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.
The body style may have evoked McCartney, but this ahead-of-its-time experiment was a different beast altogether.
In the early days of Beatlemania, John Lennon andGeorge Harrison made stars out of their Rickenbacker guitars: John’s 325, which he acquired in 1960 and used throughout their rise, and George’s 360/12, which brought its inimitable sound to “A Hard Day’s Night” and other early classics.
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.
A rare Honey Happening that survived the era of the Happening.
Our columnist’s musings on honey bring him back to a forgotten little guitar company in Japanese history that didn’t last very long, but produced some interesting models.
One of the guys I work with is such an interesting fella. Dylan has an opinion on literally every topic, and I take amusement by asking him all sorts of probing questions.
For instance, he only wears t-shirts made from a certain blend (I’ll wear anything), and he likes smoke-infused whiskey (I drink mine straight), and he can go into great detail about an array of things like infusers, griddles, recording software, artificial intelligence, and the list just goes on and on. It seems like I, on the other hand, only have a certain amount of brain bandwidth and I don’t really ponder things of the material world, unless it’s guitar-related.
Recently, he was telling me about the rise of hot honey! He’s always telling me about recipes and how he uses it, but I have to say, anything that’s hot always turns me off. I used to love heat and spice and I could really eat anything. Yours truly even won a chicken-wing-eating contest (101 wings, baby!) with scorching hot sauce. I can even remember working at a restaurant back in the day, and the cooks were always challenging me with hot-sauce concoctions. Even the Jamaican dudes there couldn’t believe how I could inhale heat without a tear. Alas, all the years of trashing my body eventually caught up with me, and now if I eat anything that’s spicy, my belly and bowels just give up the ghost.
So, all this talk with Dylan about hot sauces and hot honey got me thinking about the old guitar brand, Honey. Looking back, I can’t believe I’ve never written about the little company before, but it was just a blip in guitar history—albeit a cool blip.
The story goes that in 1965 the Japanese guitar company Kawai had purchased the Teisco company. Teisco had its headquarters in Tokyo and made mostly electronics there. The wood production was done at a plant called Teisco Gen Gakki, which was located near Matsumoto City. Within a year or so, Kawai brought all-wood production to its own plant and Teisco Gen Gakki went idle.
Some former Teisco employees, who had mostly lost their jobs in this production shift, decided to make a go of their own at the guitar business. From this time, we see the brands Firstman, Idol, and Honey. The Honey Company made all sorts of products, including amps and guitars, and the company only sold in the Japanese market. Honey had a few wild designs, but mostly the guitars were copies of Rickenbacker, Gibson, and Höfner. But then there were these crazy one-off models, like this Honey Happening guitar from 1968. I’ve never seen another one and the only photos I can find online are all of this same guitar! One of my good Japanese friends gifted this to me.
The Happening takes its name from common terminology of the time, like, “It’s what’s happening,” meaning “hip” or “cool,” but this one is one of the coolest, with that elongated upper bout contrasting a super-short lower one. It has a Bigsby copy resting on the beveled-out section at the butt, which is another detail that’s rarely seen. If you check out the pickguard, there’s a cute little bumblebee there with “happening” written across in an old typeface. The headstock design is also noteworthy, featuring an extra-large truss-rod cover with two little diamond-shaped accents.
This solidbody is powered by two sizzling pickups that are Mosrite copies. It has a stinging sound—sorry—and sets up well with the adjustable bridge. Electronics round out with simple volume/tone knobs and a 3-way pickup selector switch. The only part I personally dislike on this guitar is the tuners, which can be finicky. But the guitar itself is surprisingly well-balanced and is a joy to play.
The Honey Company started business in early 1967 but was bankrupt in March of 1969. All Honey guitars and amps are extremely hard to find today, and if you have a good example, consider yourself one of the lucky ones. So instead of hot honey, let’s give a little props to a cool Honey.
1968 Honey Happening Guitar Demo
Frank’s friend Mike Dugan demos the Honey Happening 6-string.
The rockin’ riff lords take Fender’s squeaky-clean sound palettes and blast them with dirt on their latest tour.
Hard rockers Baroness were busy writing during the early days of the pandemic, sharing ideas and bits of songs over weekly video calls until they had enough for a new record. Then, after scouting for potential recording locations, they rented an Airbnb in a tiny town in New York and got to work.
The band brought all their gear along with them: They literally loaded up a U-Haul truck and left no pedal behind—a bit unnecessary in retrospect. At the end of their stay, they’d all but finished their sixth studio album, Stone, which was released in September 2023. On their recent summer tour supporting the record, the quartet played Nashville’s Basement East, where PG’s Chris Kies met up with vocalist/guitarist John Baizley, guitarist Gina Gleason, and bassist Nick Jost to get an in-depth look at their current road rigs.
Brought to you by D’Addario.
Franken-backer
Baizley received this custom-built Rickenbacker during the band’s sessions for Stone. It’s got the body and electronics of a Rick 620 but the neck of a 660 model. The Rick and Gleason’s Tele fill in the sonic gaps for each other.
I Think I Smell a Strat
Baizley’s other two primary guitars are these Fender Stratocasters. The first is an American Pro II with a tortoiseshell pickguard and HSS pickup configuration; the second is an original American Pro. The AmPro II lives in heavier tunings and takes a set of .012–.052s, but Baizley prefers both in the fourth position of the 5-way selector switch to build space around Gleason’s leads.
Tele Twins
Gleason rocks two Fender Telecasters, again from both the American Pro I and II series. She actually prefers the first iteration of the V-Mod pickups for their aggression and grit in live contexts, while the V-Mod IIs make for a smoother recording weapon. One stays in D-standard tuning while the other is in C standard with a dropped A#. Gleason strings them with .009–.046s and .010–.046s, respectively, and the whole band loves D’Addario NYXL sets.
So Bass-ic
Bassist Nick Jost is a Fender man, too, with a Precision Bass and American Professional Jazz Bass that both run through his mini-but-mighty rig: A diminutive Gallien-Krueger Legacy series head powers a classic Ampeg 8x10 cabinet. He usually plays with his fingers, but when he loses a game of dice on the road, he’ll sometimes be forced into playing with a pick.
Dual Stereo
Baizley and Gleason both run stereo amp setups. Baizley changes his amp backline often; he used to run twin Roland JC-120s but just recently switched in this Fender ’68 Custom Deluxe Reverb.
Gleason keeps the Fender train rolling with a ’59 Bassman reissue and a ’68 Custom Princeton Reverb.
John Baizley’s Pedalboard
Baizley’s board is packed with staged dirt boxes and tasteful mod stomps, all held in check with a GigRig G2, Peterson StroboStomp, and Ernie Ball Volume Pedal. The crown drive jewels are a heavily modded EHX Big Muff and Crowther Double Hot Cake, but a Beetronix FX Overhive and Pro Co RAT add some sizzle, too. A Boss DD-3, DM-2W, and TR-2, EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master and Tentacle, MXR Phase 90 and Dyna Comp, and EHX Deluxe Memory Man handle the rest, while a DigiTech Whammy lurks for its moment to blast off.
Gina Gleason’s Pedalboard
Gleason’s favorite drive these days is the EQD Zoar, their instant-classic 2023 release. Piling on top of that are a MXR Super Badass Distortion, MXR Timmy, modded EHX Big Muff, and a touchy Philly Fuzz Infidel prototype; an Xotic SP Compressor and UAFX 1176 Studio Compressor tighten things up when needed. Three time machines—the Strymon TimeLine, EQD Space Spiral, and Boss DD-3—handle delay, and a Walrus Slo dishes out reverb. The MXR EVH Phase 90 adds some color along with another DigiTech Whammy. The Ernie Ball Volume Pedal, Peterson StroboStomp, and GigRig G2 keep Gleason’s board in line, too.
Nick Jost’s Pedalboard
Jost’s bass board, powered by an MXR Iso-Brick, is a touch more simple, with an Ernie Ball Volume Pedal and Boss TU-3 for utility duties before an Xotic Bass BB Preamp, Boss ODB-3, DOD FX69B Grunge, MXR Stereo Chorus, and Tech 21 SansAmp Bass Driver DI.
Roland Jazz Chorus-120
Fender '68 Custom Deluxe Reverb
Fender Bassman
Fender '68 Custom Princeton Reverb
Fender American Professional Telecaster
Fender American Professional Stratocaster
Fender Precision Bass
Fender American Professional Jazz Bass
Gallien-Krueger Legacy 800 Bass Amp Head
Ampeg 8x10 Cab
Tech 21 SansAmp Bass Drive DI
MXR Iso-Brick
Boss TU-3
Xotic Effects Bass BB Preamp
Boss ODB-3
MXR Stereo Chorus
Modded EHX Big Muff
Boss DD-3
MXR Dyna Comp
Pro Co RAT
MXR Phase 90
Boss TR-2
EHX Deluxe Memory Man
EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master
DigiTech Whammy
Walrus Audio SLO
Boss DM-2w
EarthQuaker Devices Tentacle
Peterson StroboStomp
Beetronics Overhive
EarthQuaker Devices Zoar
MXR Timmy
MXR Super Badass Distortion
Xotic SP Compressor
MXR EVH Phase 90
UAFX 1176 Compressor
Ernie Ball Volume Pedal
D'Addario NYXL .110 Strings
Strymon TimeLine