JANGLE, NOT JAZZ

DISCOVERING THE 12-STRING GUITAR: PART TWO

My first Rickenbacker, first electric 12-string and the first guitar I ever bought with my own money... pictured on the day of its departure back in 2002. Serial No. VC511 – if you see it, say hello!

By early 1983, there were signs – mostly around the indie fringes of the British pop scene – that an electric 12-string revival was under way. I was starting to hear their distinctive tone on a number of recent releases, some of them pretty obscure (It’s Immaterial’s A Gigantic Raft in the Phillippines). I also fancied I could hear something like an electric-12 on early Smiths recordings. I knew that this was a sound I needed to investigate in more detail.

During that year, I began working in an ad agency in Birmingham. Just across the road, in the Albany Hotel block, was another of Birmingham’s big music retailers, Jones and Crossland. Investigating the store one lunchtime, I discovered the holy grail hanging up there on the wall... a Rickenbacker 360/12, in black. I had it down, plugged in and played the riff to Mr. Tambourine Man (I defy anyone not to do this on first handling an electric-12). It was in the same store, back in 1975, that I’d tried out one of Shaftesbury’s Rick clones. Now here was the real thing, hanging up alongside a 330, a 320 and a bass or two.

I’d have bought it like a shot, but for the fact of what it cost: £599. In 1983, that was expense of an eye-watering order, more than I earned in a whole month (as a comparison, a vintage Gretsch 6120 from a London dealer would have cost you around £450). Much as I liked the Ricky, I couldn’t justify paying so much for it without first checking out the market. I turned to the ads in the back of Melody Maker, initially without success. Meantime, my dad, who knew several of the music shop owners around the city, put the word out. I think he’d have preferred it if I’d been looking for a proper ‘jazz’ guitar like a Gibson Super 400, but I wanted jangle, not jazz.

One shop tried to interest me in a 12-string version of an Ibanez Artist: today considered quite a rare model, but selling at the time for around £250. I could have had it for less, but it wasn’t quite right. Owning a Rickenbacker was about more than just the sound: I wanted the whole look of the thing, that retro aesthetic of black guitar and white plastic scratchplate that went all the way back to my first glimpses of John Lennon’s little Ricky 325. Another shop did better: in George Clay Music I was shown a double-bound black Rick 360-12: but it was in slightly shabby condition, with a few dinks and marks and the top missing from one of the control knobs. They also wanted something like £700 for it: how a second-hand example could be worth more than a new one was something I couldn’t conceive. So I passed.

This 1975 edition was still the current Rickenbacker catalogue when I bought my first 12-string:
this copy came from Jones & Crossland in Birmingham. Left, the cover, Right, specs on the 360/12 models available at that time. Reissues? They didn't exist!

I soon realised that the hunt for a Rickenbacker 12-string might prove harder than I imagined. The importer had gone out of business, and any examples remaining in UK dealers were the last to be had. I obtained a ‘fire sale’ list of guitars being sold off by the bankrupt wholesaler, which included a double edge-bound Rickenbacker 360/12, in fireglo: the George Harrison model, or what passed for it back then. This was located in Stockport and would eventually find its way into the hands of Ian McNabb of The Icicle Works, whom I spotted playing an identical model on Top of the Pops a few months later. Given the scarcity of Rick 12s in Britain at the time, it couldn’t have been anything else (he still owns it as can be seen from the photo below).

Could have been mine: Icicle Works frontman Ian McNabb with the 360-12 I almost bought.

In the end, I found what would become my own 360/12 in a shop in Cardiff, through their listing in Melody Maker. It was black, which was the colour I wanted, and the price was a hundred pounds less than the one they had just across the road in Jones and Crossland. Surprisingly, it had no case, which probably explained the cheaper price tag, and I ended up having to order one through another of my dad’s contacts. Even more surprising is the fact that I travelled to Cardiff to pick it up, convincing my brother to give me a lift down there, as I couldn’t drive at the time, and didn’t consider simply asking the retailer to ship it.

The shop was in a Victorian suburb, one of a small row in an unremarkable street. Curiously, just a few doors up the road, a most unusual vehicle was parked: a saloon car (an Austin Allegro if memory serves) faked up to look like some kind of post-apocalyptic armoured vehicle. It had yellow lines painted across the body so that the owner could claim to be parked ‘beneath’ them (har har...) I later found out that it had belonged at some point in its history to the Disc Jockey Dave Lee Travis... all of which gets us no closer to our goal, the 12-string Rickenbacker, which was there in the shop awaiting me.

I finally had my hands on the guitar I wanted. There was only one snag: it was a dog to play. Plus, as I’ve said, no case. Even so, the hundred quid difference in price was probably still some justification in having gone to such lengths. I took the guitar home – in a borrowed case, which the shop asked me to return (thanks for nothing, guys), and was, I have to say pretty displeased with it. The one in J&C had played much more easily. This one felt like a 6-string neck on a 12-string guitar. It was simply too narrow at the nut end. And it was fitted with flatwound strings... I couldn’t believe this. In its favour, it did come with the now rare ‘Rick-o-Sound’ stereo conversion kit, which I’ve never used, but is nice to own, even though the guitar itself is long gone.

A guy at work, who shared my interest in guitars, advised that I get the Rick set up by a tech in a music shop down the road. This I duly did, replacing the duff flatwounds at the same time. I later discovered that Rickenbacker themselves specified flatwound sets on their 12-strings... it might have been something to do with tension on the neck... but if you want a Rick-12 to sound the way you’ve heard on records, you need roundwound strings on it.

For better or worse, I’d reached a milestone: I’d bought my first guitar. The ‘jingle jangle morning’ had arrived. So you couldn’t play a C-chord in root position, but what the hell. Some guitars challenge you, while others simply roll over and do what they’re told. I used it at home, and with a few short-lived bands until 1991 when a proper George Harrison version came my way. And this time, I could actually play the damn thing. The old 360/12 was left in its case, unloved, for over a decade until it eventually went in trade against a Gretsch Chet Atkins. The old adage always holds good: be careful what you wish for... especially if it’s a 12-string Rickenbacker!

I may have owned my dream guitar, but the story was only just beginning... within a year, several more would find their way into my ownership, including another electric-12. Another? What was I thinking of? We'll get onto that in a future post...