1966 Rickenbaker 360/12 Jetglo 12 String Electric Guitar

Update 2022: the owner of this guitar is gear-shifting and so this is back here for resale! His loss! I've updated parts of the description.

I've now serviced a number of '70s and '80s Ricki 12s and a few '60s ones. The honest truth is that the '60s ones are just better. It's lightweight for what's essentially a semihollow, has classic styling and quirky looks, and handles beautifully. I was prepared to think the 1 5/8" nut width and narrow string spacing would doom it for me. It was the opposite, however -- this is a super-human-feeling 12 string experience and the player feels like a speed demon when picking on in.

The backward-strung Ricky-style setup (low notes come before the higher octave strings) gives you that immediate '60s electric 12 string sound -- sort of a chunky thump followed by jangle rather than just a straight jingle-jangle-twang sound. As its owner described it -- it sounds like more guitar, not "12 string guitar," per se. Does that make sense? I think it makes sense. When you play a power chord on this I'm reminded more of something like a heavy-sounding octave pedal rather than a twee-sounding flower-power device -- at least until you play lead work on the bridge pickup, in which case the Byrds are right in your ears.

Fortunately for the new-ish owner of this guitar, it didn't take much work to make it play like a champ. Fortunately for the next owner of this guitar, it has remained perfectly stable in service for the last two and a half years. I didn't even have to tweak a truss rod or adjust the bridge height when it came back. How about that?

Repairs included: a fret level/dress, minor replacement binding at the fretboard edge, grind-down and reprofile of the saddles with full compensation, a new bone nut with better string spacing (the original had the strings hanging almost off the fretboard), slight enlargement of the cavity around the truss rod nuts so they could be accessed, cleaning, and setup.

Setup notes: it plays perfectly with 1/16" overall action at the 12th fret. The neck is straight and both its truss rods (there are 2) work well. The strings are 46w-10s, roughly.

Scale length: 24 3/4"

Nut width: 1 5/8"

String spacing at nut: 1 7/16"

String spacing at bridge: 1 15/16"

Body length: 18 1/4"

Lower bout width: 15 1/4"

Waist width: 10 1/2"

Upper bout width: 12"

Side depth at endpin: 1 3/8"

Body wood: maple

Neck wood: maple, black-painted

Fretboard: rosewood w/finished top surface, bone nut

Bridge: original Ricky adjustable, freshly-compensated saddles

Neck feel: slim C/D-shape, 10" or so board radius

Condition notes: There are scratches and small dings all over but none detract much from the aesthetic. It's all-original as far as I can tell except for my new bone nut and the modification of the saddles. The original saddles had actually been compensated and ground-down poorly, so it's not like I was defacing virgin saddles by making them useful. There's an old chip-out repair to the fretboard at the 12th fret and that has some dark backfill to patch it up. It's the same place where I replaced a tiny bit of missing binding, so clearly the guitar took a bump there at some point.