The guitar was initially given to the magazine Beat Instrumental as a competition prize, but, surprisingly, when the winner was drawn, he didn’t play guitar and opted to take a cash alternative. George Harrison bought his Futurama from Hessy’s Music Centre in Liverpool in the late 1950s and used it for the next few years until it was retired and replaced with a Gretsch Duo Jet in 1961. This was the guitar which I played right through the Cavern and German Night Club days…” John gave the stopgap 1996 to Ringo, who auctioned it in 2015 for $910,000. Rickenbacker also gave him a one-off 325-style Jetglo 12-string in ’64, but he didn’t use it much. Rose-Morris, which for a while distributed Rickenbackers in the UK, gave John a 325-like 1996 in Fireglo (red sunburst) to use briefly in late ’64 when he damaged his 325. It remained his main guitar on stage and in the studio through 1964 and into 1965, and it’s the guitar most associated with John on stage with The Beatles. The new Rick arrived in time for the band’s second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. A gift from Rickenbacker provided a replacement for the road-weary original, a new Jetglo (black) 325 presented during The Beatles’ first American visit early in 1964. Later, he had the guitar refinished black. The Kauffman he replaced with a better Bigsby unit. The knobs he replaced quickly with smaller Hofner types. It had the cooker knobs that Rickenbacker fitted at the time and it had a Kauffman vibrato, neither apparently to John’s liking. He told an interviewer at the time that his semi-solid three‑pickup short-scale ’58 325 – which evidently had been on the shop wall for some time – was “the most beautiful guitar”.
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