Breaking Benjamin's Keith Wallen
Question: What’s one area you’d like to improve on in your music?
Guest Picker - Keith Wallen
A: I think there is always room for improvement for myself musically. The moment you stop trying to improve or stop caring about ways to innovate your skills or approach, you’ve kind of given up or resolved yourself to the level you’re at, even if it’s unconsciously. Playing guitar is such an amazing form of expression, but it can go hand in hand with writing, so I think songwriting is what I’d most like to improve upon. Finding that perfect combination of chords, melody, and lyrics is not easy, but I think all of us songwriters strive to come as close as we can. I know I do!
Current obsession: My newest obsession is my new signature ESP Custom Shop guitar that I got this fall. It is, for all intents and purposes, my “weapon” to go into battle with for all my solo/non-Breaking Benjamin shows. Shout out to Tony Rauser at ESP for helping me to create my ultimate dream guitar! It’s basically a souped-up E-II M-I, which is another ESP guitar that I’ve owned for almost five years now and absolutely love. I now have my own version of my favorite guitar, complete with Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck pickups, a unique crow design, a matte finish, and my logo set for the inlays.
Reader of the Month - Benoit Champagne
A: I’ve been working on practicing scales and modes at 40 bpm and lower. 60 bpm and higher is a lot easier. If you start very slow and gradually speed up, that’s where I see a lot of improvements and ease reflected in my playing—no matter the fingering pattern or speed involved.
Current obsession: Expanding on two-handed tapping. That’s something I have put aside for many years, but am currently getting back into with the scales and chord knowledge that I’ve acquired over the years. I find that this allows me to expand on my fretboard mapping knowledge with a different point of view.
Editorial Director - Ted Drozdowski
A: I’d like to establish a better, more disciplined practice routine, for chasing inspiration. When I was touring, everything flowed like water; now it’s more like pancake batter.
Current obsession: In almost every spare minute of the past two years, I’ve been working on a feature-length film called The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South with my cosmic roots band, Coyote Motel. Now, it’s screening at film festivals, winning laurels, and the soundtrack is coming out. I am obsessed with getting this trippy film into the world and having as many people experience it as possible.
Associate Editor - Jason Shadrick
A: It’s always a struggle to turn the microscope inward on your own playing. Plus, the target you are aiming for is always moving. Currently, I want to not focus so much on the craft of guitar playing, but more the art. A friend recently told me that I should look for the vulnerability in my playing—and I don’t disagree.
Current obsession: I’m binging on the original Broadway cast recording of School of Rock. My daughter recently was cast in a production, and it has become her gateway into the world of loud guitars. Next stop: AC/DC.
- Jeff Beck — “Blues to the Maximum” ›
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- Question of the Month: The Genre Connection ›
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.
