Why Do Players Hate This Guitar?

in today's Deep dive we're gonna be checking out this Rickenbacker 360 12 string and it was a suggestion by a viewer on the podcast who asked how come rickenbackers don't get any Love on YouTube after the episode I went on the internet and looked and I saw quite a few videos more than I thought I would see of people saying why they don't like this guitar and I thought well I used to have this exact same guitar in blue is a six string and one of the issues I had with it was as much as I love the way it sound I loved the way it looked I just felt the neck was a little hard for me to play because it's kind of narrow and so I thought let's do it again let's try it again let's get this one and so I bought this one on reverb and I got it in the 12 string version because maybe it's time to try a 12 string that's what I'm missing in this so let's get started let's get into the geeky stuff and learn about this thing let's go let's go over the features because boy does it have a lot starting with the body what we have is a chambered Maple body so this is all Maple this is a cat I it's an F whole but it's called a cat eye because obviously it looks like a cat eye you have a set neck this is 24 and three quarters scale length like a gibsonless Paul or an SG this is a 10 inch radius fretboard much like a Paul Reed Smith or should I say a power Smith is much like this we have vintage Frets and they are tiny as you can see right here this is the type of fretboard that when you push down on it you're pretty much in contact with wood the entire time if that's something you don't like you definitely want to consider that if something you don't mind it's great this is definitely not going to have the feel of a more modern guitar so as you know sometimes we check the Frets to see if there's any High Frets this guitar was bought secondhand so there is no high Frets but we don't know if that's how Rickenbacker did it or if the person who bought this before me uh had it done what I can show you just for illustration purposes is that the Fret ends are very very well done and I have never actually come across a Rickenbacker look at that without without a single issue there I've never had any fretboard shrinkage on any Rickenbacker ever seen I mean they're put together very very good but what I want to show you is the bridge so one of the tests I like to do is call the cheese grater and that's to see how the bridge feels against your hand and of course they put this protective bar here and most likely you're not going to play a Rickenbacker with your palm on the bridge it's not the style you're going to go for what's great is as you can see there's nothing there which is a really nice thing to know and especially since you have a lot of screws and you can see how they they basically use Allen style key or Allen style screws right there and they set them low so by design of the bridge there's nothing there to uh to bug you if that's something you're concerned about you have a rosewood fretboard that is bound but they do their binding the strangest way and you can see right here which is you can see they bind it but then you can see the underside of the rosewood fretboard right there that is not a mistake in the guitar that's how all of them are done now looking at the back of the guitar you can see this is the maple again we talked about so Maple body and this is cut binding on the back and then you have a maple neck but it's Maple and walnut and it looks like it's three piece but it's actually five because they had to put on the wings so you have Walnut maple walnut maple walnut and then of course it's a set neck now interesting thing to note about this guitar is it is a polyester finish so a lot of times maybe the original ones are different but this one is a reissue of course is a polyester finish so if you're thinking it's Nitro lacquer it's not okay something to note has 24 Frets however as of 2023 I believe they're going back to 21 Frets again and so they did that a long time ago to extend this piece here to give it better stability uh for construction wise and I guess what they've done is they've gone back to the shallow block again so this is a new Rickenbacker a newer one but not the newest edition so there's some changes so just be aware of that the nut is Bake Light so it's basically a plastic you have perloid shark fin inlays is what they're called and then you have single coil High Gain pickups that's what they call them we'll check them out these are basically if you're familiar with their toaster pickups these are the same pickups except for they have pole pieces and they have more wines on them and so that makes them just a little bit more aggressive sending more signal out to the amp of course you have the Rickenbacker Bridge which is their standard bridge for this and of course it's beautiful how they shape it with the R I think that's just a nice touch a little elegant there so this color is called Fire Glow and it's a beautiful color because it's to me it's iconic and then of course you're going to have their control layout which is proprietary to them you'll have two volumes right here a volume for the bridge and neck pickup two tones and of course you have the Dual outputs on the back okay so I pulled this out and now we can see how the output jacks work and you can see here is the standard plug it looks like a stereo plug it's not I have a great video on how output jacks work if you want to watch it's quick and simple and shows you how all what all these things are touching what they mean so here's your standard mono output Jack right here but then you have the Rick o sound and you can see this is a stereo Jack because you can see these two contact points so you can use a stereo plug right here and if you use a stereo plug you can send each pickup to a different amp so maybe you want to send your treble pickup to an overdriven amp and then your neck pickup to a clean amp and that way you can almost sound like you have two guitar players playing at the same time now looking at the tuning Keys these are shaller tune keys but if you go back back far enough some are going to have a close on style key one thing though you might be concerned about is the thickness of the neck and so let's go ahead and do that let's test that and we have the nut width at 41.25 millimeters which is 1.624 so it's kind of narrow I mean it's not really bad but I mean keep in mind this is a 12 string and the sixth ring would be the same let's check the 12th fret and the 12th fret is going to be 1.973 or 50.11 millimeters which is again kind of narrow now don't get me wrong this isn't like super bad but this is a lot more narrow than a lot of players are going to be used to so I want you to just be aware that is one of the concerns you might have let's go ahead and do the thickness of the neck and check some other things thickness at the first fret is 24.03 millimeters or 0.946 thickness at the 12th fret is 24.55 millimeters or 0.966 there's a couple things I want to show you first is how these tuning Keys work so you have like I said shower tuning Keys you have one tuning key here and then you have the same one facing downward so you have to string into this canal looking at the headstock something to notice is that Rickenbacker uses two truss rods right here this isn't just on the 12 string don't think it's that's what's what's for on the sixth string would have it as well and their base is but keep in mind newer models I think post 2021 or 22 they're now starting to integrate a single Trust Rod right there but this one has two and if your question is well how do you adjust them kind of adjust them the same way you do a single truss rod but you make an adjustment and then you make an adjustment and then you check it you make an adjustment you make an adjustment then you check it okay rosewood fretboard you can see that they put a finish on it so it's gloss that's not just Reflection from the light that is a finish over their fretboard which again keep in mind these Frets are very low vintage style fret wire and then of course the glossy fretboard so that's one thing that players don't like or maybe that's the thing that you draws you to this Guitar let's start looking at Electronics that's where it's going to get interesting here we're going to first notice how they mount these pickups these pickups are not mounted the way you think they're sitting on top they're not sitting inside the body like you think so let's go ahead and take one out so something I want to show you first is how this all comes together so first of all in this pickguard you have two layers so this is a pick guard that is on top let me adjust that and this is going to be just like how a Gibson Les Paul has this kind of sitting on top of the body now granted it's mounted on the top and on the sides and over here like the Gibson but essentially that's what it's doing so this is the pick guard and this is the pickguard of course but it's a control layout guard what you're looking at is very normal but at first it's going to look a little strange so you're used to seeing a pic pickup especially humbucker not a single boy like this with a pickup frame this Frame is a frame but it's obviously the like the top of the pickup too see so there's your frame this is the actual pickup you can see this is the wound coil right here with right and then of course there's your magnet you can see it's a very big magnet as you can see and then we have our two wires okay and of course when I say two wires uh there's no two wires right because remember if you have a single coil pickup there's only one wire the wire starts wraps around and when we're done and comes off the other side we call one a ground and a hot but essentially it's the start and the end of the coil then of course you're going to have this plate right here with the foam so just like you would normally raise in lower pickup with a screw right here see you can see as I compress this the foam is compressing and of course if I loosen it the pickup is Raising and then you can see it's routed just a little bit inside here but you can see realistically even sitting in here you look at the distance here see the pickup doesn't come below this plate see so even though it's router right there the pickups are actually sitting on top of the guitar not really in the guitar like we're normally going to see and that's why if you're looking here it's obviously very large like a P90 so again you can get a lot of wraps if I was going to guess I mean I'm just guessing because I don't know what gauge wire is on there I don't know if they're using a 43 or a 42 um they could be even using a 44 but I doubt it they're using a 43 gauge wire they could get 9000 wraps on this maybe so I don't know because it's wide but it's not very tall let's go to the bridge now the bridge is just sitting here something you need to be very aware of is that once you remove the tension of the strings the bridge is kind of hooked in like so and then it's just going to fall off so you want to be careful because you can damage that so when you take off the strings be careful and then of course be careful that if you move this guitar anyway this is all going to fall and this is The Bridge Assembly and of course now you're looking at it from this side you can see it looks pretty standard it looks like what you would see on a Gibson Tone Pro style Bridge right but of course it has this plate and I want you to notice if you could see that screw right there above my thumb if you see that you can actually remove this Shield if you wanted to you I don't know why you'd want to but you can remove the shield if you don't want it there now you're going to have this pick card assembly and this is going to be the electronics okay so what do we have here we have some potentiometers three-way switch and these are your capacitors for the tone controls different very different not something we see here on the channel every day normally I believe the two top ones are the tone controls that would explain why these are here interesting very interesting okay and then of course this control this is the interesting control this this control and looking at it I'm trying to kind of see how it's working okay so this is your ground right here this I have never seen this other than a Rickenbacker so if somebody else has seen this type of control let me know um so I think what it's going to do is I think because if you look at it it's coming over here so I'm gonna say that this is the base volume which means that's the neck volume so what this is doing is this is the volume control and then this is like intensifying in other words like more that makes any sense right like it doesn't have a resistor on it okay so it took me some time messing with to figure out what it was because there's not a lot of information out there and a lot of people just refer to it as a blend control but what I figured out it's doing is it's doing a couple things but one of them is basically like a tongue blender like a generic kind of EQ based treble tones I want you to think of it like the fender tbx tone control some tech heads are going to get upset that I said that because it doesn't work the same way but it does kind of achieve the same thing which is kind of intensifies the low frequencies of the high frequencies as you turn it although the Rickenbacker does not have a central detent position like the tbx and of course like I said The tbx Works a totally different way just kind of achieving the same things to your ears so good news everyone I think uh looking at this I think I'm figuring out what they're up to it's very interesting so first let's take a look at this so we have the bridge right here and it's reading at 10.7 K that's its DC R so in other words uh that's going to tell us how much wires on there so that's a good amount of wire like I said we're expecting it to to be like a P90 really overwhelmed like a single coil now if we go into the neck pickup okay we're like wait a minute what right what the heck 59.6 like that doesn't even make sense let me turn this off so there we go 59.6 that doesn't make any sense but watch what happens if we turn this dial laughs 10.7 that's what we expect it's almost like the bridge it's going to be normal and then when we turn this forward I'm expecting this thing to sound a lot bigger sounding along with all kinds of crazy things Rickenbacker doesn't let their dealers post pricing on their guitars you actually have to talk to the dealer in person but as of filming this video this guitar in the 12 string is selling for 299 if you don't get any discounts or if you can't work out any deals also for reference this guitar came in weighing at seven pounds eight ounces so now that we've learned a little bit about this Guitar let's see how it sounds and so of course we're going to do all three positions of the sounds and go through some of the tone controls or the overall controls as you know there's five knobs on this as we explained and so we'll go through the sounds on that the first thing I got to tell you about this guitar that is probably the most important to me is is that the bridge pickup sounds Musical and amazing on clean I'm running this through a fender 65 Deluxe revert with a stock Jensen speaker mic'd up with an sm57 and I gotta tell you foreign doesn't get more iconic sounding than that [Music] I have to say as a clean sound into an amp on a bridge pickup it's got to be my absolute favorite sound it's punchy it's cutting through [Music] but it's soft there's no compression running on this I it sounds almost like there's a compressor but there's nothing in the signal chain [Music] just beautiful just beautiful in every way now I'm going to go right to the neck pickup and there's a reason why I'll explain in a second so the neck pickup it almost sounds like the tone control is backed off in fact I'm going to go through and yep just want to make sure [Music] and I like it I like it but it's definitely more softer and in the background and and I want to explain this I think um what a lot of musicians have done recording this guitar over the years is they probably use the neck pickup for atmosphere in other words to put backing tracks so you just get the kind of like [Music] because it's just but if you go to that bridge it's definitely in your in your face so I think when you want those definitely the iconic Rickenbacker [Music] that's where you get that sound but the neck isn't out of the fight yet so we have the neck and of course we've explained there's this blend control that blends in uh basically makes it sound bigger right so here's the neck [Music] and it's like all of a sudden like it's just huge sounding much louder too [Music] I love that sound it's bigger I like it better than the standard when it's not when it's rolled back off the neck but I kind of missed that clarity so then of course you have the middle position where not only do you get both pickups but you get to still use that blend control so watch this one take that bling control or that whatever that control is for the neck pickup and then let's go to these are the two pickups combined [Music] you can make this neck makeup sound huge and keep the brightness of the bridge and you get this [Music] [Music] and that's a lot of tone variations and we haven't used tone controls but to be honest with you let's go the bridge [Music] tone controls are pretty basic I'm sure people use them big tone control fan and you can definitely soften [Music] tone control for the neck [Music] of course I think I like the bridge with a little bit of the tone [Music] rolled off [Applause] [Music] it's a beautiful sounding guitar that's for sure so let's go to the final thoughts well I liked it a lot better as a 12 string than a six string and the main reason is is because when I was playing it as a 12 string the part of the problem for me was my hands are so much bigger than they need to be for a guitar that's narrow I always feel like all the chords I played were cramped and I just feel like they were right on top each other because essentially like it feels just like a whole wall of strings when you're playing it I really can't even tell I can't even tell I guess what I'm trying to say is to me it just I'm doing off memory this this these chords I just kind of know where the shapes are and I just play them and I don't even know what I'm pushing on because like I said to me it feels like a whole just row of strings and as long as I play the shapes I want it sounds great do I like that no no this is definitely for me a the sound and the vibe transcend the fact that I'm just not in love with this next shape um it's just not the next shape for me it feels like I'm playing a broomstick I'm not exaggerating it feels like so we took a broomstick and cut it in half and stuck a row of strings on it and and any other application I would be like immediately I would probably play this and go no no appeal whatsoever for me for this um that being said there's just something about the vibe of it but if you're not die hard that you need a this Rickenbacker it's like I need that sound I get it if you're a Beatles fan you know right if you're if you're a fan of the artist that have these guitars and you just I gotta have that sound I gotta have that look I understand that but to me I would probably go with the Dane Electro 12 string they'll get you in that territory and the next will probably be more comfortable for most players so that's where I stand with this I like I said it's a beautiful guitar and I want to see where it takes me for a while um because like I said I didn't think I would like it at all I thought the video was going to be pretty straightforward as yep I didn't like it then and I really don't like it now and nothing's really changed and like I said when I say don't like keep in mind I like the way it looks I love the way it sounds I'm just not a big fan of the way it feels and that has nothing to do with the quality of the the guitar it has to do with the types of instruments I've played all my life and the way those instruments how this feels compared to those as always guys I want to thank you so much if you made it this far please considering uh please consider subscribing or hitting the like button or supporting the channel in some way whether that's becoming a patron or a member and uh or just thank you for hanging out to the end as always until the next time know your gear so I'm with Richard and we're going to say the official how you say Rickenbacker and that's how you say it foreign [Music]

Channel: Phillip McKnight

Views: 108,868

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Id: J9l8iKtIHeY

Length: 22min 22sec (1342 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 15 2023