Do any of you have memories of high school classes like wood shop, mechanical drawing, or electronics? I have some clear recollections of those days, whereas my other school experiences have become rather foggy. It was probably because I really liked working with my hands. I’m pleased to know that in my daughter’s school, the kids are still learning about woodworking, plastics, and even 3-D printing, which is awesome.
After looking at my daughter’s latest plastics project, it got me thinking about my days in wood shop, where I made this really cool butcher-block cutting board that my mom actually used for many years. I remember selecting different types of wood based on color, gluing all the strips together, and shaving off the ends. It was so simple, yet quite the feat of creation for an ape like me.
As with all things in my brain, it led me to make a connection to a “butcher-block guitar” with a built-in fuzz circuit. Yes, once upon a time in the late ’60s, there was a guitar that could carve out some seriously gnarly sounds. Born out of the legendary Tokai factory in Hamamatsu, Japan, this 6-string was built well beyond my wood shop project and was actually the flagship for Tokai’s first foray into electric-guitar production.
Released in 1967, this aggressively styled guitar was dubbed the Humming Bird 230S. Its butcher-block-type body was created by using alternating dark woods, and then stained to show the grain and beauty of the alignment. All of these 230S guitars were finished in a dark, natural hue, so you won’t find any color variations out there in vintage land.
Photo 2
The offset body reminds me of a flipped Mosrite, which isn’t surprising since the designer—Masahiro Matsui—was inspired by the Mosrite Ventures guitar of the same era. It’s also no surprise that all of the original Tokai electric guitars combined Mosrite aesthetics with Japanese flair. Check out the German carve and the sharp points (Photos 1 and 2) that came to exemplify the earliest Tokai offerings.
What really made the 230S different from the other Humming Birds in the line was the fuzz circuit hidden under the pickguard. There is a separate tone circuit on the upper bout, à la Fender’s Jazzmaster, but rather than a darker tone, it provides a truly interesting fuzz that’s reminiscent of an Electro-Harmonix LPB—with a little more edge and rawness. It’s hard to describe because there isn’t a modern equivalent, but the sound of the fuzz reminds me of some old bands from Japan like the Outcast or the Jaguars. The fuzz totally captures the era so authentically, and the circuit stacks really well with other gain pedals for some rather in-your-face tones.
Photo 3
The pickups in the 230S (Photo 3) are unique, because they were only made for a very short time and also appeared briefly on a few no-name guitars from the era. The pickups read out in the 6k to 7k range, have excellent clarity, and can push a small tube amp nicely. These pickups remind me of clear P-90s—suited for all sorts of music, but particularly awesome at ’60s- and ’70s-rock riffing.
Tokai is still making guitars today and recently reissued some of the old Humming Birds, but this first venture into electrics only lasted a little more than a year. I still see this model pop up every now and again, which is nice since they were only released in Japan in small numbers. Yes, these butcher-block guitars are something of an anomaly, but if you can find one, carve away!
See and hear this late-’60s Mosrite-like fuzz machine demoed by Mike Dugan.
The Rickenbacker 481’s body style was based on the 4001 bass, popularly played by Paul McCartney. Even with that, the guitar was too experimental to reach its full potential.
By the early 1970s, the great interest the lads had sparked in 6- and 12-string Ricks had waned. But thankfully for the company, there was still high demand for yet another Beatles-played instrument: the 4001 bass.
Paul McCartney was gifted a 4001 by Rickenbacker in 1965, which he then used prominently throughout the group’s late-’60s recordings and while leading Wings all through the ’70s. Other rising stars of rock also donned 4000 series models, like Yes’Chris Squire, Pink Floyd’sRoger Waters, the Bee Gees’ Maurice Gibb, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Stu Cook, and more.
And like that, a new star was born.
So, what’s a guitar company to do when its basses are selling better than its guitars? Voilà: The Rickenbacker 480. Introduced in 1972, it took the 4000-series body shape and created a standard 6-string out of it, using a bolt-on neck for the first time in the brand’s history.
The 481’s slanted frets predate the modern multi-scale phenomenon by decades. The eight-degree tilt of the frets is matched by an eight-degree tilt of the nut, pickups, and bridge.
“It was like a yo-yo at Rickenbacker sometimes,” factory manager Dick Burke says in Rickenbacker Guitars: Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo. “We got quiet in the late ’60s, but when the bass started taking off in the ’70s, we got real busy again, so making a 6-string version of that was logical, I guess.”
The gambit worked, for a time. Sales of the 480 were strong enough at first that, in 1973, a deluxe model was introduced—the 481—and it’s one of these deluxe versions that we’re showcasing here.
“The 481 features slant frets—pointing ever-so-slightly toward the body of the guitar—and the eight-degree tilt of the frets is matched by an eight-degree tilt of the nut, pickups, and bridge.”
Take a close look and you’ll notice that the body shape isn’t the only remarkable feature. The 481 was Rickenbacker’s first production run to feature humbucker pickups. Here, you can see each humbucker’s 12 pole pieces dotting through the chrome cover, a variant casing only available from 1975 to 1976. (Interestingly enough, the pickups had first been developed for the 490, a prototype that never made it to public release, which would’ve allowed players to substitute different pickups by swapping loaded pickguards in and out of the body.)
The new pickups were also treated with novel electronics. The standard 3-way pickup-selector switch is here, but so is a second small switch that reverses the pickups’ phase when engaged.
The inventive minds at Rickenbacker didn’t stop there: The 481 features slant frets—pointing ever-so-slightly toward the body of the guitar—and the eight-degree tilt of the frets is matched by an eight-degree tilt of the nut, pickups, and bridge.
Long before the fanned fret phenomenon caught on in the modern, progressive guitar landscape, Rickenbacker had been toying around with the slant-fret concept. Originally available from 1970 forward as a custom order on other models, slant frets were all but standard on the 481 (only a small minority of straight-fret 481s were built).
The 481 was the deluxe version of the 480, which preceded it and marked the first time the company used a bolt-on neck.
Dick Burke, speaking separately to writer Tony Bacon in an interview published on Reverb, only half-recalls the genesis and doesn’t remember them selling particularly well: “Some musicians said that’s the way when you hold the neck in your left hand—your hand is slanted. So, we put the slanted frets in a few guitars. I don’t know how many, maybe a hundred or two—I don’t recall.”
Even proponents of the 481 do not necessarily sing the praises of the slanted fretboard. Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno, a 481 superfan, told Rickenbacker Guitars author Martin Kelly, “I don’t just love the 481, it’s part of me.... The 481’s slanted frets have made my fingers crooked for life, but I don’t care, I’ll take that for it’s given me riff after riff after riff."
Initial 480-series sales were promising, but the models never really took off. Though they were built as late as 1984, the slant-fret experiment of the 481 was called off by 1979. And these slanted models have not, in the minds of most players or collectors, become anywhere near as sought-after as the classic 330s and 360s, or, for that matter, the 4001s.
For that reason, 481s—despite their novelty and their lists of firsts for Rickenbacker—can still be found for relatively cheap. Our Vintage Vault pick, which is being sold by the Leicester, England-based Jordan Guitars Ltd, has an asking price of 3,350 British pounds (or about 4,300 U.S. dollars), which is still well under half the going-rate of early 360s, 660s, and other more famous Ricks. Some lucky buyers have even found 481s on Reverb for less than $2,000, which is unheard of for other vintage models.
With its idiosyncratic charms, the 481 remains more within reach than many other guitars of a similar vintage.
Sources: Martin Kelly’s Rickenbacker Guitars: Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo, Tony Bacon’s"Interview: Dick Burke on the Creation of the Rickenbacker 12-String | Bacon’s Archive" on Reverb, Reverb Price Guide sales data.
