a train-wreck, I didn't know how the final product with new electronics/pickups was even going to sound in the end. The answer is, awesome! I knew it was going to play well, it has the lowest/lightest action I have ever experienced on any guitar (and I used to sell them), but the sound was a very nice surprise. Thanks for the compliment!
hannaugh said:
Thanks for the compliment. They are dead sexy guitars that Rickenbacker should re-introduce in my opinion. They may have been a little before their time, or something kept them from catching on at the time, but I think it's high time they stirred their pot a bit.
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AutoBat said:
To me it's more like a world saturated with too many Accords, Camry's and Altima's (Strats, Teles and Les Pauls) and it's mighty refreshing to see a rare old BMW E30 M3 (Rickenbacker 480/481) for a change. Thanks for the compliments on the refinish though!
Or a classic old girlfriend! Great work, and white on white gets my vote as well.
[/quote]
Thank you for the kind words. The pickguard ended up being one of the more challenging aspects of the project, and not because of the color choice. The fabricator determined that the original pickguard was plexiglass. So, he took my modified template and cut out both black and white new ones. He routed and polished the outside edges of the plastic perfectly, but I did not have him do the holes. I did those and what a pain it was! And I discovered the hard way just how brittle and fragile plexiglass is. So it's got a few hairline cracks that I superglued on the backside, hopefully they won't get any worse and you have to really look to see them. I also had to back the whole thing with white duct tape, due to it's slight see-through nature showing shadows of the electronics underneath it. Black wouldn't have had that issue! But like you, I like the way it looks.
[/quote]
Thank you for the kind words. The pickguard ended up being one of the more challenging aspects of the project, and not because of the color choice. The fabricator determined that the original pickguard was plexiglass. So, he took my modified template and cut out both black and white new ones. He routed and polished the outside edges of the plastic perfectly, but I did not have him do the holes. I did those and what a pain it was! And I discovered the hard way just how brittle and fragile plexiglass is. So it's got a few hairline cracks that I superglued on the backside, hopefully they won't get any worse and you have to really look to see them. I also had to back the whole thing with white duct tape, due to it's slight see-through nature showing shadows of the electronics underneath it. Black wouldn't have had that issue! But like you, I like the way it looks.
