Mdou Moctar has led his Tuareg crew around the world, but their hometown performances in Agadez, Niger, last year were their most treasured.
Mdou Moctar, the performing moniker of Tuareg guitar icon Mahamadou “Mdou” Souleymane, has played some pretty big gigs. Alongside guitarist Ahmoudou Madassane, drummer Souleymane Ibrahim, and bassist Mikey Coltun, Moctar has led his band’s kinetic blend of rock, psych, and Tuareg cultural traditions like assouf and takamba to Newport Folk Festival, Pitchfork Music Festival, and, just this past April, to the luxe fields of Indio, California, for Coachella. Off-kilter indie-rock darlings Parquet Courts brought them across the United States in 2022, after which they hit Europe for a run of headline dates.
Mdou Moctar - "Oh, France" (Official Audio)
But the band’s most treasured performances to date weren’t any of these, the stuff of Western musicians’ dreams. They were free, impromptu generator shows around Agadez, a city in Niger’s Sahara desert. They were the type of gig any DIY punk musician knows well: no stage, no light show, no fancy PA or mixing—just some guitars and amps, a drum kit, some flood lights. At one of the first shows, the band set up their gear against the beige walls of a school, and soon a crowd of locals—most of them Tuareg, an Indigenous ethnic group that lives across the Sahara region—had kettled the band in, anxious to hear the music. Kids hung out a window of the school, cell phones alight as they documented the gig. The band tasked a couple local friends with recording the set.
It’s thanks to them we get a glimpse of the blistering, pure power of that night with the performance of “Imouhar” uploaded to YouTube. It’s the second track from Mdou Moctar’s sixth full-length record, Funeral for Justice, released on May 3. It starts at a mid-tempo clip, with Moctar’s lacerating, hammer-on- and pull-off-heavy shredding soaring above Ibrahim’s tight groove and Madassane’s driving rhythm chording. People dance and clap and grin as the song picks up speed, like a runaway train on a steep hill, free and wild and reckless.
On a video call from a New York apartment, Moctar, speaking in French through a translator, says the shows had “historical importance” for the band: “Being able to be in Agadez, and having our people around us, supporting us, and the youth being there was so special for us. Also, to inspire young people for the future. We had tried to do that since [our first album] Anar, right up to [2021’s] Afrique Victime, but we hadn’t managed to do it in that way before. This time, we really managed to. It made us very proud of our work, and the way we were able to work.”
Decades of oppression, violence, and a constantly darkening political horizon for Tuareg people—and Africans in general—have led Moctar to declare a Funeral for Justice.
Coltun, who grew up in Washington, D.C., and is the band’s only non-Tuareg member, started following Mdou’s music while playing in Mali in 2011, and he connected with the guitarist via the Sahel Sounds label shortly after. Coltun was managing the band’s 2017 U.S. tour when Moctar invited him to join the group. Every time he goes with the band to Niger, Coltun says he sees kids mimicking Mdou’s style, a Saharan recasting and mashing-up of Eddie Van Halen’s volcanic tapping techniques. “It’s turned into his own style, and there’s kids around playing in that style,” says Coltun. Madassane’s rhythm playing, too, has left a mark. “Ahmoudou’s right hand, when he gets going, is so fast, and not a lot of people in Agadez can play that fast for that long and be relaxed. That’s really inspiring, to see all that stuff.”
“I’m an eternal student…. I never sit back and say, ‘Now I know how to play guitar.’” —Mdou Moctar
Funeral for Justice is, like everything the band does, rooted in an uncommonly keen sense of place, people, and responsibility. Sung almost entirely in Tamasheq, a Tuareg language, the record puts centuries of imperialism, colonialism, and oppression in its crosshairs. In the late 1800s, European powers endeavored to control Africa’s west coast, resulting in the French occupation and colonization of countries like Mali, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, and Niger. Funeral for Justice leaves no question as to the impact of France’s past and present subjugation of Africans on the continent. “Occupiers are carving up your lands while you watch / Gallantly marching all over your resources / Why is that?” Moctar, singing in Tamasheq, demands of Africa’s governments on the opening cut. Later, on “Oh France,” the Tamasheq vocals mourn, “Youth around the world is thriving, meanwhile my people’s fate remains uncertain / The world rises and falls, meanwhile my people remain immobile.”
Even simply singing in Tamasheq is an act against dominion. “The Tamasheq language is starting to disappear because our youth don’t speak it well,” says Madassane. Moctar concurs. “They’re interested in other languages, mostly French, which is a language that has dominated almost all the African languages,” he adds. “They think that if you speak [French], it means you’re civilized or modernized somehow.” Moctar references the sad case of Tifinagh, a Tuareg script that’s almost disappeared. “We really want to give hope to our youth with our music and make them understand that they need to take care of this language, that there’s nothing more valuable than this. We want to say to the world that this is what constitutes our tradition and origins, and there’s nothing more precious.”
Mdou Moctar's Gear
Moctar and his bandmates prefer Fender instruments, whose bite and immediate presence are a perfect match for the music’s politics.
Photo by Mike White
Guitars
- 2018 American Stratocaster (white) with Lollar Strat Special S and Sustainiac pickups
Amps
- Orange Rockerverb 100 (live)
- Orange 4x12 cabs (live)
- Soldano SLO-100 head (studio)
- Traynor vintage 4x12 cab (studio)
Effects
- TC Electronic PolyTune
- Union Tube and Transistor Shiny
- Analog Man Sun Face
- EarthQuaker Devices Acapulco Gold
- Champion Leccy Rocktar Fuzz
- Analog Man Mini Chorus
- Boss PH-3
- Boss DD-3
Strings and Picks
- D'Addario NYXL .010s
The musical roots from which Mdou Moctar (which is the guitarist’s nickname, but also the band’s name) have launched their furious, two-guitar attack can be traced back to the Sahara desert in northwestern African countries like Niger, Mali, Libya, and Algeria. When France began to occupy the region in the early 1900s, the nomadic Tuareg population was forced under their rule until the French retreated from the area in the ’50s and ’60s. The lands where the Tuareg traditionally lived were divided between nations with bigger populations and stronger political infrastructure, so the minority Tuaregs were once again on the back foot. They rebelled, trying to establish independence and liberation against new, French-installed governments. Malian governments crushed the uprisings brutally. Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, a young Tuareg man, fled Mali after his father was executed by government forces for participating in the rebellions. Years later, while playing music in militant Tuareg camps, Ag Alhabib formed the pioneering assouf-rock outfit Tinariwen.
“Ahmoudou’s right hand, when he gets going, is so fast, and not a lot of people in Agadez can play that fast for that long and be relaxed.” —Mikey Coltun
Like Moctar, Tinariwen injected rock and psychedelic sounds into the Tuareg struggle, electrifying their musical practices with Western pop and rock instrumentations. They branded their music “asuf,” a Tamasheq word that speaks to the loneliness, longing, and pain that seemed to characterize Tuareg life. Tinariwen’s bassist, Eyadou ag Leche, told an interviewer in 2011 that when they eventually heard the music of Jimi Hendrix, they recognized something common in his playing, a bond between American rock music and the Tuareg experience. “It was almost as if I had known that music from the day I was born,” he said in 2011. “I’m told that a lot of the Africans who went to North America came from West Africa, from our part of the world. So it’s all the same connection. I think that any people who have lived through something that is very hard feel this asuf, this pain, this longing.”
These are the musical and cultural contexts that shaped Moctar. He DIYed his first guitar from some wood and bike brake cables, and his first recordings were shared via Bluetooth on peer-to-peer cell-phone networks across northern Africa. Sahel Sounds, a Portland, Oregon, record label focusing on music from the Sahara, included one of Moctar’s tunes on a 2011 compilation release, then re-released his 2008 debut, along with two other full-length records and an original, Prince-inspired movie soundtrack. Third Man Records took notice and put out the band’s 2019 live record, M’dou Moctar: Blue Stage Session, then major independent Matador signed Moctar to release his 2021 American breakout LP, Afrique Victime.
Ahmoudou Madassane’s Gear
The music of Mdou Moctar spread regionally in Africa before being scooped by American label Sahel Sounds. After a live release on Third Man Records, the band signed with acclaimed indie Matador.
Photo by Ebru Yildiz
Guitars
- American Stratocaster (custom metallic green) with Lollar Strat Sixty-Four pickups
- 1980s Squier Stratocaster (red) with Lollar Strat Sixty-Four pickups
Amps
- Orange Rockerverb 50 (live)
- Orange 4x12 cab (live)
- Vintage Fender tweed Deluxe (studio)
- Vintage Fender Deluxe Reverb (studio)
- Vintage Fender Champ (studio)
Effects
- TC Electronic PolyTune
- Analog Man King of Tone
- EarthQuaker Devices Erupter
- Maxon PT-999
- Boss DD-7
Strings and Picks
- D'Addario NYXL .010s
The follow-up, Funeral for Justice, was recorded between an upstate New York rental house, Coltun’s apartment, and Agadez. It ups the outfit’s production value, and often, the pulse rate, too. A mid-boosted slam of chording opens the record’s title track, which drops into a crackling 6/8 swagger—a lot of the record plays out in a characteristic 3/4 or 6/8 groove—and introduces the band’s familiar call-and-response vocal style. The lo-fi, minor-key intro of “Imouhar,” which means something akin to “comrade” in Tamasheq, feels like a Tuareg analog to the slick flourishes and lead runs pioneered by original blues players of the American South. But soon enough, an electric note rises and howls, and the band crashes in like a thundering steam engine.
There’s plenty of noise and dynamic movement this time out. “Sousoume Tamasheq” starts with a screeching blast of rapid-picked notes that brings Hendrix’s “Machine Gun” to mind—though unlike Jimi’s distinct solo lines, Moctar’s leads are often incomprehensibly fast. The dark, simmering resentment of “Oh France” bursts open halfway through with a melody and timing change that thrashes upward in tempo until its climax. Then there’s the clap-and-percussion-driven desert-blues of “Imajighen,” as invigorating a modern blues song as you can find, or the acoustic noodling intro of closer “Modern Slaves,” which ducks and weaves between minor and major key over its slow, determined groove. The lyrics, meanwhile, articulate the absurd cruelty of modern inequity and inaction: “My people are crying while you laugh / All you do is watch.”
Throughout, one of the more stunning qualities is the duality of Moctar’s lead-guitar work. It’s difficult to figure out how he strings so many notes together in such frantic, precise phrases, like little strikes of lightning across the fretboard. But part of the magic of Mdou Moctar’s music is that these leads aren’t so much scene-stealers as one of a handful of bubbling, explosive elements, all ricocheting off one another. And while Moctar’s style seems by now distinct and singular to our ears, he insists he’s not content where he is. “I’m an eternal student,” says Moctar. “I’m always curious to try new things within my style. I never sit back and say, ‘Now I know how to play guitar.’”
Mikey Coltun's Gear
Moctar follows a Tuareg tradition of mixing rebellion and assouf guitar music, a lineage that originated in the 1970s with the Malian Tuareg rock outfit Tinariwen.
Photo by Nelson Espinal
Guitars
- 1966 Fender Mustang bass (white)
- 1971 Fender Mustang Bass (green)
Amps
- 1970s Ampeg SVT (live)
- Orange 8x10 cab (live)
- Fender 8x10 cab (live)
- 1970s Ampeg V4 (studio)
- Traynor 2x15 cab (studio)
- Ampeg B-15 (studio)
Effects
- TC Electronic PolyTune
- Boss OC-2
- EarthQuaker Devices Blumes
- Analog Man Sun Face
- Union Tube and Transistor Sub Buzz
- Aguilar Grape Phaser
Strings and Picks
- DR Strings Fat-Beams .045–.105
“We really want to give hope to our youth with our music and make them understand that they need to take care of this language, that there’s nothing more valuable than this.” —Mdou Moctar
The record’s grave title, however, does imply a finality. Funeral for Justice is not just a rhetorical phrase; Moctar and his bandmates really mean it. This record is frenetic and bright, but at its heart, it is a work of mourning. It’s a product of how the Tuaregs—and Africans in general—have been treated for centuries. “I don’t see justice on this earth,” says Moctar. “If you look at a European or an American citizen, they seem to have more value compared to an African citizen.
“The world is a really scary place for us today,” he continues. “War technology is progressing, and each country is just trying to become stronger than its neighbor, as if that was their priority. None of that makes sense to us. Why isn’t the world focusing on how to make life better for people instead of bombing them? Bombing innocents who don’t even make two dollars a day with bombs that are worth millions. Why are these resources not being used to make this world a better, more wonderful place?
“All these leaders know that doing all that would be possible, but instead they prefer to manipulate people into believing it’s not, and to continue to oppress the weak, and make the strong people in this world even stronger. That’s what makes us say that justice doesn’t exist.”
YouTube It
Flanked by comrades and youth, Mdou Moctar blast through a riotous performance of “Imouhar” at an outdoor generator show in Agadez, Niger.
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Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
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.
