RB-612CS Classic Series : The good, the bad and the ugly

I bought this knowing it was a budget 12 string guitar. It was half the price of the closest electric 12 string and less than a Tenth of the price of a Rickenbacker, so you get what you pay for right?

The good - The construction of this is very good. It's slightly neck heavy as you'd expect but not any problem. There are a few flaws on the finish but you'd have to look hard to find them. My nightmare would be if there were would be buzzes or rattles with the strings due to the budget nature. On mine though, there's not. It's nice and straight, the nut fitting is good. The neck is really playable, the tuning is very stable and I find myself picking it up to play it all the time.

The Bad - The pickup wiring failed almost straightaway. On inspecting behind the scratchplate, the soldering was really poor, the wiring was bad and the quality of the pots was terrible, even for a cheap guitar.

I kind of expected this though and I ended up replacing all the pots for CTS ones, tidied up the wiring and resoldered etc.

It was easy enough to do and the resulting jump in sound quality made it more than worthwhile. I had thought of replacing the Pickups too but actually they're not too bad for now and I can always do that in the future if necessary.

The ugly - In copying the Rickenbacker style control panel. The makers stuck two bits of plasticcy looking scratchplate material together roughly. It had sharp edges and looked bad. As I had the scratchplate off to fix the wiring anyway, I made an attempt to replace the scratchplate with a piece of white Pearliod material I had left over from a hobby project. The result turned out great and really improves the look of the guitar. It was easy to do and the guitar now looks and plays so well that people comment on it all the time.

I would recommend this guitar but would just put a warning that the wiring and quality of the pots is poor and you may have to rectify that.

Overall though, I'd buy one again. Even with the cost of parts etc this guitar is €150 cheaper than the nearest 12 string electric I've seen and I'm really happy with it.