Rickenbacker Factory Tour: Model 330 Guitar & Model Bass Construction

everybody this is Charles for premier guitar and it's a thrill to be here at the Rickenbacker Factory in Santa Ana California Rickenbacker which is one of the pillars of electric guitar history in American electric guitar history is celebrating their 80th anniversary this year and we're going to go inside we're going to visit Rickenbacker chairman CEO John Hall and take a peek into their own history and how they do things so let's go inside it's my pleasure to introduce you to Rickenbacker chairman CEO John Hall John how you doing I'm doing good we're real happy to have you here thanks very much John's going to take us inside we're going to see how they do things here what are we going to go see first I think we'll start in the woodshop and then we'll move all the way through the factory well unfortunately this isn't very impressive because we're late enough in the day that we've already cut up most of our wood but we bring in large lifts of primarily maple and cut it all up as early in the day as we can get it into a guitarra the same day you told me earlier what percentage approximately of wood that you bring in is maple and what was that again oh I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't 85 90 percent that's our primary wood we believe that it's the perfect wood for making a guitar very stable it finishes well and most importantly its plantation or farm grown it's not an endangered species it's something that can be replaced within about ten years in a farm environment it's called a jump saw we're going to see in a second it almost completely hides access to the blade now what what are we cutting up here we're cutting up neck blanks here we're just cutting off the ends cutting them to the proper length it comes down it protects the blade you don't even see it it holds the piece and it cuts it off very cool you really have to work hard to hurt yourself with this one we start with a rectangular piece it's just two pieces of wood left and right and one half came out of the same board immediately next to it when was just cut flipped over and glued together then it goes on to a CNC machine and it's carved out fully from the inside first this is something you do very very differently this is a than almost any guitar manufacturer there's something that's very quintessentially Rickenbacker and so it well it's building a guitar from the inside out actually now that we take that we'll take a back laminate a back onto it as this one and will allow it to dry and then this will go on to the CNC machine as a unit will cut the shape on the exterior and all of the interior will still remain open like that with all of its cone chambers we're going to do all of the little fine cuts to the top of the instrument so we'll get some pickup cutouts and all of the various little details like the soundhole rather than create entirely new models we were trying to transfer the manual production of older instruments to the CNC so our procedure was really quite straightforward we went and we found what you would call the quintessential version of that model the instrument that sounded the best that played the best looked the best created a 3d digital model of that instrument and we keep making that instrument over and over the code that the Machine executes is based off of that that 3d model so there's a lot more capability that we have here with CNC and I think that's why we made the move its capability and repeatability not necessarily increased production although that is a side benefit after coming off the CNC machine this inch begins to be a completed looking instrument it's a solid well responding piece of wood still got all of its tone chambers inside all of the different cutouts necessary to pass through the wiring finally beginning to look like a guitar obviously it's going in for a little more sanding here this is a 360 so as compared to that 330 it's had two additional operations one the edge has been shaped into that nicely contoured edge it's also had a binding applied on the back binding slot was cut and then that was hand applied creates a nice looking at appearance on the back of the instrument we have several different ways to make necks this is the slower ball cutter method where essentially we're taking a ball nose router and moving it across the wood just incrementally moving at each time so that we can get that shape we have other programs too though that have special cutters that can take off the wood and make the shape of the neck in one past but there's pros and cons of both typically high production units will use the specialized one-pass cutter lower production will use the ball cutter but it's also dependent upon the geometry involved these are three 13x which is a glued in insert type neck so we've got a complete wood assembly here laminated with the Reta fide maple down the middle and two laminations on the headstock this will be inserted into a body a little later in the process our scheduling is such that at any given time in the shop we're doing one family of instrument that might be for an entire week it could be several weeks straight actually but it's much more efficient for us if we're making instruments that are all roughly related this will be the final product off of the CNC machine fully completed next structure ready for sanding it doesn't have a fingerboard yet on it but you can see the alignment pinholes which make sure that it lines up perfectly on CNC machine every time we've got the ratified maple on the headstock and the stringer so it's an all maple structure even though it has the difference in color it's it's all the same type of maple all of our instruments have dual truss rods the truss rod slot has already been put in here the the rod enters through the top and will be adjusted at the head but it's a little hard to see but there's two maple grooves all the way through here and this is done in a bit of an arc and the trim strips that are on the top have been inserted and glued in and then trimmed flush so we have a channel all the way down the length of the instrument and the other end of the truss rod will be affixed down here it's perfectly possible on a Rickenbacker to unscrew the nuts and slide the rod out so if you want to replace the rod down the road you don't have to take the fingerboard off it's a pretty easy easy job to service it so this is Ben Hall this is John's son and Ben is actually the factory manager that correct and you're overseeing all the various processes here you're also seem to be tackling one yourself here what's this all about at this table what we do is we actually assemble the rod these pairs right here and we wrap them in shrink tube and we will take them over here and we will use a heat gun and this shrinks it just enough so that it fits into the truss rod channels of our guitars and obviously this is a very important process we don't want it loose we want it rattling around and this will ensure a snug fit and ensure that we have optimal adjustability in the guitars as well we put the truss rods in as soon as they're finished in the woodshop department so they need to be inside the guitar before it goes into the finish area because otherwise we have to put the truss rods in up here which we used to do for years but felt that wasn't the best place to do it so we do it before there's any pain even on the guitar I think the shape of headstocks shape of the neck all of those things is a little bit like ladies fashion it changes community here but yeah we have gone back to some of those styles that people seem to prefer but I have no doubt in a few years down the road everyone will say they preferred the larger head sucks and we'll go back to that the fingerboard process is pretty straightforward we create a fingerboard blank here in this case boo Binga and it goes on the CNC machine and the CNC machine transforms that blank into something a little more sophisticated like this it's got some cutouts and it does have some locating pins on the back so that we know exactly where everything is located on the machine from that stage we add inlays the inlays are nothing more than a piece of plastic that's inserted into the slot it's glued in place and it goes back on the machine machine trims the edge slot which is where the binding is going to go but it also prepares the crowning of the fingerboard does that all in one pass and it contours the entire fingerboard to the proper shape I see we have two kinds of wood here actually we have Caribbean rosewood as well as one piece of bubinga this is probably a straggler from from something but we're tending to use the Caribbean rosewood more and more because we like the uniformity the difference in grain and it's a little brown more Brown rather than reddish in appearance as you can see this is the very high-tech method of creating fret dots here essentially it's just a little rod that's inserted in trim that'll get trimmed off by the CNC machine up and does he change blocks of wood to use as a hammer yeah that's a good question I'm sure there's some special mojo associated with that particular block this is actually just a relatively simple easy way to make sure that the glue is applied evenly that its dispensed over the surface of the the wood properly we don't use too much or too little this way here he's laminating finger boards to the necks there's actually a little dimple in the neck and a corresponding a mating hole in the fingerboard so that the fingerboard is always going to line up with a neck exactly the way the the model and the CNC machine predicted that they would so the left and right halves of the body are joined to the neck over here just a simple matter of gluing it together letting the glue dry uses very basic aliphatic resin glue no no magic here and it really makes for a great instrument because all of the tension is really contained on that center piece of wood it's not spanning a neck joint it's it's all all of the tone everything remains right there in the center in that solid piece of wood and it's a technique that we've been using forever obviously if you were to break a neck big problem it would be a big problem I suppose in that circumstance would be nice to bolt on a neck and I have to say in production it would probably be nicer to be able to deal with bodies and necks separately but this is just simply a better way to to make an instrument in my opinion over in the main part of the woodshop we saw tons and tons of 330 guitars but you're in the next shop over we're seeing 4,000 3 instruments and that's simply because today is Monday they started making 330s in the woodshop this would be Friday's instruments and obviously we were making four thousand three bases then at this stage forward everything is by hand a lot of automation in the rough rough mill over there but from this point on it's all basic down and dirty handwork he's just doing some cleanup of the binding where it meets the threads a little bit of handwork necessary to make that look right in this area we're providing all of the coatings on the instrument it starts out with a number of sealer coats and then if it's a shaded type finish it's applied by hand to get the coloring that in the fire glow shading or any first type shading our materials now are almost completely solvent free and they'll never dry as such but they contain a photo initiator and after the instrument is sprayed here we put it into an oven which is a misnomer because there's really no heat involved and expose the thing to ultraviolet light the ultraviolet light sets off the photo initiator and cures the finish very similar the way dentists do bonding in in your mouth anymore doing it this way is not only great for production because it's a huge time saver is also a tremendous ecological step forward because that solvent is now not going up the stack and into the atmosphere we're containing almost all of the materials here and reusing them the instrument spins around three minutes and forty-five seconds that's going to come out cured we intentionally don't mask it all off the reason for that is it allows us to come back quite literally to create a razor edge line between the color and the binding and they take the razor blade and with a great deal of practice and skill on this are able to create that that perfectly sharp delineation between the color of the instrument and the binding I've been going on the same way even doing that the same way for all these years that's been that way since we began putting on binding which must have been in the 50s sometime we use a lot of automation here where we can but there's just some things like this that really can't be done any other way than with a lot of skill and by hand in order to achieve the absolutely perfectly smooth finish that we need we go through a number of levels of sanding where we're continuously getting down to finer and finer sandpapers this is just basically leveling the finish there's a certain inconsistency when you spray to the finish and this levels at all out nice and smooth but it ends up with this nice milky looking color immediately before it goes into the buffing stage which then polishes that all off into a gloss this is actually one of the most difficult jobs in the shop takes an immense amount of skill to buff the instruments properly we spend about an hour and a half with each instrument varies a little bit by a model and we're using differing types of compounds start with something that's fairly abrasive to work down through the system until it's pure wax and it's the way to achieve a really deep looking finish that that we're known for you mentioned there's a lot of experience in this room there is we currently have a father and son working in this room and we previously also had the grandfather so it's something that's been handed down here we've got a instrument with a exceptionally glossy deep looking finish and it's it's something that's achieved not so much with materials as with the lots of knowledge and time the biggest investment is the finish is the time that it takes again all completely done by by hand at this point and I don't think there's too many people that can compare with us on the quality of finish that we're putting out consistently every day of the week an awful lot of the circuitry that you find in other guitars is produced in Asia wired as assemblies and imported into the u.s. for inclusion in guitars we do it all here it's very important to us that we utilize American components where we can switch craft connectors out of Chicago it's the CTS pods some of which are produced in Taiwan but it's all custom made components for us but we believe in in doing as much as we possibly can here in the US with us mate products Jeff Rhodes here is dad's red Rhodes and amplifier modification Fame and he's known for pretty famous pickups - velvet hammer pickups it's pretty amazing to me that such a fine piece of wire can be wound at such a speed and that of course is something that the computer can do it's modulating the tension throughout the cycle here we believe it's really important to have the high accuracy on the winding of the pickups of course the unique thing is is that we're doing it again here in the US almost all of this type of work is done either in Asia or Mexico currently by others here we begin the final assembly of the instrument key whines pickups pick guards all of the different parts come together here these are all the exception of the german-made shall our key wines all parts that we make here in the US we also go to a great deal of trouble to color match the chrome some parts of brass some are diecast zinc summer steel we vary the nickel chrome content so that they all are the same color of chrome we match them against the collar chrome that's done in Germany this is the final detailing of the instrument getting ready to prepare this for shipment she's just making sure that all the fingerprints and polish and dust on the instrument are cleaned up here she's also inspecting it for any little imperfections and there might be a little touch-up work occasionally that needs to be done and this is the stage where where we want to catch that let's go on here put the nameplate on finishing up as a business yep we are they enough to be a Rickenbacker so we're looking at the finished product John yeah this is one of today's production going out all of these instruments will be shipped tomorrow and interestingly about 60% of everything we produce goes outside the US pretty high percentage of export I like this one I'm a bass player so I think this is going to be a good one thanks a lot for showing us around John I appreciate it this is Charles for a premier guitar

Channel: Premier Guitar

Views: 1,342,645

Keywords: factory, tour, premier, guitar, magazine, rickenbacker, guitars, 330, 360, 4003, pete, townshend, lemmy, kilmister, george, harrison, john, lennon, roger, mcguinn, beatles, the, who, motorhead, rock, blues, metal, handmade, handbuilt, pickups, humbuckers, toaster, 12-string, RIC

Id: NEuqgZzKxC4

Length: 21min 58sec (1318 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 08 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/pwndepot]

I love this. I think the guys over at r/guitar would love this too

[u/kitosho]

It's the level of craftsmanship that allows them to open up N.O. channels in your forehead when you get hit with one.