Rickenbacker 330

Help!I'maRock!

Mediocringly Derivative
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this is a 2006 Rickenbacker 330 in blueburst, which was the color of the year. i bought it from www.pickofthericks.com based on a buncha pics he sent me. i paid $1350 for it, which was $150 more than standard colors at the time. i'm not sure how much they're going for now, but Ric did have a 40% price increase recently.

i received the guitar in absolutely perfect condition. it was even tuned. in the months that followed though, it kinda devolved. once the stock strings went dead, i replaced them with D'Addario 10s. they sounded really ratty and nasty. i figured it was a bad pack so when those wore out i put another on. same deal. by this point, the neck had started shifting, which is normal on any new guitar. so i adjusted the bridge height and everything was great. fast forward a month down the line, and i'm back where i started. ratty strings, high action and a less than thrilled howie. by now the intonation was so bad, i couldn't play it in the band. so back it went with me to the tech.

i kinda freaked out when we both looked at a very bowed neck. but one turn of the truss rods (yes, there are two) revealed that there was never any tension on them!!! so of course the neck kept shifting, there truss rods weren't doing anything. straightened those suckers out, and put another set of D'Addarios on it. well this time the neck didn't move in the next few months, but the roundwound strings still sounded like shit. by now i'd had the guitar over a year and was kinda getting frustrated with it. so at the next string change, i put some Thomastik-Infeld flatwounds on it.

ho. lee. shit. flatwounds!!! that's what this guitar wanted!!! and it sounds amazing, even distorted. the jangle is there, but there's an incredible bluesy woman tone living in the neck pickup that most people never hear about. in the right hands, it could even make a good jazz guitar.

since the neck has stabilized, i decided to continue experimenting with other strings. after the TI flats died, i decided that i didn't want to pay $18 a pack and tried D'Addario Chromes for $8 a pack. i like them just as much. i'm going to stick with them for a while and then maybe try half-rounds.

a note on scale length, neck width, and playability: Rics are standard Gibson scale, 24 3/4". but they have a very skinny fretboard, vintage frets, and a rather chunky neck that doesn't really widen as you approach the body. the result is a guitar that feels smaller than it really is. i can play it because i have small hands, but i can also play the large U neck on my Fender Telecaster. i can see how it might be cramped for some people, but i do think guitarists give up on it before they really adjust because their strats, teles, and LP jr's are more familiar.

there are a couple of things i don't like about the guitar:

first is the 5 knob setup. the fifth knob works great on the 360 where it can blend the two pups when using the Ric-O-Sound output with a stereo cable. but on the mono 330, it functions as a neck pup blend knob. this would be great if it only affected the middle position of the selector switch, but it affects the neck pup only position too. so its kinda like having two volumes on that pup. i'm considering re-wiring it to be a master volume instead.

the second thing i don't like is the R tailpiece. aesthetically, its beautiful. practically, it makes me want to kill. the best way to restring the guitar is to remove the R tailpiece, put all of the strings into the open slots, and use masking tape to secure them. this way, they won't fall out of the slots when you put the string through the machine head. this works with varying degrees of success, and i always end up with the high e string falling out of the slot and having to guide it through. the good news is that i only learned the tape technique when i put on this last set of strings. so hopefully i'll get better at it as time progresses. the bad news is that if you break a string on a gig, you're screwed. but hey, that's why we have backup guitars.


once the guitar is strung up, and the 5th knob set right, this guitar is amazing. the action is low, its got a wide range of tones, and takes well to distortion. and feel wise, its the polar opposite of my PRS. i really couldn't ask for anything more.
 
Thats a beautiful guitar...I'll have to get my 620 serviced and see if you can change my mind about it...

And I had changing the strings on mine, too... :mad:
 
helpimarock said:
why am i changing your mind on it, and you're just not selling to me for a ridiculously low price?

Because I don't sell guitars anymore smi


Its a great guitar, i just need to learn how to get along with it...
 
its too small for you.
you have gorilla hands.
the R tailpiece makes you want to kill.
its not a Suhr.

really, you should just give it to me.
 
He will not give you that guitar :mad:

It belongs to me, mark just doesn't know it yet poke

I like the R tail piece, and the routing on the bottom to accommodate it...it so sensuallllllll! drool0
 
RICKENBACKER RESURRECTION!

Did it ever fully stabilize?

it did. then i started experimenting with different strings again because i didn't like the flatwounds and it started moving again. i've now got Dunlop roundwound 11s on it and it's pretty stable. maybe some seasonal movement, but nothing major like before.
 
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