Rickenbacker 600 series

There are a number of great things about making your own instrument. They all center around catering to your whims and tastes instead of forcing yours to wrap around that of a company.

Another is that you can finally have all those guitars you've always lusted after without shelling out the dough. Well, not as much dough anyway.

I always liked the classic shape of Rickenbacker guitars. They also have a very unique sound, using mostly maple and mini-humbuckers. What I never really cared for is their finishes. Soooooo.......

I took a bunch of pictures from the internet of the shape that I like. I then scaled them up to the size I wanted, then traced the image onto some sketch paper. From that tracing I made the template for the body. It was the same process for the headstock. From there, it was pretty straight-forward construction.

I actually scaled the body down a bit. I think the original is 13 1/2" wide, mine is 12 1/2". The main reason I did this is because my planer is 13" wide. It doesn't hurt that I kinda like small bodies.

The body is 2-piece hard maple. It's topped with a 1/4" flamed maple cap that has been dyed green. The whole thing is triple bound in black/white/black.

The neck is mahogany. Maple is a really bright sounding wood with a lot of bite while mahogany is very warm and mellow. The combination of the two makes for a very balanced sounding guitar. The fretboard is chechen - a rosewood from the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. I inlaid the Ibanez style vine for fret markers.

The headstock shape is from the Rickenbacker 4000 series bass. Their guitar headstocks are pretty boring - just a basic rectangle. This shape really says "Rickenbacker".

I went with all gold hardware on this one. In my eyes, gold hardware is more upscale than black or chrome. With the green flamed maple and the vine inlays, I just felt this one needed a little more bling.

The pickups are Artec mini-humbuckers. I made the volume & tone have push/pull pots with a coil tap and a phase switch.

Overall, it's a good sounding little guitar that has ended up being pretty versatile. I'm not 100% happy with the final shape of the neck, but overall it's worth showing off.