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Fig. 1 consists of two scale diagrams of the minor pentatonic scale that show the passing tones I’ll be using in the next few examples. If you look closely at the two diagrams you’ll notice that the passing tones fall in between notes that are a whole step apart.
Fig. 2 is a lick out of the fifth position A minor pentatonic scale. I start the lick on the root (A), and then move to the flatted 3rd (C), natural 3rd (C#) and finally to the 4th (D). Remember, these notes are the ones you really want to hang on for too long. One exception would be when you resolve to the natural third, especially on the I chord of a blues. The lick then moves from the fourth to the root and then to E, the fifth of the scale, before finally resolving to the flatted 7th (G). Download example audio...
Fig. 3 starts out not only on the and of the fourth beat but it also starts on the 4th degree of the scale. It then goes up to the flatted 5th (Eb). The Eb is repeated before going back to the fourth. We then descend chromatically down to the minor third before resolving to the root. Download example audio...
Fig. 4 is a down and dirty lick using the fifth and sixth strings. This lick starts out on the root and then moves to the flatted 3rd and uses passing tones to move down to the natural 3rd (C#). We use another passing tone to connect the major 3rd and the fourth in the second measure. Download example audio...
We look at an area of the neck in Fig. 5 that I spend a lot of time in as a blues player. This lick starts out on the flatted 7th (G) and then chromatically goes upward to G# and then A. We then move up to the first string and play C before using C# as a passing tone on our way to the 4th. With a skip, we go up to the 5th (E) on the twelfth fret of the first string and then jump back down to the flatted 3rd. Download example audio...
Fig. 6 is in the style of Stevie Ray Vaughan. This lick descends down the fifth position A minor pentatonic scale using all of our passing tones, the natural 3rd(C#), the natural 7th (G#), and the flatted 5th (Eb). This lick also uses a lot of hammer-ons and pull offs. Take care to make sure they come out clear and clean. Download example audio...
Have some fun experimenting with these passing tones. This will add a lot of color to your playing. Take your time with them and listen to how they interact against the chords. In some cases it may sound really cool to hang on them for a second to create a great deal of tension. Other times you’ll need to move quickly as to avoid too much tension. The best way I can describe this is to stretch and pull at both time and tonality to create and relieve tension.
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.
