The Steel Guitar Forum

Another perspective

These Rickenbacker consoles are absolutely beautiful, and the scanned catalogues are fun to read over too. Great thread!

I agree...this is so much fun ! I really have the wants for a Rickenbacker console,,,I have seen a lot of beautiful steels on here...thanks to all who have contributed !
My guitar teacher, Bill Pruitt, back in the 60s, was a Rickenbacker dealer and he sold a lot of 6 string electric guitars, but I dont recall ever seeing him have a Rickenbacker steel in the store, and he was a great steel player, but played Fenders.

In surfing the internet, I ran across this from several years ago...interesting I thought: Did anyone on the forum wind up with this one ?

Link to Heritage Auction website.

I found this guitar years ago in a pawn shop - it plays great even though someone "refinished" it somewhere along the line. It's stamped with "DW14115" - anyone know the year? It's a double 8-string so not sure why it's not DW16.

Rick, that one looks interesting, any chance I could talk you into posting a picture of it from the front to give us the full view ? Thanks !

Here you go. Any information would be appreciated. It's the classic "player" - you can take it to any honky-tonk and not worry about it getting a scratch because it's already had far worse. Previous owner painted the body and sanded the neck. Must be a story there.

Rick
Thanks for posting that...if you look back on page one of Paul Mac Neliage's post of his steel, they look the same to me other than the finish...possibly yours was a blonde originally ? I love the tuner covers with the Rickenbacker lettering on them...very classy ! I would love to find one like that and woudnt mind it having "character"...I have a T8 stringmaster that has lots of character, can take it anywhere as long as my old body holds up ! haha Thanks again for posting, you have a real classic there IMHO !

Aloha & Howdy - I am new to the forum and new to lap steel. Been taking lessons for a year and a half and in that time have become a huge fan of this forum. Very early on in my steel journey I ran across this Ric console locally and jumped right on it. It has been sitting in my living room ever since and gets played everyday. The amp came a little later from a local Craigslist ad, an M-9, both circa 1960 and make an awesome pair. I've picked up a couple other, more vintage guitars I enjoy playing but like I say, this Ric gets played everyday - until recently - I just got a Clinesmith. But that's for a different thread.
Mahalo y'all. Jim

Jim: That is an extremely-pleasing combination, what finds! Now THAT combination is going on my bucket list of instruments.

RICKENBACHER ELECTRO DOUBLE 8 (Postwar Before Name Change to RICKENBACKER)

No legs, plays on lap, probably is not considered a console!!!!

Bakelite necks, adjustable horseshoe magnet pickups, cast metal body with sheet metal back, RICKENBACHER on headstocks, in original case.

Rick
Regards the sanding of the neck, possibly it was sand blasted along with the body during the re paint job?
An alternative suggestion is the neck was to silvery looking for the player, as I found my neck was hard on my eyes due to silver strings running horizontal with silver frets going vertical and fret markers crowding out the black on the fretboard.
I rectified this by adding coloured insulation tape to the fret markers and find it a lot more comfortable to play the tape can be removed easily and does not damage the guitar in any way, below is a snap of my modification.



Regards the year, I posted " how old is this Rickenbacker" back in January of this year and the answer to my question was early fifties the serial number on mine is DW24148 and that raises a lot of questions
Did the factory make 10033 consoles between our two
Is DW241 a different model to DW141?
Is 41 a model number along with DW 1&2?
It's hard enough playing the thing without trying to figure out the number system used in the factory 65 years ago!
Michael lee summed it up nicely by telling me to get on and play it and enjoy having a wonderful instrument, it would be nice to know the answer but it's in the same vein as the chicken and egg and how long is a bit of string questions, your guess is as good as mine!


Regards RMN

Here's mine! Sorry, it's not the greatest photo.

Here's part of one:


[b]Invalid link removed.[/b]

Mikiya Matsuda wrote:I picked up this Console 758 a couple weeks ago. 25" scale. Todd Clinesmith zapped the horseshoes and now the guitar sounds glorious.

Some cool stuff in this thread.

Mikiya, I just heard you playing this guitar with Sam Rocha in a clip from a couple years back and it does sound glorious! I did a double take, I did not know that Rick made these in Birdseye! It's beautiful. I would love to get one exactly like this eventually (or even a D8 one). Must be a rare bird.

Also, I am a huge fan of your playing. The Jazz, Hawaiian stuff is all so good. Great stuff!

I recently acquired this 50s Rickenbacker 208. Sounds fab and is surprisingly light weight. I find I prefer it to my previous DW-16 because the controls don't get in the way of playing.

56/57 DW-12