1965 Rickenbacker 360/12 Fireglo, Original Toaster Pickups, OHSC

Step back into the golden era of rock and roll.

If you have been chasing that unmistakable jangle of the mid-sixties (and later on Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, The Smiths & R.E.M.), the search ends here. This is the sound that defined the British Invasion, folk rock, and the soundtrack of a generation, and this is the exact year and the exact finish that everyone pictures when they think of it.

Up for sale is a highly resonant 1965 Rickenbacker 360/12 in Fireglo, serial EJ049 (George Harrison had this exact model from the same year)

Rickenbacker used a two-letter dating code from 1961 to 1986: the first letter is the year, the second is the month. E is 1965. J is October. Production number 49. The serial is stamped on the jack plate and photographed below so you can decode it yourself rather than take my word for anything.

That date matters more than it looks. The rounded, unbound top edge with checkerboard binding on the back, the "New Style" 360 body, arrived around August 1965. This guitar was built roughly two months into that run. It is an early example of the body shape that became the Rickenbacker 360 for the next sixty years, and it is from the single most sought-after year in the model's history.

All-original.

The original toaster-top pickups are in it. The original electronics and wiring. The original bridge, tailpiece and tuners. The original pickguard. And the original 1965 nitrocellulose finish, worn exactly where sixty years of playing wore it, because nobody ever tried to make this guitar look newer than it is.

A finish can only be original once.

This is a player's guitar, and it has never pretended otherwise.

This is not a sterile museum piece that spent its life hiding under a bed. People played this thing, hard, for decades. The photos show it honestly and completely:

• Back of the body: significant finish wear on the lower bout, worn through to bare wood, consistent with belt buckle contact. This is the most visible cosmetic feature of the guitar and it is photographed in detail below.
• Front, treble-side lower bout: finish worn through along the edge from picking-hand and body contact.
• Back of the neck: the finish has been played smooth. If you have spent time with vintage instruments you already know what this means. A neck worn in like this feels faster and more comfortable under the hand than any glossy modern finish, and it is the one form of wear that is an outright improvement rather than a tradeoff.
• Headstock: finish chipping and lacquer loss around the tuner bushings and along the top edge. Structurally sound. No cracks, no breaks, no repairs.
• Pickguard: a hairline crack near the upper mounting screw. Original guard, still solid.
• Hardware: honest tarnish and light pitting on the bridge, tailpiece, tuners and pickup covers. Nothing has been replated, polished, or cleaned up to fake a condition this guitar does not have.

What it sounds like

Plug it into a clean amp, bring the treble pickup up, and it is instant. Every note doubles into itself, an octave up on the low four courses, and the whole chord blooms out like a piano with the sustain pedal down. Both toasters together give that wide, chiming shimmer. On the bridge pickup alone it gets sharper and more cutting, the setting that built a whole genre of California folk rock.

The 360/12 is one of the very few instruments where the tone is not something you dial in. It is already there, waiting, and it is why this design has never been meaningfully improved on in six decades. In my experience the vintage toasters do something the reissues do not quite reach, though that is my opinion and you are welcome to form your own.

How it plays and functions

It plays well and everything works. Both pickups are alive, all five controls and the selector function, the neck is straight. It received a professional setup at a shop in Hollywood shortly after I acquired it, and it has been a working studio instrument since.

On frets: I have had no fretwork done during my ownership and I cannot speak to what may have been done before I acquired it. The frets play cleanly with no dead spots.

The case, and the man whose name is on it

It comes in a period-correct Rickenbacker hardshell case, silver exterior with black leather ends and blue plush interior. Latches and handle intact.

Stenciled down the lid in black, by hand, by somebody long before me: REICHARDT 12 STRING.

I do not know who Reichardt was. I know he stenciled his name on this case because he was carrying this guitar to gigs and did not intend to lose it. I have left it exactly as I found it, and I would ask that whoever buys this leaves it too.

Why this one

Clean, all-original mid-sixties 360/12s carry dealer asking prices near and above ten thousand dollars. This is not one of those, and I am not pricing it as though it were. This is the other kind of vintage guitar: completely unmolested, completely original, and visibly played by people who loved it.

I am a working music producer. This has been a studio instrument, not a collection piece, and it will keep being one until the right person turns up. I am in no hurry.

Serious questions welcome, and I will answer all of them. I will photograph any detail you ask about, from any angle. I can also upload a video of me playing it, if requested.