Gretsch and Ricky

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Rick!

The Ricky and the Gretsch were the first high-end guitars we’ve ever bought, and it took us a long time to figure out which instruments we wanted exactly and then also how to get them.

For example, very few guitar stores in Austria even stock Rickenbacker guitars, so once I considered them as a possible choice for my main electric guitar I didn’t even have any possibility to try and confirm that idea for quite some time. Not until we took a trip to the big annual Music Fair in Frankfurt and subsequently Europe’s largest Music Store in Cologne back in 2011. That was also the same trip that we had filmed While My Guitar Gently Weeps on.

The whole purpose of the journey to Germany was for us to be able to test out and try as many different guitars as we possibly could in order to find “the right ones”. Quite frankly, we were still hoping that we could find that “twang” in a cheaper alternative, so we tested dozens of different guitars at both the music fair and the store.

Well, during our many testing sessions we fell in love with the Ricky 350v63 and Lisa’s Gretsch and ended up ordering them online once we arrived back home. Back then I wasn’t aware that we basically picked the exact Beatles guitars. Of course, they were on our radar for that reason but so were other instruments the Beatles and other 60’s bands had used in that period. So it didn’t click until a few days later 🙂

I still love both those guitars and they get used for so many of our recordings still!

Good question, thanks for asking!
Mona

[Tim Johnston]

Roger McGuinn of the Byrds plays that Rickenbacker too I believe.