Rickenbacker 650A

I won't go into repeating the features as the other reviewers have covered that.Though mine is 1992,with Schaller locking tuners.

Sound is INCREDIBLE.Amazing tone and sustain.From jazz to grindcore this baby sounds sweet as hell no matter what I play.

Well I bought mine used on ebay via the Green County Rt.66 Music Exchange.Everything was to my liking from the low,butter like action to it's near mint condition.I was amazed that she arrived in tune even though the Ric spent several days in transit in freezing weather.
The chrome pickguard was actually condensing up.Still in tune,and stays that way.
Finish was fine.A few minor scratches on the pickguard which you can't even notice unless you're close up and the light hits it a certain way.

Well this Ric is almost 14 years old.Her previous owner took great care of her,as will I.
Seems very dependable.I've had the Ric for several months now and she's endured some pretty brutal string bashing at times.Stayed in tune.I wouldn't gig without a backup.Nothing against the guitar,you just never know.Better safe then look stupid.

N/A

I've been playing over 10 years.I also own a 1975 Fender Musicmaster,two Epiphone LP's,a couple old acoustics and an Aria Pro II bass guitar.
If it were stolen I would find the thief and do horrible things to them.I'd certainly buy one again,but this baby(imho) is irreplaceable!
I love everything about it.Aesthetically,musically,everything.My fave feature would be the O-O-O-D-L-E-S of sustain,ease of play and the wonderful spectrum of tones you can get.
The seller is very reliable and I highly recommend them.
http://www.route66music.com

It has a unique look! A great modern Rickenbacker for modern guitar players, yet it looks like a Rickenbacker. It will never be mistaken for a Fender, Gibson, or other guitar.

It's a Rickenbacker! It rocks...........many different sounds. Great tonal range. Somebody knew what they were doing when this guitar was being designed. It can play heavy metal, yet the most accomplished jazz and blues players will appreciate the subtle qualities of this instrument. The pickups are so clean and quiet. Every string in a chord is easily heard separate from the others.

Schaller tuners and a tailpiece of comparable quality. Quality tonewood and great Rickenbacker custom quality finish. You can get ridiculous low action if you want, but a slightly higher action gives a more pure tone. I do not like skinny necks. This neck is substantial and gives great feel and excellent sustain. Very easy to play. The strings bend so smoothly and easily.

How could you break this guitar? This guitar is extremely rugged and very simple. Everything is first class. It is not fancy, but you know it is high quality. If you want a guitar for the rest of your life, this is the guitar to buy.

I doubt you will need any customer support. I never have.

My fancy guitars that I paid so much more money for are getting less and less use these days. Now that Rickenbacker is making this guitar in all the standard RIC finishes, I will buy me another one in Fireglo with vintage single coil pickups and the vibrato option. Some of my other guitars may soon be sold as these new Rickenbackers with the wider necks suit me very well. With the vintage coil pickups and wide neck, this guitar sounds and feels like the more expensive 660 6 string model, except this has a 24 fret neck and better access to the upper frets. I had to smooth down the fret ends after the neck seasoned out over the winter, but now it feels perfect. The contoured neck is very comfortable to play. I like it better than the skinny necks with binding on the more expensive Rickenbacker models.

This guitar was made in March of 1991 to commemorate Rickenbacker's 60th anniversary. Rickenbacker is one of the last American guitar manufacturers to build their guitars by hand at their shop in Santa Ana California.
The body and neck are maple. The neck is a slight bit wider than most Ricks. The fretboard is maple and is distinctly different than other Rick guitars with "rosewood" fretboards. The neck is one piece thru-body design. The neck has a natural clear finish all the way through the body. The "wings" of the body are finished in vintage turquoise metallic. The frets are medium jumbo style and the neck is a full 3 octaves. The pickguard and knobs and Schaller roller style bridge are chrome. The pickups are high-gain humbuckers. They sound like original Rick pickups through my '64 Vox Cambridge Reverb tube amp, but with MUCH more output. Balls Deluxe. It came with a deluxe Tolex hardshell case, and polish cloth and manual.

This guitar will do the beatles sound hands down. Especially through a Brittish tube amp. It will do lead work very well when overdriven. It sustains extremely well due to the one piece neck design. The sound is vintage Rick, with extra balls when cranked.

Rick makes great guitars by hand. This is the cheapest, best made guitar you'll find for the price in the US. All the other guitar manufacturers with this kind of quality have much higher prices. The fit and finish quality are on par with Paul Reed Smith, G&L, and Fender custom shop guitars.

All Rick finishes are known to be exceptional. They last a long time even under some heavey use.
All their guitars are made to be played professionally.

I have dealt with Rickenbacke directly. Cindy Hall is in charge and can be difficult, if not impossible to deal with.
I reccommend dealing with one of the assembly guys in the shop. In other words, stay clear of the front office.

I have been playing guitar for 28 years. This is one guitar I would keep for a long time. The neck is very comfortable. The whole guitar is well balanced. It would be hard to replace because there aren't that many of them produced. I also have G&L, Fender, Gretsch and Steinberger guitars. This Rick is at the top of the list.

my 650A (A is for Atlantis) is a 1997 model. it is an all maple guitar with neck through body construction, short scale neck , 12" neck radius, 1.75" width at nut (that means really wide. like sg special width), medium frets, 2 humbuckers (volume and tone on each), a fixed bridge with roller saddles, black graphite nut, and a body style similar to the 620 series but with contours. i hate the way the contours are. they rounded everything except where my forearm contacts the body (the location where strats have nice big contours). if you aren't going to contour where you really need it, then don't contour at all and give us some cool looking binding so that we can justify the huge welts on our forearms in the name of style. this is by far my biggest pet peave with the guitar. mine also came with a case. the strap buttons suck. i always replace my stap buttons with dimarzio strap locks, but these are oversized machine screws threaded into the wood. there is a reason that wood screws were invented: because machine screws don't hold in wood. therefore, after i modified the dimarzio strap to accept the rick strap buttons, i had to duct tape it all down to hold it in place. one of these days, i'm going to glue dowel pins in the holes then redrill for regular strap buttons.

my rating of 9 is post modification. the first thing i did after buying this guitar was to throw away the pickups, do some routing, then replace the pickups with an emg-81 in the bridge position and an emg-h (single coil in a humbucker shape) in the neck position. i found that the original pickups were dirty, fairly low gain, lacked character, and lacked upper mid range attack when played heavily distorted. the 81 gave me the crunch i needed and the h gave me the character. when i switched the pickups, i also moved the positions of the volume and tone knobs. for some reason, they positioned the volume knob for the bridge pickup as the furthest knob away from the picking hand, when it should be the closest. after those modifications, it sounded great. it became a clean, very balanced sounding (and feeling) guitar with tons of sustain. sometimes it sounds a little bit too bright, though. i tend to have to back off the highs on my amp more than i'd like. if they made a version with a rosewood fterboard or ebony fretboard and mahogony body, it might help. plus, the guitar would look a lot cooler, anyway.

first of all, i must say that this is one of the best weighted guitars i've ever played. i almost bought an sg, but i hate the way it is headstock heavy and slides away from you. between the guitar's weight distribustion and strap button positioning, this guitar always seems to sit just where you want it. as far as the factory setup goes, who knows. i started modifying it as soon as i got it. i setup the action the way i like it and it plays wonderful. fortunately i set it up good at the beginning, because the bridge hardware has rusted so badly that there is nothing left of the screw heads to adjust with. if i ever want to adjust them, i'll have to buy a new bridge. but if i do, the first thing i'm doing is replacing all of the screws and springs with stainless steel hardware. the neck is solid and the truss rod is very effective. i didn't like the tuners it came with so i replaced them with sperzel locking tuners, but there was a problem, because the headstock wood is thicker than most standard headstocks so the sperzel pegs were a little on the short side. it still works, it's just a little annoying changing strings sometimes. the nut sucks. the g-string sticks like hell. the width of the slots really varies too much from the size strings they are designed to hold. even though i'm a vegetarian, i might have to sell out and get a bone nut which would hopefully be more consistant and lubricious. the finish is nice, but it is too thick. i ended up sanding the back of the neck (the finger board is next on my list) to get the feel i wanted. i really think this guitar would look better with binding and a rosewood or ebony fretboard.

this guitar is very tough. it has survived 2 u.s. tours and 1 european tour so far on which it has been dropped (read: thrown) on the floor, used to bludgeon cmybals, used (inadvertantly?) to break our singer's hand and almost his nose, and used (inadvertantly!) to break off my entire front tooth (i wish the guitar broke instead, but that is life). my only complaints in this catagory were with the bridge hardware and the strap buttons, but i mentioned those ealier. even though it has a roller bridge, i break an e or a string every other show so i alway bring a back up.

customer support was very helpful when i was trying to find one of these in stock somewhere in the u.s. they don't make many of these each year so they are hard to come by. i really wanted one, and they helped me track one down. since then, i've had less luck with the company. my band has product endorsements for a lot of other equipment, and we want to get rick (we already have esp), but they won't endorse anyone who isn't tom petty, so i'm a little bit bummed out about that. but that's no big deal. my main problems is that when my bridge hardware rusted beyond recognition, i planned on drilling out the hardware are replacing it with new stainless hardware. well i was going to have to order the hardware from someone because nobody stocks little metric set screws around here. so all i wanted was the hardware specs before i destroyed my old hardware taking it out. my only other method would be to measure after destroying the existing harware, then order the stuff and wait, while my guitar sat there, out of order. not only did rick seem disinterested in my problem, but all they were able to provide was the name of the company that made them. no contact person or telephone number. my other beef with them is that when they have a factory second, they throw it in the trash. i could build the perfect guitar if i could get one in a partially finished state. imagine this: a rickenbacker 650 with neck and body binding, finished in tv yellow with gold hardware, ebony fretboard, all stainless screws and springs, emg pickups, body contouring at the forearm area and nowhere else. but they won't sell me something in an partially finished condition so that i can do it. you wouldn't be able to bind the body of this guitar after they do their contouring. it makes me mad.

i love the guitar more than any other guitar i've ever played, but there are little things that bug me about it. i look at it as a framework for the best guitar possible, but not the actual best guitar possible. it is certianly a much better value that a lot of the other guitars on the market right now.