The black stuff is asphalt based pitch. It was a common potting compound well into the 1960s. Some heat will soften up that Gilsonite asphalt. Late 1942 or 1943 and the nameplate was NOT removed. This model was not a great selling item by late1941 when the US entered WWII. The name plates were gone from Rickenbacher's inventory stock and metal was now in high demand for the war effort, so you got the water slide decals on these. The bodies were back stock in the factory and they lasted until 1943. The paper further reduced feedback. The pitch seals off the solder so it won't corrode, and it dampens the guitar also to reduce feedback. I use a hot air surface mount rework station to melt that old asphalt. A soldering pen you hate would also work. YOU CAN START THAT BLACK STUFF ON FIRE SO NO OPEN FLAMES OR TORCHES!
I think the main thing I love the most about this man,...is his obvious passion, love, and respect for every single instrument that lays upon his bench. Some might say,..."well,... he is so careful as to not have to pay for broken things outta pocket." But I would say,..." he loves these instruments more than money." That would be my guess. Another intriguing and beautifully performed repair.
My '39 Supro 60 lap steel came with the factory cord attached like that. I replaced it ( dry rot cracked) with a new one but am changing it to barrel jack this week. The cord being attached drives me crazy after 10 years of dealing with it.. lol. Another wickedly awesome video !
@@WujekDobrelody 🤔 Well, "resinator" is a 'generally' relevant term for certain, 'non-musical instruments'..... You undoubtedly heard the video narrator discussing "pots" he found within ^his Rickenbacker Hawaiian instrument. Well, it so happens that the non-musical instruments I'm referring to specialize in "pots" of a different sort, some of which can be coincidentally sourced from Hawaii as well! 🌴 😏👉There are a myriad of such instruments used by 'pot-eficianados' that qualify as "resin-ators". In lean times, many will remove and 'recycle' the resin, often utilizing the same 'resinators' from where the resin originated... 😁
The pots and tar along with the grommets are all vintage radio materials, the tar or pitch as it's also known was used to submerge capacitors in bakelite pots and it was used to wrap around transformers as a insulator.
I was going to guess that too. I recall a video where Oliver Wood from the Wood Brothers talks about how he stuffed a pair of underwear in his guild semi-hollow to do the same thing. At some point a luthier took it out without asking and he swears even after replacing it with socks it never sounded quite the same.
My thought too. I would guess that the tar was spread all along the back, but once the guitar got stored vertical, in a hot place, and the tar melted to the bottom.
Neither of mine had black goo inside. One of them was emptied of its paper, the other had shredded newspapers inside. I was able to date it to mid 1941due to scraps of articles I could read about what was happening in the war.
I'm not a fan of "3 in 1" 3 components= penetrant , lubricant, but 3rd part is a varnish. Its meant to fill spaces between worn parts but it also turns into a Glue with time. I used to repair typewriters and "3 in 1" was a death blow to old manual typewriters.
3:30 those cords came standard on many lap steels, I own two and have seen several more of cheaper models. Brilliant commentary below-a real brain trust in repair. Thanks everybody!!
@@zwz.zdenek Kinda-sorta, yeah - Jack White had a guitar made that has a retractable bullet (harmonica) mic with a take-up drum inside the body. He liked the lo-fi sound for vocals.
@@zwz.zdenek last time I went vacuum shopping, I didn't see a single one with a cord retraction device. All had the cord manual wind up fingers on the back.
@@Ozmandius, it depends on where you live, in Europe we often use vacuum cleaners that are pulled around by the hose. And they have cord retraction, for the most part.
The black stuff looks like tar. Edit: if I know correctly, tar was also used as a potting compound for transformers (I think McIntosh still uses it for their output transformers).
Yep. My brother toured the Mc factory when he was a teenager, and said one whole end of the building reeked of the stuff 'cause it was in a big open-top pot. By the time I toted my kids up to Binghamton for a tour they'd gone to a sealed pot to keep the tar hot. Didn't smell near as bad.
I restored a 1929 Johnson outboard which used the same tar to bed the coils; revelries and resided! (Stinks though and ruined the pot I used to melt it)
That's instrument maker's asphalt. Brass instrument (trumpet, french horn, etc) makers use an asphalt compound to bend tubing. It comes in flakes like raw shellac. It's melted down and poured in the tubing and allowed to solidify before making tight bends to prevent the tube from collapsing during bending. It's then reheated and poured out to be reused.Any instrument repair guy would have had the stuff on hand back in the day... Here, if Ted won't mind I'll link a vid that shows the process somewhere around the 15min mark. ruclips.net/video/ZWgt4vcqq4U/видео.html
@FoulOwl. Nowadays I think that since they make the brass tubes air tight, they fill them with water. After freezing the water, the tubes bend without collapsing.
@@markmiwurdz202 Sand is a common material for filling soft tubing. Fill with sand and cap the end. With water, there is no need to freeze since it does not compress, and freezing water expands and can burst a tube.
@@markmiwurdz202 it has nothing to do with air tight tubes. You cant use a liquid as most liquids dont compress and will rupture the tubing by hydraulic force. You can freeze the water. But obviously that takes time...quite a while. We ain't got all friggin day to wait for a tube fulla water to freeze. We got bends to make. Then you gotta move fast before it melts or, its back to liquid and blowing out tubes. You can fix a flat tractor tire with bubblegum and a basketball pump too l rekon. But is it really practical? Sand is somtimes used. But it does not work as reliably as good old fashioned asphalt or pitch. It can be melted in mere minutes. Poured in the tube in seconds. Cooled instantly. Bend your tube. Heat it up with a yellow flamed torch. Poured out. Move on to the next. It's been used for centuries. Still works today. If neighborhood music shops still had real repairmen rather than just shipping everything off to the big "repair shop in the sky" you'd still see it all the time.
I knew right away when he was poking it. That's asphalt. I had no idea the uses in the music instrument world. Thanks for the info and link. FWIW: In other musical areas, Asphalt was used to quiet down items that would "ring", by adding mass to change its resonance. Think of Dynamat, before it was invented.
Very enjoyable watch. I am quite old and have a number of items from my Grandfather in nickel. I think it looks nice; this guitar certainly does. As soon as I saw the black material inside I thought "Pitch". A number of commenters agree. Think "handy thermoplastic non-conductive filler". It was used to seal large 1.5 v dry cell batts back in the day, among many other uses.
Thanks for this video. I have a NS 1948 model, and after having the nerves to open her up, i noticed that there where real newspapers inside the neck. The newspapers are from Los Angeles Times from Sunday , Mar. 24, 1946. I have heard it is done to increase sustain, however i doubt it helps a lot.....:=) , but she sounds beautiful....
"Whatever this is" is probably pitch. It is a resin that is derived from coal tar or birch tar. It has a melting point somewhere between 65 and 150 Centigrade. It was popular as an insulator and as a 'potting' material.
Thanks for the video! Coincidentally I finished restoring a 1939 NS100 just 3 weeks ago! Differences in mine: 1) There was the usual jack on the treble side, not a hard-wired cable. The guitar also had a plugged hole on the bass side where a 1938 version's jack would have resided. Maybe mine was from early '39 and transitional? 2) The wiring scheme was way different from yours, and quirky; more like a 1938: The 250K volume pot was wired as a *rheostat* (only 2 terminals used) ACROSS the pickup. The jack was also in parallel with the pickup. The rheostat acted as a variable load across the pickup, ranging from dead short to 250K. The tone control was also wired as a 250K variable resistor in series with a .05uF cap (common setup on most guitars), with the R-C pair also in parallel with the pickup and output. Not the best of wiring schemes because the volume control by itself would act as a treble cut due to the extreme amount of loading in mid to low volume positions. So, you end up having a guitar with, in all practicality, TWO tone controls!! 😞 3) I didn't have any pitch inside the guitar. Instead, there was a mass of plaster of Paris filling the cavity from just south of the pickup down to the tail. The plaster didn't interfere with removing the pots. Was this intended to couple the bridge to the back, dampen vibrations or just provide mechanical stiffening under the bridge? I have no idea. Other owners haven't reported the plaster. 4) I had some tissue right under the pickup and controls, but also there was a squirrel's nest of shredded newspaper, 3/8" wide and a page long extending all the way into the neck cavity. Wadded up, it's nearly the size of a football! Unfortunately, I didn't have the patience to find matching strips, paste them up and read the LA Herald Express from the month the guitar was built.😃 Even in the absence of a newspaper date, I'm pretty sure mine is a '39. 5) Tone control is white, volume is black. What did I do with it, and am I going to rot in hell?: 1) The pots were SHOT. Dead. Kaput. There was a distinct gritty feel to both the volume and tone, and there were places along the pot where it would either open up, or act as a short. No amount of cleaning would restore it. (sealed pot bodies, too, darnit). I replaced both pots, rewiring the guitar in the process to the more conventional post-1940 scheme with the 250K volume pot acting as a real pot (jack is fed from the wiper), and the tone circuit is fed by the pickup (or high terminal on the volume pot). Result: the guitar maintains its tone over a wide volume control range. Oh yeah, one more thing: the wire colors are reversed from conventional audio gear: black is hot, yellow is ground; sort of like residential wiring.. 2) The dampening material really is important. Without it the guitar sounded like it was being played inside a culvert. I opted against stuffing back the old newspaper (I'll keep it in a bag for history's sake). What I did was to have a friend make approximately a half-dozen "beanbags" made of a flimsy slippery cloth stuffed loosely with fiberfill insulation (like they use for sleeping bags). The bags were approximately 3-1/2" square and VERY compressible. I stuffed the bags, sparingly, into the cavity. The beanbags got rid of the worst of the trashy clanginess, but not totally muting it. i imagine I can fine-tune the response by adding/removing beanbags, or shifting them around in the cavity, but I don't have the patience to do that right now (that would require unstringing and restringing after every attempt); I'm having too much fun playing the guitar as it is!! Overall result: I LOVE this guitar. I've been learning Hawaiian lap steel over the past year and a half, and this instrument NAILS the sweet Hawaiian tone. It's probably not quite as appropriate for country or rock because it lacks much of an edge to the tone; it would get lost in the mix. I also own a '38 Bakelite B6 which, until a couple weeks ago was my favorite. The B6 sounds smoother overall but the NS100 has a very distinct personality because of just the right amount of high-end resonance. It's sort of midway between the Bakelite and Frypan in treble response and is my favorite lap steel! --Aloha!
You should definitely post a video of the Rics you have, man. I'm a huge fan of these old Rickenbackers, especially since they're almost always super inexpensive. Seriously, I've seen a '38 (I think) go for like $300 or $500 on Reverb, which makes them very attractive to a person like me, who is younger, working a minimum wage job, and not the richest person alive (who is? Haha) but still loves both vintage instruments and Rickenbackers, despite the fact that both can get very expensive very quickly.
Don't forget the Valco (Supro, National, Airline) string-through pickups. They're awesome. Largely due to Ry Cooder having fitted his "Cooder-caster" Strat with one of those, Lollar now makes reproductions of them.
I seem to recall that the Horseshoe pickups were used on the original 4000 series Bass Guitars and it is one of the reasons why cosmetically there is still the (unnecessary) Chromed Pickup Cover over the Treble pickup on the 4001-3 Basses ... (By all means correct me if I am wrong !).
@@Jester-Riddle Rickenbacker made a series of electric guitars (I believe they were called Capri) with horseshoe pickups in the 1950s. I believe that the toaster-tops became the Ric standard around the same time as the 330 came out. Some Capri's may have had one of each.
@@jamesfetherston1190 , It's funny that your comment popped up when it did, because almost simultaneously, a morning show on TV referred to Scorpios, of which I am one, the most "purely evil" of all astrological signs. I half-expected my wife to echo that statement with a joke at my expense, as I probably would have done had the situation been reversed, but instead she defended me.....
The black stuff sure looks like the pitch we heated and poured to make polishing laps in our optics fabrication shop. I think we mainly used "Gugolz" brand, and it was basically some kind of tree resin. Or, maybe it's some kind of asphalt .
I would bet that it is a form of resin called “asphaltum” , used as a backing while stamping reverse images , or forms in sheet metals. Perhaps, the face and back were formed on a bed of the stuff?
Rickenbacker (pronounced with a “back” and not a “bach.”) was originally named Ro-Pat-In Corporation, and designed and produced the first commercial magnetic pickup, along with Paul Barth… the horseshoe. This was invented by Rickenbacker’s founder George Beauchamp. Prior to this Beauchamp invented the resonator guitar and founded National. The resonator was developed with John Dopyera, who later left National and started Dobro. Adolph Rickenbacker ran a metal stamping shop and stamped out the metal bodies for the National guitars, and later guitars like this. He’s always credited with inventing the Frying Pan, but that was Harry Watson, an employee at the company, now named Electro Sound. He made the first Frying Pan out of wood, and it was just something to hold the horseshoe pickup. Before building their own guitars Ro-Pat-In sold Harmony guitars with the horseshoe pickup. Another fun fact, Italian luthier Roger Rossmeisl who designed the classic Rickenbacker electrics also designed the Tele Thinline and Coronado.
Hammond organs were using magnetic pickups in 1933, based on what looks like parts of the H.J Round/ J.B.Woodroffe gramophone design, based on parts of Alexander Graham Bell's design.. I think George Beauchamp or George Dearmond were the first to use and sell it on 6 string instruments though.
It says RickenbacHer on the headstock? And I am curious (just because I just finished netflix show about musicians in LA in the 60's) because Jakob Dylan was also correcting Tom petty about the pronunciation, is why? I am not swiss, but studied german 8 years in school in Finland and I think (might be wrong) the right way of the pronunciation would be baHHer. Anyhow all the finnish musicians who own RickenbacKer guitars pronounce it bach not back.
@@pekkavirtanenrocks the original spelling is with an H. Adolph changed the spelling, as did other Germans in the US due to anti German sentiment. The company pronounces it Ricken BACK er. If you look it up the American pronunciation is “ri kuhn ba kr.” We pronounce a lot of German names differently, including my last name. 😃
Black Gold, Texas Tea (dried)... well the first thing you know, ol' Ted's a millionaire. The kin-folk said "Ted, move away from there!" Said "Californee is the place you oughta be", but Ted stayed put in Ontario Canadie!
The paper is there to dampen resonance and reduce/control feedback. I've known lots of guys who've packed paper or batting into wood Rickenbackers and ES-335s for that very reason. Townshend used to do it with his various Ricks. The hardened black goo is probably there for the same reason...they wouldn't put that quantity in there just as an insulator. It's far more likely they'd just use a strip of fish paper for that purpose. Other's have mentioned instrument maker's asphalt used to help form the metal...that sounds reasonable as well, although I don't know why it would be added after the pots or why it was never removed. Mystery! Beautiful looking and sounding guitar! Ted, I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoy your videos...my favorite channel!
Lovely instrument, and great workmanship getting her back up and running, Ted. I think that the black stuff is asphalt, I've seen raw asphalt before, and that's what it looks like.
That black stuff inside the guitar looks like Creosote, one of the substances that was used to preserve telephone poles. It also looks like tar. I love the way that Hawaiian guitar looks and sounds - It's a real beauty. I think the owner is going to be very happy with the work you did.
I'm thinking the hardened goop inside is the 1940s version of shrink wrap. It all made sense when you put the shrink wrap on the jack "in case things get spun around inside". Rachel was founded in 1957. Thats the company that made electrical shrink wrap tubing. So I'm thinking that was the way Rickenbacher dealt with this situation to avoid players being electrocuted with the all steal lap steal "in case something gets spun around in there..."
Maybe the black stuff is reactor corium, Chernobyl's elephant foot style. Every self respecting guitar shop should have a Geiger counter. I know absolutely nothing about lap steel but am slightly surprised it has protruding frets, thought those didn't need them. Altough after a minute of thinking - it was probably the best way to create durable and good looking markings where the sounds should be on a metal instrument.
Well, bituminisation of radioactive waste, including highly radioactive alpha-emitters, was tried as part of a disposal process in several European countries and Japan until long-term stability issues became obvious. Fire hazard was also an operational issue with bituminisation, a fire in Japan contributed to the practice being replaced with concrete encapsulation.
The paper that was removed was to stop the vibrating string feedback in the steel case to the magnetic pick-up. Reverberation will distort the string amplification and output..
The paper is likely "fish paper". It's an insulator with a fairly high dielectric constant. It was very common in paper-foil capacitors. It also doesn't absorb moisture very well if at all.
14:04 that's a grommet specific divet. Grommets work best when supported (or those old ones did, which were a lot softer than modern ones) so they don't move about too much and self slice on the metal through the motion. The recess provides the grommet with that support so all the grommet works against the cord. I think the grommet, bitumen and config might be OG to this unit.
I believe your guess about it being asphalt/bitumen is correct. Probably what amateur "repair men" used before JB Weld. How strange. And the tissue paper? I gotta know why.
Perhaps the “Asphaltum” was used when forming or finishing up the edges of the face so as not to break the brazed or soldered joint? That is a really beautiful piece of metal craft. Great vid! Thanks.
I love the way you take things step by step and figure out exactly what the problem is and what you feel is the best solution!! Love your videos, please keep them coming
That black stuff definitely looks like pitch to me. Which would mean that unless your workshop is already so cold that your fingers are going numb, it's technically still a liquid, just very, very viscous. It'll crack and shatter, but it'll also flow and even drip, over a period of years. There's an experiment in Australia that's been going on for over a century at this point, and they've had nine drops fall from the funnel so far. Nobody's ever witnessed it happening, though, and even the webcam they've had pointed at it for the last twenty-odd years tends to fail at exactly the wrong moment.
Pitch/tar/bitumen is a "super cooled liquid" and will flow very, very slowly. Glass also does this so theoretically a very old window pane will be thicker at the bottom than at the top.
I take that “black stuff” out of basses all the time. They used black weatherstripping foam as a spring behind pickups. It disintegrates and turns to black melted goo that turns solid and crystallized. It’s very common in old guitars.
@@FoulOwl2112 it’s not bullshit. I doubt fender put instrument makers asphalt as you suggested under there bass pickups. I clean it out of old guitars all the time. In this video I think it’s more likely there was foam used as a spring or dampener than asphalt poured in.
I have a 1950 model G which is essentially a silver hawaiian with a lucite fret marker board, and clear lucite knobs and a gold tuning post cover plate . All the newspaper and black shit in there is to dampen the metal. These things are insanely resonant and will feedback at higher volumes.... I must say that it doesn't do the best job but its mostly tame when standing away from a loud amp. I've had a 47 bakelite as well and that was the complete opposite, not as resonant and oddly not as fun to play. Nice video man, always learn something from you!
my guess is the plastic is tar that has solidified over time. It was probably there to prevent electrocution, body buzzing or feedback just like the paper would muffle the sound. The patch cable was probably added because they couldn't get the pots out.
Good, snug-fitting screwdrivers are the unicorn of tools. Many Les Paul bridge and tail-stop screws bear witness to ill-fitting screwdrivers. I work on guitars and I'm a gunsmith. Boogered up screws on a gun is common too. *Tip:* That's why I use screwdrivers made for gunsmithing to work on guitars. They're hollow ground and will not mar the heads.
Being that it’s a metal body guitar in an era when wiring sucked I’d say the paper was for moisture reduction and the tar substance was simply extra insulation to prevent shorting.
I use C6 tuning on my acoustic lap steel the bass strings CEG are a C chord and the treble strings ACE are an Am chord, the relative minor to C. It’s a neat tuning because you can essentially play in any key.
![Eminem - Fuel (Shady Edition) feat. Westside Boogie & GRIP [Official Audio]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/k1OquBida9s/mqdefault.jpg)
The black stuff is asphalt based pitch. It was a common potting compound well into the 1960s. Some heat will soften up that Gilsonite asphalt. Late 1942 or 1943 and the nameplate was NOT removed. This model was not a great selling item by late1941 when the US entered WWII. The name plates were gone from Rickenbacher's inventory stock and metal was now in high demand for the war effort, so you got the water slide decals on these. The bodies were back stock in the factory and they lasted until 1943. The paper further reduced feedback. The pitch seals off the solder so it won't corrode, and it dampens the guitar also to reduce feedback. I use a hot air surface mount rework station to melt that old asphalt. A soldering pen you hate would also work. YOU CAN START THAT BLACK STUFF ON FIRE SO NO OPEN FLAMES OR TORCHES!
Im amazed at how there's always someone hanging around with this niche knowledge. Nice one
“Maybe he was a session musician and wanted to cut his plug-in time in half” 😂😂😂
I think the main thing I love the most about this man,...is his obvious passion, love, and respect for every single instrument that lays upon his bench.
Some might say,..."well,... he is so careful as to not have to pay for broken things outta pocket." But I would say,..." he loves these instruments more than money." That would be my guess. Another intriguing and beautifully performed repair.
My '39 Supro 60 lap steel came with the factory cord attached like that. I replaced it ( dry rot cracked) with a new one but am changing it to barrel jack this week. The cord being attached drives me crazy after 10 years of dealing with it.. lol.
Another wickedly awesome video !
Don't you know? It's the famous Rickenbacher "Resinator" guitar 🤣
Yeah, they wanted to produce dobro, but someone misspelt "resonator" in documentation, and here we are. True story.
Ya can't have virtuosity without viscosity!
The built-in pitch corrector drain is clogged; all that pitch is trapped inside...
@@WujekDobrelody
🤔 Well, "resinator" is a 'generally' relevant term for certain, 'non-musical instruments'..... You undoubtedly heard the video narrator discussing "pots" he found within ^his Rickenbacker Hawaiian instrument. Well, it so happens that the non-musical instruments I'm referring to specialize in "pots" of a different sort, some of which can be coincidentally sourced from Hawaii as well! 🌴
😏👉There are a myriad of such instruments used by 'pot-eficianados' that qualify as "resin-ators". In lean times, many will remove and 'recycle' the resin, often utilizing the same 'resinators' from where the resin originated... 😁
🤣
The pots and tar along with the grommets are all vintage radio materials, the tar or pitch as it's also known was used to submerge capacitors in bakelite pots and it was used to wrap around transformers as a insulator.
"With my luck it's a combination of lead and asbestos" had me bust out laughing, tears in my eyes!
Beautiful! Not often do I see an instrument I had no previous desire to have, and then moments later, I feel as if I need one in order to survive...
Funny, Ezra!
Me too!
Interesting - my thoughts precisely.
that sticky goo is probably asphaltum, the concept behind paper was to cut down on feedback. both of mine are stuffed with newspaper.
I guess it was to stop interference with the metal body from the electronics?
Pull the news paper out it’s probably got some cool history on it!
I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the paper stuffing was used to kill unwanted resonances from the metal body, along with the black substance.
I was going to guess that too. I recall a video where Oliver Wood from the Wood Brothers talks about how he stuffed a pair of underwear in his guild semi-hollow to do the same thing. At some point a luthier took it out without asking and he swears even after replacing it with socks it never sounded quite the same.
My thought too. I would guess that the tar was spread all along the back, but once the guitar got stored vertical, in a hot place, and the tar melted to the bottom.
0r to set the pick up on after it's removed... what if they thought of everything.
Neither of mine had black goo inside. One of them was emptied of its paper, the other had shredded newspapers inside. I was able to date it to mid 1941due to scraps of articles I could read about what was happening in the war.
To be simultaneously as entertaining as informative is a real gift; you’re one of the best on RUclips, bud!
Thanks for that :) ! For the pots, you certainly know but there are some plastic "wrenches" to protect finish.
I'm not a fan of "3 in 1" 3 components= penetrant , lubricant, but 3rd part is a varnish. Its meant to fill spaces between worn parts but it also turns into a Glue with time. I used to repair typewriters and "3 in 1" was a death blow to old manual typewriters.
3:30 those cords came standard on many lap steels, I own two and have seen several more of cheaper models. Brilliant commentary below-a real brain trust in repair. Thanks everybody!!
I can’t be the only one that holds my breath while he’s doing precision work 😂😂😂
Shiny. Maybe it needs a cord retraction device, like moms vacuum from the 1960s.
LOL. Most household vacuum cleaners have that today. A guitar would be a first though.
@@zwz.zdenek Kinda-sorta, yeah - Jack White had a guitar made that has a retractable bullet (harmonica) mic with a take-up drum inside the body. He liked the lo-fi sound for vocals.
Thats a great idea!
@@zwz.zdenek last time I went vacuum shopping, I didn't see a single one with a cord retraction device. All had the cord manual wind up fingers on the back.
@@Ozmandius, it depends on where you live, in Europe we often use vacuum cleaners that are pulled around by the hose. And they have cord retraction, for the most part.
The black stuff looks like tar.
Edit: if I know correctly, tar was also used as a potting compound for transformers (I think McIntosh still uses it for their output transformers).
Tar mixed with ground slate was/is used for transformer potting.
Yep. My brother toured the Mc factory when he was a teenager, and said one whole end of the building reeked of the stuff 'cause it was in a big open-top pot. By the time I toted my kids up to Binghamton for a tour they'd gone to a sealed pot to keep the tar hot. Didn't smell near as bad.
Years ago, in art printmaking/etching, "asphaltum" was available in tins, that was used melted as a resist on the plates.
I restored a 1929 Johnson outboard which used the same tar to bed the coils; revelries and resided! (Stinks though and ruined the pot I used to melt it)
That's instrument maker's asphalt. Brass instrument (trumpet, french horn, etc) makers use an asphalt compound to bend tubing. It comes in flakes like raw shellac. It's melted down and poured in the tubing and allowed to solidify before making tight bends to prevent the tube from collapsing during bending. It's then reheated and poured out to be reused.Any instrument repair guy would have had the stuff on hand back in the day...
Here, if Ted won't mind I'll link a vid that shows the process somewhere around the 15min mark. ruclips.net/video/ZWgt4vcqq4U/видео.html
@FoulOwl. Nowadays I think that since they make the brass tubes air tight, they fill them with water. After freezing the water, the tubes bend without collapsing.
Amazing to hear this! I did a glass-blowing course once, but they never filled the tubes. Thanks for the info!
@@markmiwurdz202 Sand is a common material for filling soft tubing. Fill with sand and cap the end. With water, there is no need to freeze since it does not compress, and freezing water expands and can burst a tube.
@@markmiwurdz202 it has nothing to do with air tight tubes. You cant use a liquid as most liquids dont compress and will rupture the tubing by hydraulic force. You can freeze the water. But obviously that takes time...quite a while. We ain't got all friggin day to wait for a tube fulla water to freeze. We got bends to make. Then you gotta move fast before it melts or, its back to liquid and blowing out tubes. You can fix a flat tractor tire with bubblegum and a basketball pump too l rekon. But is it really practical?
Sand is somtimes used. But it does not work as reliably as good old fashioned asphalt or pitch. It can be melted in mere minutes. Poured in the tube in seconds. Cooled instantly. Bend your tube. Heat it up with a yellow flamed torch. Poured out. Move on to the next. It's been used for centuries. Still works today. If neighborhood music shops still had real repairmen rather than just shipping everything off to the big "repair shop in the sky" you'd still see it all the time.
I knew right away when he was poking it. That's asphalt. I had no idea the uses in the music instrument world. Thanks for the info and link.
FWIW: In other musical areas, Asphalt was used to quiet down items that would "ring", by adding mass to change its resonance. Think of Dynamat, before it was invented.
Very enjoyable watch. I am quite old and have a number of items from my Grandfather in nickel. I think it looks nice; this guitar certainly does. As soon as I saw the black material inside I thought "Pitch". A number of commenters agree. Think "handy thermoplastic non-conductive filler". It was used to seal large 1.5 v dry cell batts back in the day, among many other uses.
An excellent video. The content is of the highest quality. A fascinating exploration and a real education. Thank you for uploading.
I dont know why but when you pulled out the vintage tissue paper, I started laughing
It calls to mind a packed clown car.
@@MusicLover-vq3ol Or a magician with a scarf.
@@waybackplayback1347 , Or the Three Stooges loudly exclaiming "Excelsior!"
It had a sort of ASMR clown car vibe ; )
Thanks for this video. I have a NS 1948 model, and after having the nerves to open her up, i noticed that there where real newspapers inside the neck. The newspapers are from Los Angeles Times from Sunday , Mar. 24, 1946. I have heard it is done to increase sustain, however i doubt it helps a lot.....:=) , but she sounds beautiful....
"Whatever this is" is probably pitch. It is a resin that is derived from coal tar or birch tar. It has a melting point somewhere between 65 and 150 Centigrade. It was popular as an insulator and as a 'potting' material.
He would know for sure if the dust from it started to burn him. Pitch is some mean shit..
instrument with a pitch, man I'd never expect it here
Pitch perfect
Really entertaining. Thanks for doing this job and documenting it!
Thanks for the video! Coincidentally I finished restoring a 1939 NS100 just 3 weeks ago! Differences in mine:
1) There was the usual jack on the treble side, not a hard-wired cable. The guitar also had a plugged hole on the bass side where a 1938 version's jack would have resided. Maybe mine was from early '39 and transitional?
2) The wiring scheme was way different from yours, and quirky; more like a 1938: The 250K volume pot was wired as a *rheostat* (only 2 terminals used) ACROSS the pickup. The jack was also in parallel with the pickup. The rheostat acted as a variable load across the pickup, ranging from dead short to 250K. The tone control was also wired as a 250K variable resistor in series with a .05uF cap (common setup on most guitars), with the R-C pair also in parallel with the pickup and output. Not the best of wiring schemes because the volume control by itself would act as a treble cut due to the extreme amount of loading in mid to low volume positions. So, you end up having a guitar with, in all practicality, TWO tone controls!! 😞
3) I didn't have any pitch inside the guitar. Instead, there was a mass of plaster of Paris filling the cavity from just south of the pickup down to the tail. The plaster didn't interfere with removing the pots. Was this intended to couple the bridge to the back, dampen vibrations or just provide mechanical stiffening under the bridge? I have no idea. Other owners haven't reported the plaster.
4) I had some tissue right under the pickup and controls, but also there was a squirrel's nest of shredded newspaper, 3/8" wide and a page long extending all the way into the neck cavity. Wadded up, it's nearly the size of a football! Unfortunately, I didn't have the patience to find matching strips, paste them up and read the LA Herald Express from the month the guitar was built.😃 Even in the absence of a newspaper date, I'm pretty sure mine is a '39.
5) Tone control is white, volume is black.
What did I do with it, and am I going to rot in hell?:
1) The pots were SHOT. Dead. Kaput. There was a distinct gritty feel to both the volume and tone, and there were places along the pot where it would either open up, or act as a short. No amount of cleaning would restore it. (sealed pot bodies, too, darnit). I replaced both pots, rewiring the guitar in the process to the more conventional post-1940 scheme with the 250K volume pot acting as a real pot (jack is fed from the wiper), and the tone circuit is fed by the pickup (or high terminal on the volume pot). Result: the guitar maintains its tone over a wide volume control range. Oh yeah, one more thing: the wire colors are reversed from conventional audio gear: black is hot, yellow is ground; sort of like residential wiring..
2) The dampening material really is important. Without it the guitar sounded like it was being played inside a culvert. I opted against stuffing back the old newspaper (I'll keep it in a bag for history's sake). What I did was to have a friend make approximately a half-dozen "beanbags" made of a flimsy slippery cloth stuffed loosely with fiberfill insulation (like they use for sleeping bags). The bags were approximately 3-1/2" square and VERY compressible. I stuffed the bags, sparingly, into the cavity. The beanbags got rid of the worst of the trashy clanginess, but not totally muting it. i imagine I can fine-tune the response by adding/removing beanbags, or shifting them around in the cavity, but I don't have the patience to do that right now (that would require unstringing and restringing after every attempt); I'm having too much fun playing the guitar as it is!!
Overall result: I LOVE this guitar. I've been learning Hawaiian lap steel over the past year and a half, and this instrument NAILS the sweet Hawaiian tone. It's probably not quite as appropriate for country or rock because it lacks much of an edge to the tone; it would get lost in the mix. I also own a '38 Bakelite B6 which, until a couple weeks ago was my favorite. The B6 sounds smoother overall but the NS100 has a very distinct personality because of just the right amount of high-end resonance. It's sort of midway between the Bakelite and Frypan in treble response and is my favorite lap steel!
--Aloha!
You should definitely post a video of the Rics you have, man. I'm a huge fan of these old Rickenbackers, especially since they're almost always super inexpensive. Seriously, I've seen a '38 (I think) go for like $300 or $500 on Reverb, which makes them very attractive to a person like me, who is younger, working a minimum wage job, and not the richest person alive (who is? Haha) but still loves both vintage instruments and Rickenbackers, despite the fact that both can get very expensive very quickly.
Yes, you will rot in hell for bringing an old battered instrument back to life and then even making music on it.
Unforgivable.
I love your dry humour and rhetorical questions keep up the good work I learn something every episode thank you much love from Australia 🌈😇🙏
Those horseshoe pickups are wonderful. One of those times where they just got the design right, like the tele bridge and the p-90👍
Such a cool and unique look. I've never seen those before, really neat.
Don't forget the Valco (Supro, National, Airline) string-through pickups. They're awesome. Largely due to Ry Cooder having fitted his "Cooder-caster" Strat with one of those, Lollar now makes reproductions of them.
I seem to recall that the Horseshoe pickups were used on the original 4000 series Bass Guitars and it is one of the reasons why cosmetically there is still the (unnecessary) Chromed Pickup Cover over the Treble pickup on the 4001-3 Basses ... (By all means correct me if I am wrong !).
@@Jester-Riddle Rickenbacker made a series of electric guitars (I believe they were called Capri) with horseshoe pickups in the 1950s. I believe that the toaster-tops became the Ric standard around the same time as the 330 came out. Some Capri's may have had one of each.
I vaguely recall seeing a Telecaster someone had outfitted with one of those horseshoe p'ups. Unexpected, to say the least. :D
the gunk reminds me of the "pure evil" from the movie Time Bandits...or the kryptonite that Richard Prior made in Superman 3
brilliant Time Bandits reference!
@@madgebishop5409 , "Mum! Da! Don't touch it, it's *concentrated evil*!" Mum and Da look at each other, and touch the stuff similtanously.....
Time Bandits! My man!
Just rewatched that last weekend. All time favorite of mine. I saw it in the theater when it was first released.
@@jamesfetherston1190 , It's funny that your comment popped up when it did, because almost simultaneously, a morning show on TV referred to Scorpios, of which I am one, the most "purely evil" of all astrological signs. I half-expected my wife to echo that statement with a joke at my expense, as I probably would have done had the situation been reversed, but instead she defended me.....
The black stuff sure looks like the pitch we heated and poured to make polishing laps in our optics fabrication shop. I think we mainly used "Gugolz" brand, and it was basically some kind of tree resin. Or, maybe it's some kind of asphalt .
I would bet that it is a form of resin called “asphaltum” , used as a backing while stamping reverse images , or forms in sheet metals. Perhaps, the face and back were formed on a bed of the stuff?
Looks like pitch to me and was an old method of bending tubes without them collapsing (think they still use pitch for brass instruments.)
Pitch for sure, to support the metal work.
Pitch.
Pitch, asphalt, asphaltum, and bitumen are all words for the same substance.
(Okay, there is also non-petroleum pitch, but still.)
With regard to old electronics, I would have replaced the capacitor. They are almost always leaky and slowly become resistors. Great video as usual.
Rickenbacker (pronounced with a “back” and not a “bach.”) was originally named Ro-Pat-In Corporation, and designed and produced the first commercial magnetic pickup, along with Paul Barth… the horseshoe. This was invented by Rickenbacker’s founder George Beauchamp. Prior to this Beauchamp invented the resonator guitar and founded National. The resonator was developed with John Dopyera, who later left National and started Dobro.
Adolph Rickenbacker ran a metal stamping shop and stamped out the metal bodies for the National guitars, and later guitars like this. He’s always credited with inventing the Frying Pan, but that was Harry Watson, an employee at the company, now named Electro Sound. He made the first Frying Pan out of wood, and it was just something to hold the horseshoe pickup.
Before building their own guitars Ro-Pat-In sold Harmony guitars with the horseshoe pickup.
Another fun fact, Italian luthier Roger Rossmeisl who designed the classic Rickenbacker electrics also designed the Tele Thinline and Coronado.
Hammond organs were using magnetic pickups in 1933, based on what looks like parts of the H.J Round/ J.B.Woodroffe gramophone design, based on parts of Alexander Graham Bell's design..
I think George Beauchamp or George Dearmond were the first to use and sell it on 6 string instruments though.
@@alfsmith4936 Hammond organs aren’t guitars.I’m referring to a guitar pickup. Beauchamp’s pickup was the first one. Patented in 1934.
ruclips.net/video/wusGysG6U_o/видео.html
It says RickenbacHer on the headstock? And I am curious (just because I just finished netflix show about musicians in LA in the 60's) because Jakob Dylan was also correcting Tom petty about the pronunciation, is why? I am not swiss, but studied german 8 years in school in Finland and I think (might be wrong) the right way of the pronunciation would be baHHer. Anyhow all the finnish musicians who own RickenbacKer guitars pronounce it bach not back.
@@pekkavirtanenrocks the original spelling is with an H. Adolph changed the spelling, as did other Germans in the US due to anti German sentiment. The company pronounces it Ricken BACK er. If you look it up the American pronunciation is “ri kuhn ba kr.” We pronounce a lot of German names differently, including my last name. 😃
"My luck it's a combination of lead and asbestos"! It shouldn't have but that made me laugh out loud. Thanks Ted.
Black Gold, Texas Tea (dried)... well the first thing you know, ol' Ted's a millionaire. The kin-folk said "Ted, move away from there!" Said "Californee is the place you oughta be", but Ted stayed put in Ontario Canadie!
Beautiful Instrument!! Wonderful and informative repair!!
The paper is there to dampen resonance and reduce/control feedback. I've known lots of guys who've packed paper or batting into wood Rickenbackers and ES-335s for that very reason. Townshend used to do it with his various Ricks.
The hardened black goo is probably there for the same reason...they wouldn't put that quantity in there just as an insulator. It's far more likely they'd just use a strip of fish paper for that purpose. Other's have mentioned instrument maker's asphalt used to help form the metal...that sounds reasonable as well, although I don't know why it would be added after the pots or why it was never removed. Mystery!
Beautiful looking and sounding guitar! Ted, I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoy your videos...my favorite channel!
Lovely instrument, and great workmanship getting her back up and running, Ted. I think that the black stuff is asphalt, I've seen raw asphalt before, and that's what it looks like.
This is more like archaeology than guitar repair.
A great history lesson too.
What a beautiful old Rickenbacker!!!! You did a fine job on this one!!! It certainly is in better shape than most of these I have seen.
I enjoy all of your videos, but I especially enjoyed this one. Quite different from the norm.
That black stuff inside the guitar looks like Creosote, one of the substances that was used to preserve telephone poles. It also looks like tar. I love the way that Hawaiian guitar looks and sounds - It's a real beauty. I think the owner is going to be very happy with the work you did.
Creosote. Once you've smelled it you can never, ever forget it.
What a lovely little bit of history you had on your workbench.
I'm thinking the hardened goop inside is the 1940s version of shrink wrap. It all made sense when you put the shrink wrap on the jack "in case things get spun around inside". Rachel was founded in 1957. Thats the company that made electrical shrink wrap tubing. So I'm thinking that was the way Rickenbacher dealt with this situation to avoid players being electrocuted with the all steal lap steal "in case something gets spun around in there..."
A Bowie knife! I'm laughing so hard enjoying your story. You have great writing talents!
Ted, thanks for the video, this one of the best musical instrument videos that i have seen in 5 years, Cousin Figel
Maybe the black stuff is reactor corium, Chernobyl's elephant foot style. Every self respecting guitar shop should have a Geiger counter. I know absolutely nothing about lap steel but am slightly surprised it has protruding frets, thought those didn't need them. Altough after a minute of thinking - it was probably the best way to create durable and good looking markings where the sounds should be on a metal instrument.
Well, bituminisation of radioactive waste, including highly radioactive alpha-emitters, was tried as part of a disposal process in several European countries and Japan until long-term stability issues became obvious. Fire hazard was also an operational issue with bituminisation, a fire in Japan contributed to the practice being replaced with concrete encapsulation.
Looks like pitch that is used for chasing and repousse. Use it in jewelry often.
I'm wondering if the "frets" also add some strength and rigidity. In any case, it's a gorgeous instrument.
These are some of the first electric guitars as far as I'm concerned, what a gem!
Maybe he was a session musician, in high demand, who wanted to cut his plugin time in half. Now that's some comedy gold right there!
Love this dudes humour and the comments
Geez that story sounds like the voice over narration for a National Film Board animation. Well done.
That gunk is probably tar from the La Brea Tar Pits! haha
Given his background in making car sheet metal, it reminds me of early soundproofing applied to car joints to reduce rattling...
It's not too much different than the soundproofing still used today
I had a Stella Lap Top come through with a hard wired patch cord. Thank goodness, the retro tweed cords had just been reintroduced.
I'm expecting the vintage Rickenbacker paper to show up now on Reverb for $500, and get featured on Fluff's Ridiculous Reverb series.
And that bitumen is clearly worth $1,500 at least
I acquired a nickel allergy in 2018.
Seeing this evokes the idea of the Ultimate Nemesis! :D
The paper that was removed was to stop the vibrating string feedback in the steel case to the magnetic pick-up. Reverberation will distort the string amplification and output..
The paper is likely "fish paper". It's an insulator with a fairly high dielectric constant.
It was very common in paper-foil capacitors. It also doesn't absorb moisture very well if at all.
Instant Hawaiian steel sound with that tuning. It takes a minute to wrap the brain around it, but oh so fun. Cheers from Kauai 🤙🏽
I have the same instrument with a green finish. It was stuffed with a newspaper from 1947 if I remember correctly.
Nicely done! I love the little bit of history that you give us as you are inspecting and disassembling these instruments.
14:04 that's a grommet specific divet. Grommets work best when supported (or those old ones did, which were a lot softer than modern ones) so they don't move about too much and self slice on the metal through the motion. The recess provides the grommet with that support so all the grommet works against the cord. I think the grommet, bitumen and config might be OG to this unit.
I believe your guess about it being asphalt/bitumen is correct. Probably what amateur "repair men" used before JB Weld. How strange. And the tissue paper? I gotta know why.
These Lapsteel are absolute beauty, well done the sound seems nice.
Perhaps the “Asphaltum” was used when forming or finishing up the edges of the face so as not to break the brazed or soldered joint? That is a really beautiful piece of metal craft.
Great vid! Thanks.
I love the way you take things step by step and figure out exactly what the problem is and what you feel is the best solution!! Love your videos, please keep them coming
Probably your best video so far. Camera angles, voice over, lighting, editing all as good or better than anything on RUclips. Thanks!
Definitely a type of bitumen that was heated and poured in initially. Probably to give more weight and stability after the instrument was purchased.
Just outstanding! (I bet that stuff is asphaltum or some closely related form of mineral pitch.)
That black stuff definitely looks like pitch to me. Which would mean that unless your workshop is already so cold that your fingers are going numb, it's technically still a liquid, just very, very viscous. It'll crack and shatter, but it'll also flow and even drip, over a period of years. There's an experiment in Australia that's been going on for over a century at this point, and they've had nine drops fall from the funnel so far. Nobody's ever witnessed it happening, though, and even the webcam they've had pointed at it for the last twenty-odd years tends to fail at exactly the wrong moment.
Pitch/tar/bitumen is a "super cooled liquid" and will flow very, very slowly. Glass also does this so theoretically a very old window pane will be thicker at the bottom than at the top.
Some very nice soldering at 15:15 Ted, nice and shiny.
I take that “black stuff” out of basses all the time. They used black weatherstripping foam as a spring behind pickups. It disintegrates and turns to black melted goo that turns solid and crystallized. It’s very common in old guitars.
Bullshit
@@FoulOwl2112 it’s not bullshit. I doubt fender put instrument makers asphalt as you suggested under there bass pickups. I clean it out of old guitars all the time. In this video I think it’s more likely there was foam used as a spring or dampener than asphalt poured in.
with my luck it's led and asbesto's. OH MY GOSH MAN THAT'S GOT me rollin'
I have a 1950 model G which is essentially a silver hawaiian with a lucite fret marker board, and clear lucite knobs and a gold tuning post cover plate . All the newspaper and black shit in there is to dampen the metal. These things are insanely resonant and will feedback at higher volumes.... I must say that it doesn't do the best job but its mostly tame when standing away from a loud amp. I've had a 47 bakelite as well and that was the complete opposite, not as resonant and oddly not as fun to play. Nice video man, always learn something from you!
It must be fun to get your hands on stuff like that. What a nice old survivor. You reminded me of Doc from the Seven Dwarves mining away in there.
my guess is the plastic is tar that has solidified over time. It was probably there to prevent electrocution, body buzzing or feedback just like the paper would muffle the sound. The patch cable was probably added because they couldn't get the pots out.
Good, snug-fitting screwdrivers are the unicorn of tools. Many Les Paul bridge and tail-stop screws bear witness to ill-fitting screwdrivers. I work on guitars and I'm a gunsmith. Boogered up screws on a gun is common too.
*Tip:*
That's why I use screwdrivers made for gunsmithing to work on guitars. They're hollow ground and will not mar the heads.
wow! what a fantastic looking instrument! almost like a trophy for musicians...
Very beautiful on the outside, very weird in the inside. I 'd be scared that something might jump out and eat me !😅
One of your most interesting (to me, anyway) videos ever! Thanks!
this was outstanding!!!!!!!! you are great!!!!!! thank you.
I use Lighter Gauge strings & raise the tuning up a Minor Third to Eb6 Terz Tuning so I can get a brighter sound.
😎🎸👍🏽 ENJOYED VERY MUCH. Thanks as usual. 👏🏽👏🏽🙏🏽🎯
Usually a (current for the time) newspaper would've been stuffed inside the neck to validate date of manufacture. He didn't take it that far apart.
I have seen that hard black stuff on the roof of a flat topped building I used to own. It was very hard.
good gracious... you pulled some steel guitar stories out of your arse in this one!! LOVE IT!! thanks for bringing us along!!
They guitar intro reminds me of that show of Rick Steve's traveling through Europe 😆
Watching the paper come out was like watching clowns come out of a clown car, when will it end...
Being that it’s a metal body guitar in an era when wiring sucked I’d say the paper was for moisture reduction and the tar substance was simply extra insulation to prevent shorting.
it's resin. used to eliminate undesirable resonances. A type of caulking as used in automobiles for the same reason. Beautiful sounding instrument.
Ted says this guitar was manufactured like a Duesenburg, which I find entertaining because I heard him refer to a previous repair job as a deusy.
I read an article about Rickenbacker the other day. Interesting factoid, his cousin is Eddie Rickenbacker, WWI ace.
I really like your content brother. Keep it up, we enjoy it out here. Nice variety
I had a 1938 Model "59" in Ivory crinkle paint. The way I knew it was 1938 was the date on the newspaper stuffed inside the body.
Reminds me of my youth. I did all my guitar repairs with a hammer and chisel. Or a dull screwdriver.
Lol, you seemed way more cautious than usual with that thing, I don't blame you.
Just a guess. Could the black plastic be a guard for any electric shorts? The guitar is metal... and wires do rub thru eventually...
Awesome guitar.
I use C6 tuning on my acoustic lap steel the bass strings CEG are a C chord and the treble strings ACE are an Am chord, the relative minor to C. It’s a neat tuning because you can essentially play in any key.
"but those have been over-shadowed and so we must never speak of them" lol
Someone was smugglin' opium...... Hell, not a clue, but that's some funky lookin' stuff.
Great video, Ted. A rare instrument and your rare style are a perfect match!