These occupy the same footprint, but feature black hex-key-adjustable polepieces in chrome surrounds, sit on full-sized sponge feet and are adjustable via crosshead screws at either end. The Pillar Box Red finish is beautifully executed and buffed to a perfect gloss.Įarly 330s featured Rickenbacker’s Toaster Top single-coil pickups while later versions, ours included, carry the more powerful but still jangly-toned Hi-Gain models. As before it’s lacquered, remains unbound (as does the body), and retains the small position markers with double dots at the 12th and 24th frets. Our 330 Limited Edition is somewhat different to the norm, in that its neck material is stated as all maple, and the fingerboard a hefty lump of the same timber. Unusually, the neck also features twin truss rods in order to eliminate twisting – these are accessed (and can even be removed) via the large ‘shark fin’ plastic cover, inscribed with the legendary underlined Rickenbacker logo. It was a radical if logical ploy, given that it laid out two complete octaves for the guitarist to explore. The fingerboard’s 254mm (10-inch) radius initially featured 21 small frets, but this was increased to 24 in 1970. Necks were generally maple-and-walnut laminates, with a thick chunk of unbound but lacquered African rosewood on top. Its tenon extends deep into the body, almost to the bridge, surrounded above and below by this sandwich and making repairs complicated and expensive, if not prohibitive. A flat maple back is glued to a top and sides that have been pre-routed from a two-piece spread of maple to create acoustic cavities, pickup and control cut-outs and the neck’s mortise. To cloud the issue somewhat, UK importer Rose Morris not only altered one or two of the guitars’ features – including replacing the cat’s eye or ‘slash’ soundholes with standard f-holes – but also used its own numbering system, so the 325 became the 1996, the 3, the 3, and so on.Ĭonstruction of these guitars is complex but clever.
John Lennon famously used the smaller-bodied, short-scale 325 (vibrato version of the 320).
#Rickenbacker 325 scale series
Other models in the 300 series included the 335 (with vibrato), the 340 (with an extra pickup), the 345 (three pickups and vibrato), the 360 (bound body and ‘shark fin’ inlays) and, of course, the 360/12 12-string as played by The Beatles and The Byrds. In 1961 Rickenbacker reduced their body depth by an inch, from 2.5 inches (63.5mm) to 1.5 inches (38.1mm) making for a much more streamlined look and feel. It’s almost impossible to imagine how music from the latter part of the 20th century on would have sounded without Rickenbacker guitars and bassesĭesigned primarily by German luthier Roger Rossmeisl these were deep-bodied, double-bound instruments bearing this same ‘cresting wave’ cutaway design.