Products
B.C. Rich is a manufacturer of guitars and bass guitars founded by the late Bernardo Chavez Rico in 1969 and the early 1970s. Currently, most B.C. Rich guitars are manufactured in Asia, but luthiers of the company's custom shop continue to hand-make instruments. Hanser Music Group now operates the Southern California B.C. Rich custom shop. As of 2001, no member of the Rico family is involved in the production of B.C. Rich guitars.
Slayer with Kerry King on his B.C. Rich
Early years
Rico produced guitars for a much lower price to a much wider audience. B.C. Rico was the name originally given to these imported B.C. Rich guitars that Rico had manufactured in Japan and sold in the US. This name was given to make a distinction between the US made and imported guitars, but was dropped due to a lawsuit filed by the Rico reed company. Only several hundred of these are believed to have made it into the US. These Japanese (and later Korean) made guitars were subsequently known as the NJ series, which originally stood for Nagoya, Japan, the place where they were manufactured. NJ still serves to distinguish an imported line of B.C. Rich guitars and basses, along with the even cheaper Platinum and Bronze series.
The B.C. Rico and early NJ guitars and basses were of neck-through body construction, and were very well made instruments. The present imported guitars are mostly basic bolt-on neck construction (except for the current NJ Classic and N.T. series).
There was also a very inexpensive Rave series in the 1980s, as well as a higher-quality L.A. Series.
Kerry King of Slayer and his B.C. Rich Guitars
By the mid-1990s, B.C. Rich's guitars were widely used in heavy metal -- partly because the instruments' unusual designs were deemed more appropriate for the threatening image many metal performers wanted to project. The popularity of B.C. Rich instruments among metal musicians continues to the present.
Mick Murphy of My Ruin Shreds off BC Rich Mockingbird
Class Axe
In the late 1980s, Bernie Rico decided to step away from guitar manufacturing and licensed production out to a New Jersey based manufacturer known as Class Axe. Class Axe produced guitars at a fraction of the cost of other manufacturers. However the quality of the guitars was extremely poor as they used glued and layered plywood along with other generic lumber yard woods for the guitar bodies. Among the list of major complaints, aside from the obvious use of cheaper woods, was general poor workmanship, which included bad sanding, shaping, paint jobs, hardware, and fret wire installation. As soon as this was brought to Rico's attention, he immediately regained control of production.
Design and types
Since 2003, for the imported models, B.C. Rich used their own brand of pickups, known as B.D.S.M. (broad dynamic sonically matched). These pickups were an improvement from the generic pickups factories provided. However starting in 2006, B.C. Rich primarily uses Rockfield brand pickups. Due to the broad selection of features B.C. Rich is selecting pickups that match the guitar's design and player's requirements.
B.C.Rich guitars come in a variety of shapes, ranging from styles which are similar to electric guitar types (e.g., the Telecaster-styled Blaster) to unusual styles such as the Fat Bob, which has a body in the shape of a Harley-Davidson gas tank. Unconventional body styles and designs that take different shapes than early electric guitars, who were inspired by the design of acoustic guitars.
"Acrylic Series" guitars. These guitars are made completely of acrylic and their bodies are transparent, making the electronics inside viewable. The original run of the acrylic models featured a standard bolt-on maple neck with wood headstock, but later models featured an acrylic headstock, matching the same color as the body and making the overall appearance of the guitar more attractive. Acrylic is more dense than most woods which makes the guitar heavier than it would be if it were made of wood.
Like Rickenbacker and Gibson before them, B.C. Rich used a true neck through body design in many of their instruments. In addition, they used custom battery-powered active electronics — pickups and tone controls inside the guitar. These electronics were originally thought out and designed by Neal Moser who was a contracted employee for B.C. Rich from 1974 through 1985.
In 2006 B.C. Rich also created an innovation known as I.T. (Invisibolt Technology) which bolts the neck extremely deep into the body rather than the typical neck joint. In this series the neck is bolted inside the body to look like a neck-through, but neck joint is still visible. This combines the elements of both bolt-on and neck-through designs.
