The story of this guitar is one of those when an instrument is so linked to a musician to become almost an icon of him. Ric 325 is to Lennon what Fender Stratocaster is to Jimi Hendrix, or Gibson SG is to Angus Young.

Lennon bought this guitar in Hamburg in 1961, after weeks and weeks spent saving money. It was a natural finish model with golden pickguard and “short arm” (the neck was shorter). It was a perfect instrument for rock n’ roll: its hollow body (without f-holes) but most of all the three “toaster” pickups (called so cause resembling to a toaster) produced a gingly, acute sound which probably has never been reproduced again by any instrument.

This guitar was Lennon’s one and only instrument for some years. He was indeed the one to make it famous, but after chancing its design: when the Beatles reached fame, during 1962-63, the Ric 325 was modded by his owner, and it became black, to match better to the band’s new gartments.

When Beatles conquered America in 1964, the Rickenbacker Company didn’t lose opportunities offered by a famous musician playing its guitars. It was so produced a new 325, called Jetglo: it was different in some technical details (the neck was normal), but most of all it was black. They also produced a 12-strings version, but it was an experiment without much success.

But since 1965 the Ric was not used as often as before, and at the end Lennon totally changed. Such a guitar - so useful for rock n’ roll - showed its limits about new tendences of 60s pop music: it didn’t work at its best if overdriven or passed through new “fuzz” distorsion pedals of those years.So Lennon in 1965-66 tried some guitars (Fender Stratocaster, too), until he choosed the Epiphone Casino as his main one.He didn’t get rid of the Ric 325 anyway: as someone says, he played it during recording sessions for “Double Fantasy” in 1980.

Nowaday Rickenbacker produces two faithful copies of both the 325s played by Lennon, in the “C Series” of its catalogue. If Ric guitars are usually not cheap ones, this ones are quite expensive. I remember I saw one 325 Jetglo 1964 in a store of Lecce (Apulia, Italy) for 2500 euro. It remained there for years, nobody even daring to look at it. And I guess it’s still there…