This blueburst/paua 700C/12
offers an up-close look at Paul
Wilczynski’s trademark pickguard.
In a world dominated by
Gibson- and Fender-style
instruments, it is easy to forget
that neither Leo Fender nor
Orville Gibson created the
first commercial electric guitar.
Truth be told, the first 6-string
instrument manufactured with
a pickup was a lap steel invented
by George D. Beauchamp
with help from Paul Barth and
put into production by Adolph
Rickenbacker. The 1935
Bakelite Model B Spanish-style
guitar made by Rickenbacker
predates the Telecaster and the
Les Paul by over a decade. This
guitar eliminated the acoustic
feedback suffered by plugged-in
archtops long before the
solidbodies of Gibson and
Fender.
Wilczynski playing his favorite jazz guitar—a Rickenbacker 760J Jazz-bo. |
The Rickenbackers that most
of us know are the 1960s models
made famous by that foursome
from Liverpool. The jangle
of Lennon’s and Harrison’s
6- and 12-string Ricks influenced
contemporaries like the
Byrds as well as future generations
of bands looking for that
pop chime and jangle, from
R.E.M. to the Bangles.
So why has Rickenbacker
receded into the background
in the new Millennium? Who
knows—perhaps because jangly
pop has fallen from favor?
Or, maybe it is the fact that
Rickenbackers are all American
made. The company doesn’t
offer any low-cost, offshore-manufactured
models that
help spread brand names like
Fender and PRS. John Hall
and his family still manufacture
Rickenbackers in the U.S. of
A., just as Adolph Rickenbacker
did more than 75 years ago.
When Rickenbacker
decided to take a break from
making acoustic models in-house,
it teamed up with a
man as passionate about the
Rickenbacker legacy as they
are: Paul Wilczynski. A self-described
“guitar hobbyist and
mediocre musician for about 40
years,” Wilczynski is the man
you now call when you want a
Rickenbacker flattop—or if you
need that vintage Rick restored
to its former glory. You can see
gorgeous examples of his work at
studiocalifornia.rickbeat.com. He
has restored, rebuilt, and refinished
about 200 Rickenbacker
guitars in his one-man shop since
May 2005. As Rickenbacker’s
sole licensee for construction and
restoration, Wilczynski gets all
of the company’s non-warranty
work. The Bay Area luthier also
handbuilds Rickenbacker’s entire
line of flattop acoustic instruments—
at a rate of one every six
to eight weeks.
Wilczynski’s earlier and
current alternate lives revolve
around industrial design and
prototype manufacture—
including concept-car
design (visit
conceptcar.co.uk to see some of the cars
Wilczynski has worked on).
This craft-oriented background
might explain how
the first instrument he ever
built was good enough to
be played by the Jefferson
Starship’s Paul Kantner and
the Church’s Marty Willson-Piper at Rickenbacker’s 75th
Anniversary celebration in
August 2006. But let’s let
him explain.
A Rickenbacker 700 Comstock 12-string finished in Mary Kaye white with spruce-green
back and sides.
Note typical checkerboard body and soundhole purfling.
How did your debut as a
luthier turn out to be such
a well-constructed
instrument?
Half of it was luck and half
of it was knowing what I was
doing. I was educated in industrial
design at the University
of Illinois in Chicago. At that
time, I found that I was as
interested in actually building
things as in designing
them. My career ended up
being evenly divided between
designing objects and building
them—not as sculptures, but as
working products. After a successful
career as a toy designer,
I migrated to California and
started my own design and
fabrication business in Orange
County. During that time, I
had design firms as customers,
and I also worked directly with
companies like Xerox, Mazda,
GM, and Mitsubishi. I did the
design and fabrication work
for them in my own shop, or
contracted with them to work
on their premises. My business
was building precision
prototypes of anything from
stereo systems to automobiles.
I started off really knowing
my way around a shop: metal
shop, wood shop, painting,
etc. When I decided to get
involved in guitars, I took all
these talents and focused them
into building instruments. You
could say that building guitars
is half engineering, half art.