The Accent vibrato, slash soundhole, and distinctive pickguard and control set make for an iconic and distinctive design.
Here’s some Rickenbacker history you might enjoy—especially if you’re a fan of the company’s Fireglo works of art. F.C. Hall, the owner of Radio & Television Equipment Co. (Radio-Tel), purchased the Electro String Company from Adolph Rickenbacker in 1953. Hall revamped the business to focus on standard electric guitars rather than the steel guitars the company began producing in the early 1930s, such as the historic “Frying Pan” lap model.
These new electric guitars were slow sellers at first, but they continued to increase in popularity as the 1950s progressed. By early 1954, German guitar maker Roger Rossmeisl was hired as head of the woodshop, overseeing design and production. He concentrated on solidbody guitars for the first few years, giving them a unique European look that set Rickenbackers apart from other brands.
By 1958, Rossmeisl began work on a new group of semi-hollow electric guitars called the Capri Series (after Hall’s family cat). The series consisted of 12 models: the small-bodied three-quarter-sized 310, 315, 320, and 325; the standard full-sized 330, 335, 340, and 345; and the deluxe full-sized 360, 365, 370, and 375. Models ending in zero had no vibrato, while those ending in the number five did. The bodies for these guitars started as a solid block of wood, which was then hollowed out from the underside, with a separate back later attached. The vibrato-equipped instruments originally had Kauffman Vib-Rolas, but those were switched in 1960 to the more efficient Accent vibrato developed by Paul Butts, who also developed the Gibson Maestro Vibrola. By 1961, Rossmeisl had modified the original 2"-thick design to the 1 1/2" thickness that remains standard for the 330 series today.
A potent tone combination: a 1963 Rickenbacker 365 with one of the company’s early 1960s B9A amps.
The 1963 guitar featured this month has the characteristics common to deluxe-series 365 models before they were reshaped again in 1964. These include a bound maple neck, a gloss-finished rosewood fretboard with large triangle-shaped inlays, two “toaster”-style single-coil pickups, a maple body with a bound top and back, a slash soundhole, and an Accent vibrato tailpiece.
This Fireglo finished guitar has a gold Lucite truss rod cover, with a matching two-layer pickguard (white plastic was used after 1963). Four diamond-shaped “oven” knobs control the volume and tone of each pickup, while the smaller blend control knob subtly balances the sound from each pickup when the switch is in the middle position. The original list price was $309.50. The current value for one in excellent, all-original condition is $5,000.
“The bodies for these guitars started as a solid block of wood, which was then hollowed out from the underside, with a separate back later attached.”
The amp behind the guitar is an early 1960s Rickenbacker B9A. It is equipped with tremolo, and pushes 6 watts through a 12" speaker. The current value for the amp is $700.
Sources for this article include Rickenbacker Electric 12-String: The Story of the Guitars, the Music, and the Great Players, by Tony Bacon; The History of Rickenbacker Guitars, by Richard R. Smith; The Rickenbacker Book: A Complete History of Rickenbacker Electric Guitars, by Tony Bacon and Paul Day; and Rickenbacker Guitars: Out of the Frying Pan into the Fireglo, by Martin Kelly and Paul Kelly.
- 1935 Rickenbacker Electro Spanish ›
- Rickenbacker Guitars Factory Tour ›
- Vintage Vault: 1964 Rickenbacker 325 ›
While creating her new solo record, Kim Deal was drawn to exploring the idea of failure.
Deal isn’t smiling on the cover of Nobody Loves You More, her new album, but the art bears some similarities: Deal is floating on a platform in an expanse of gentle, dark blue waves, accompanied only by a few pastel-colored amps, her guitar, a stool, and a flamingo. It’s an unmistakably lonely image, but for Deal, failure doesn’t mean loneliness. It’s not even necessarily a bad thing.
“I mean, at least something magnificent was tried, you know?” says Deal. “At least there was something to fail. That’s an endearing thing. I think there’s a sweetness to seeing somebody get their ass kicked, because they were in it. It warms my heart to see that, just people getting out there. Maybe it gives me the courage and confidence to try something. It’s okay if I get my butt kicked. At least you’re trying something.”
“I think there’s a sweetness to seeing somebody get their fucking ass kicked, because they were fucking in it.”
Nobody Loves You More feels at least a little like Van Ader’s journey: an artistic project so long in the making and so precious to its creator that they’re willing to break from all conventions and face the abject terror of being judged by the world. That might seem like nothing new for Deal, who’s played music professionally for over 35 years, first with Pixies, then with the Breeders. But this LP marks her first proper solo album under her own name—a thought that mortified her for a long time. (“I like rock bands,” she says.) Even when she recorded and released what could be called “solo” music, she released it under a pseudonym. Initially, it was to be Tammy and the Amps. “I still was so uncomfortable, so I created Tammy and the Amps,” explains Deal. “I’m Tammy, who are my band? It’s the amplifiers downstairs in my basement. But the Tammy thing sort of got on my nerves so I just dropped it, so it was called the Amps.” She also assembled a band around that concept and released Pacer under the Amps’ name in 1995.
The cover art for Nobody Loves You More echoes the doomed last voyage of Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader.
This new record hums with the soft-loud energetic alchemy that defines much of Deal’s previous works. The opening title track is a slow, romantic strummer with string arrangements, while “Coast” is faintly ska-indebted with horns and a ragged Blondie chord progression. “Crystal Breath” gets weirder, with distorted drums, synthy bass, and a detuned, spidery guitar lead. “Disobedience” and “Big Ben Beat” continue the darker and heavier trajectories with fuzzy stompers interspersed with ambient, affective interlude tracks like “Bats in the Afternoon Sky.” It’s a patient, sensitive, and unmistakably scrappy record.
Some of the songs on Nobody Loves You More are as up-close and personal as solo records get. One in particular that’s drawn attention is “Are You Mine?,” a sleepy-eyed, lullaby ballad. At first listen, it could be taken for a love song. (In fact, Deal encourages this interpretation.) But it’s a song about her mother, for whom Deal cared in her home while she died from Alzheimer’s. The song title comes from a gut-wrenching moment.
“I was in the house, she doesn’t know my name,” explains Deal. “She’s still walking, she can form words, but she doesn’t know what a daughter is or anything. She passes me in the hallway, stops, grabs my arm and says, ‘Are you mine?’ She doesn’t know my name, she doesn’t know who I am, but there was a connection. I knew she was asking if I was her baby. I said, ‘Yeah, mama, I’m yours.’ I’m sure five seconds later, she forgot that conversation even happened. It was just a flicker, but it was so sweet. To have her not see me in so long, and then for one brief second, be recognized in some capacity…. She was such a sweet lady.”
Deal’s mother wasn’t the only loss that went into this collection of songs. Her father passed, too, after a prolonged illness. “My dad was this big bravado sort of personality and watching them get extinguished a little bit every day… I don’t know,” she says. “They both died at home. I’m very proud of that.” But writing “Are You Mine?” wasn’t painful for Deal; she says it was a comforting experience writing the gentle arpeggio on her Candelas nylon-string acoustic.
Deal assembled the bulk of Nobody Loves You More in her Dayton, Ohio, basement, recording with Pro Tools and a particularly pleasing Electrodyne microphone preamp. (Some of the songs date back more than a decade—versions of “Are You Mine?” and “Wish I Was” were initially recorded in 2011 and released as part of a series of 7" singles.) Deal recorded a good part of the record’s drums, bass, and guitar from home, but other contributions came in fits and spurts over the years, from old faces and new. Her Breeders bandmates, including Mando Lopez, Jim MacPherson, Britt Walford, and sister Kelley Deal, all pitched in, as did Fay Milton and Ayse Hassan from British post-punk band Savages, and the Raconteurs’ Jack Lawrence.
Kim Deal cared for her parents in their Dayton, Ohio, home until their passing, an experience that colors the music on her new solo record.
Photo by Steve Gullick
Kim Deal's Gear
Guitars
- '90s Fender Stratocaster
- '70s goldtop Gibson Les Paul
- Candelas nylon-string acoustic
Amps
- Marshall JCM900
- 4x12 cabinet
- Kalamazoo combo
Strings & Picks
- .011-gauge strings
- Dunlop Tortex Standard .60 mm
One day, ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer stopped by the studio to see what Deal was working on. He listened to “Wish I Was,” and scrambled together a lead idea. Deal kept the part and expanded it over time, leading to Klinghoffer’s writing credit on the record.
Deal used her trademark red ’90s Fender Stratocaster HSS along with a ’70s goldtop Gibson Les Paul for most of the electric work, pumped through either her long-time Marshall JCM900 or a tiny vintage Kalamazoo combo. Deal has never been a gearhead—at one point on our video call, she uses a tooth flosser as a pick to demonstrate some parts on her Candelas. “Kelley is a pedal person,” she says. “I’m not doing leads. I’m just doing a rhythm that needs to sound good.”
“I don’t think I’m taking it very well still, actually, or I’m a sociopath because I don’t even talk about [Steve Albini] in the past tense.”Over the years, Deal’s sonic thumbprint has been tied up in the work of her good friend and frequent collaborator Steve Albini, the producer, engineer, and musician who died unexpectedly in May 2024. (Deal quips, “Steve’s the lead character in my own life.”) Albini and Deal began working together in 1988, on Pixies’ debut LP Surfer Rosa. Their friendship continued over decades—Deal even performed at Albini’s wedding in Hawaii, for which he gifted her a ukulele—and the final sessions for Nobody Loves You More were under Albini’s watch. His parting hasn’t been easy.
“I got a text: ‘Call me,’” remembers Deal. It was a mutual friend, telling Deal that Albini had passed. “He told me and I just said, ‘You’re absolutely wrong. That didn’t happen.’ I don’t think I’m taking it very well still, actually. I don’t even talk about him in the past tense. I say, ‘What he likes to do is this.’ I never think, ‘What Steve used to like to do.’ My head never goes there. I wanted to record a song that wasn’t working and I said, ‘I need to do it from top to bottom at Albini’s.’ That’s not going to happen.”
YouTube
Along with Rob Bochnik and Spencer Tweedy, Kim Deal plays two tracks from Nobody Loves You More for a holiday fundraiser in November 2024 in Chicago.
Bluegrass music is bigger than a genre. It’s become an entire world of ideas and feelings in the popular American imagination. And musician Jerry Douglas has been a key part of its celebration and revival over the past 30 years. “It's an old form of music that came from people in the south playing on the porch and became this juggernaut of a genre,” says Douglas. “It’s a character. It's a physical music.”
Douglas has racked up an impressive cabinet of accolades, including Grammys, American Music Association Awards, and International Bluegrass Music Association Awards. He’s been dubbed the CMA Awards’ Musician of the Year three times, and played with everyone from Allison Krauss and Elvis Costello to Bela Fleck and John Fogerty. He’s an encyclopedic guide to contemporary American roots music, and on this episode of Wong Notes, he walks Cory Wong through the most important moments in his 50-year career.
Tune in to hear Douglas’ assessment of bluegrass’ demanding nature (“Honestly, there's not so many genres nowadays that require as much technical facility as something like bluegrass”), what’s required of roots players (“Get it right, get it fast, make it hook”), and why the O Brother, Where Are Thou? soundtrack connected with so many listeners. Wondering how to get involved with session work? Douglas says there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, and what worked for him might not work today. The key is to be dynamic—and know when to keep your mouth shut.
There are plenty of gems in this interview, like Douglas’ thoughts on what makes a good solo, but the most significant might be Douglas’ big takeaway from decades of sitting in on communal roots-music sessions. “We can play in all genres,” says Douglas. “We just have to listen.”
Orangewood Juniper Live Acoustic Guitar
- Equipped with a high-output rail pickup (Alnico 5)
- Vintage-inspired design: trapeze tailpiece, double-bound body, 3-ply pickguard, and a cupcake knob
- Grover open-gear tuners for reliable performanceReinforced non-scalloped X bracing
- Headstock truss rod access, allowing for neck relief and adjustment
- Light gauge flatwound strings for added tonal textures