A Fine and all Original 1959 Rickenbacker 365-OS with the Rickenbacker 'Doc Kauffman' Vibrato tailpiece

1959 Rickenbacker 365 "OS" (two pickups, with vibrato)

This 15-inch-wide thin-body (just over 2 inches deep) full-size guitar weighs just 7.70 lbs. Double-bound hollow maple body with a two-piece maple top and a two-piece maple back. Single  large unbound 'slash' sound hole. Three-piece 'flamey' maple/walnut/maple neck with a nut width of just under 1 5/8 inches, a scale length of 25.00 inches and a wonderful medium-to-thick profile. Brazilian rosewood fretboard with twenty-one original medium-thin frets and inlaid triangular pearl position markers. Headstock with gold opaque plastic logo plate with black lettering secured by three slot-head screws. Single truss rod. Individual 'single-line' Kluson Deluxe tuners with oval metal buttons (all stamped "D-169400 / Patent No." on the underside) and hexagonal bushings. Two Rickenbacker chrome bar "toaster" pickups with chrome covers and outputs of 5.83k and 7.91k. Gold lucite pickguard with four screws. Two controls (one  volume, one tone) plus three-way pickup selector switch and three-way 'tone' selector switch, all on pickguard. Rickenbacker TV style brown plastic knobs with gold diamond inlays on top. The potentiometers are stamped "137 848" and "137 910" (CTS December 1958 & March 1959). Rickenbacker bridge and Rickenbacker 'Doc Kauffman' Vibrato tailpiece with original bridge cover. The serial number "2V 361" is stamped onto the jack plate. There is a very slight, six-inch seam crack on the treble side of the top between the bridge and the tailpiece - this could easily be fixed but it is not expanding - so we have decided to leave well alone. There is some very fine finish checking on the body, and a few miniscule surface marks on the sides. There is some slight playing wear on the edges of the fretboard and some very slight playing wear to the original frets and fretboard - otherwise this wonderfully beautiful piece of Rickenbacker history is in exceptionally fine (9.00+) condition. Complete with the original? black leather guitar strap and an original latefifties? Rickenbacker Accessories sheet. Housed in its original Rickenbacker three-latch, rectangular silver hardshell case with black leather ends and red plush lining (9.00). According to Richard Smith, the production totals for 365-OS Autumnglo guitars was:
33 in 1958; 74 in 1959; 10 in 1960; 4 in 1963 and 2 in 1968. There were also a total of 61 Natural examples; 291 Fireglo examples and 12 in other colors.

"Models 360-375-- The third division of the 1958 Thin Hollow Body Series consisted of full sized guitars with the same Deluxe features. The body shape was the same as Models 330-345 from 1958 to the summer of 1964; then it changed… The guitars from this group were the finest and most expensive of the Thin Body Capri guitars. They had neck binding, triangle finger board inlays, and body binding. The two tone brown sunburst guitars had white body binding while the natural maple guitars had brown wood binding which was later changed to white. The factory produced the first commercially sold Deluxe Thin Body guitars in May and June of 1958. (They produced the forerunner prototype at least a year earlier according to a dated photo in the Rickenbacker archive.)… Two gold pickguards, four T.V. style knobs, and one switch became standard for the Models 360 and 365 before the end of 1958. The non-vibrato model had the flat tailpiece." (Richard R. Smith. The History of Rickenbacker Guitars, p. 171).