Post by roberteaux on Dec 12, 2015 3:14:27 GMT
Just wanting to say: I sure do like this guitar a lot, even though it can be tricky to play on a fumble-fingered sort of night.
The fretboard width at the nut is very narrow... like, 1.63", and it's really easy to totally clam a chord while playing it-- especially if the chord is one that involves three notes found on the same fret on adjacent strings, such as an A major. There, you might play the chord with one finger if you just happen to be blowing through... or you play it with just two fingers, ala McGuinn.
I did finally get to where I can *usually* pull off an Amaj using three fingers... never was comfortable with McGuinn's two-finger thing, which involves fretting strings #2 and #3 with a single finger, and some of the arpeggiations I like to screw with involve doing things like sliding the finger I'm using to play the a-note on string #3 down one fret to g# create an Amaj7 ala Clapton (I use that trick for "Bell Bottom Blues" during the chorus). I also like to be able to slide around on string #2 to form Asus4 and Am chords, as James Taylor does in one song. My finger positioning is 2,1,3 from the d-string to the b-string.
So yes, it's a pain in the butt to play a Ricky like mine. But you just can't get that sound out of any other electric twelve string that I'm aware of, and it was *that* sound I was really after.
It's also a pain in the butt in other ways. While the guitar has proven itself to be stable when it comes to remaining in tune, I see this instrument requires a bit more attention to the truss rods (there are two in a Rickenbacker 330/12) and the thing does want you to have a look at it once in a while. Right now I see a recurve beginning to develop, and the thing is to have that board as flat as possible... or at least, that's how McGuinn preferred to set his and in his instructional video he actually teaches the viewer how to do that. And for sure, it's easier to cover his stuff when your board is like that. When the guitar features a recurve that's "within limits", it's sometmes difficult to squeeze a nice, clean tone out of even a single string pair up by fret 12... and with McGuinn's material, you are definitely going there.
I had somebody tell me that Rickenbacker's actual factory literature prescribes a small recurve... but then one day I found a guy who actually works for Rickenbacker as one of their chief techs saying that you want that neck as straight as possible, that this is how they were designed to be set up.
That puzzled me and so I went looking for Rickenbacker tech stuff to see if it was true. The Rickenbacker website is curiously silent about most tech details and the stuff I found elsewhere wasn't much better. So, I'm prone to figure that the guy who worked for Rickenbacker and appeared in the interview I saw here:
link
Is probably the guy I should listen to. It's nice that he concurs with McGuinn, too.
But, they do part ways. McGuinn insists that a Rickenbacker neck should be kept down-tuned by one half step at any time that one is not performing with it and needs standard tuning. He says that the neck is "too weak" and that it will screw the guitar up.
The guy who designed the 330/12 totally disagrees with McGuinn, though, and I usually go with engineers over lay persons when it comes to technical matters of this sort.
Still, it's troubling to think that McGuinn-- who has been on Ricky electric twelve-strings since I was just a little kid-- would make that sort of recommendation. It's not as if he's not familiar with the breed, after all.
It's always something.
--Rob
The fretboard width at the nut is very narrow... like, 1.63", and it's really easy to totally clam a chord while playing it-- especially if the chord is one that involves three notes found on the same fret on adjacent strings, such as an A major. There, you might play the chord with one finger if you just happen to be blowing through... or you play it with just two fingers, ala McGuinn.
I did finally get to where I can *usually* pull off an Amaj using three fingers... never was comfortable with McGuinn's two-finger thing, which involves fretting strings #2 and #3 with a single finger, and some of the arpeggiations I like to screw with involve doing things like sliding the finger I'm using to play the a-note on string #3 down one fret to g# create an Amaj7 ala Clapton (I use that trick for "Bell Bottom Blues" during the chorus). I also like to be able to slide around on string #2 to form Asus4 and Am chords, as James Taylor does in one song. My finger positioning is 2,1,3 from the d-string to the b-string.
So yes, it's a pain in the butt to play a Ricky like mine. But you just can't get that sound out of any other electric twelve string that I'm aware of, and it was *that* sound I was really after.
It's also a pain in the butt in other ways. While the guitar has proven itself to be stable when it comes to remaining in tune, I see this instrument requires a bit more attention to the truss rods (there are two in a Rickenbacker 330/12) and the thing does want you to have a look at it once in a while. Right now I see a recurve beginning to develop, and the thing is to have that board as flat as possible... or at least, that's how McGuinn preferred to set his and in his instructional video he actually teaches the viewer how to do that. And for sure, it's easier to cover his stuff when your board is like that. When the guitar features a recurve that's "within limits", it's sometmes difficult to squeeze a nice, clean tone out of even a single string pair up by fret 12... and with McGuinn's material, you are definitely going there.
I had somebody tell me that Rickenbacker's actual factory literature prescribes a small recurve... but then one day I found a guy who actually works for Rickenbacker as one of their chief techs saying that you want that neck as straight as possible, that this is how they were designed to be set up.
That puzzled me and so I went looking for Rickenbacker tech stuff to see if it was true. The Rickenbacker website is curiously silent about most tech details and the stuff I found elsewhere wasn't much better. So, I'm prone to figure that the guy who worked for Rickenbacker and appeared in the interview I saw here:
link
Is probably the guy I should listen to. It's nice that he concurs with McGuinn, too.
But, they do part ways. McGuinn insists that a Rickenbacker neck should be kept down-tuned by one half step at any time that one is not performing with it and needs standard tuning. He says that the neck is "too weak" and that it will screw the guitar up.
The guy who designed the 330/12 totally disagrees with McGuinn, though, and I usually go with engineers over lay persons when it comes to technical matters of this sort.
Still, it's troubling to think that McGuinn-- who has been on Ricky electric twelve-strings since I was just a little kid-- would make that sort of recommendation. It's not as if he's not familiar with the breed, after all.
It's always something.
--Rob
