Rickenbacker Guitars

1957 Rickenbacker Combo 450 Guitar, Restored
OK, let's begin with the condition of this guitar when I originally bought it about 4 years ago.  The guitar was poorly refinished in black, the pickguard was very scratched and pitted, the backplate was missing, and one of the original pots was frozen solid and unusable.  BUT, the good news was that the rest of the guitar was original (pickups, pickguard, wiring, output jack, tuners and bushings, switch and switchtip, bridge, bridge pieces, nut, truss rod, bridge cover, metal "saxophone" disk, frets, trussrod cover). No extra routing done to the guitar whatsoever.  I do not know if the volume/tone knobs are original but they are period-correct in type.  Similarly, the Ric end strap button came installed on the guitar but I am not sure that it is original to the guitar in 1957.
So, we stripped the guitar to the bare wood, prepped it, and refinished the neck and body in nitrocellulose lacquer.  The body was then refinished to Jetglo color and then the entire guitar was clearcoated, wetsanded, and buffed to a high gloss.  We amber tinted the neck and through-body portion of the neck to give it a vintage look.  Note that the back of the headstock has a stain in the wood from years of resting against the Combo 800 guitar case lining that this guitar came with.  We could not bleach out this stain, so we left it, and you can see it in one of the pictures.  
We had the original pickguard resurfaced, polished, and then re-anodized to a gold color, approximating the same anodizing that Fender used on the '58-'59 Jazzmaster pickguards and offered the closest color match to the original Combo pickguard. There are still some minor pits that we could not remove by resurfacing, so we left them.  The anodizing did fill in some of these pits, they are hard to see unless you are several inches away from the guitar.
Note that the anodizing on the bridge cover is not a match to that of the pickguard; the bridge cover is somewhat darker in appearance. Just a note, the bridge cover is original to the guitar and is in mint condition.  
We created a "backcover" out of coccobolo wood that matches the screwholes and shape of the original plastic or metal backcover that these guitars came equipped with.  The wood is sealed with Tung oil and can be repaired by simply light sanding and re-oiling if the finish ever wears off.
We then replaced the bad potentiometer with one from the early 1960's, taken from a Ric 950 model wiring harness that I bought off of Ebay.
We then reassembled the guitar, tested it (works fine, low fingerboard action, frets are excellent, pickups work) and then played it off and on over the past few years.  This type of guitar features a very flat fretboard and frets, similar to a Gretsch.  I don't have pictures of the wiring harness or pots but to the best of my recollection all the items that I listed as being original are.  The bridge pickup is very Tele sounding, the neck pickup is typical "Ric" with the tone cap, kinda dark or muddy like a Gretsch.   I do not know if either pickup has ever been rewound, but they test around 7 kOhms each.
This Combo 450 is one of the rare, 2-pickup "Tulip" versions, with the very early "Toaster" pickups. These pickups do not have long polepieces and are flat on the bottom.  The pickup covers have a more rounded edge appearance to them.  The other interesting feature of this guitar is that the body is made from multiple slabs of alder or similar wood, glued together in a "butcher-block" style, similar to the Combo 600/800 models of 1955-1957.  Some of the earlier Combo 400 guitars actually had 2 bolts holding the body wings onto the center neck section; I've seen a few of these out in SoCal many years ago.  But what is interesting is that the guitar shown in these pictures does NOT have these bolts, the body wings are glued to the center section directly.  It would appear that this particular 450 was one guitar whose manufacturing process departed from the original bolt-on strategy.  Not sure when this building transition occurred, but maybe someone out there knows.
It is very hard to find one of these 53 yr old guitars for sale.  Not many were made, and of those that still survive, many are beat up or modified.  This one is in an amazing restored condition such as you see here, ready to soldier on for another 50 years.  Consider what a guitar of this kind would cost to make today:  handmade, neck-through-body, made in the USA by skilled craftsmen using 50+ yr old "old growth" maple, alder, and Brazilian rosewood tonewoods, and featuring hand-wound pickups.

This guitar comes with a "green-black" 1950's "krinkle" finish Ric case meant for either a combo 800 or combo 600 model.  This guitar fits snugly into this case and I will ship the guitar in this case, with some cloth wrapping to keep the old interior from rubbing up against the guitar.   But please note that the case that is provided is not original to the 1957 Combo 450.  

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