Doing Business / GUITAR MANUFACTURING : A 60-Year Anniversary--With Strings Attached

John Lennon played it as one of the Beatles. Pete Townsend played it when he was with the Who. Tom Petty plays it to this day with the Heartbreakers.

It is the Rickenbacker electric guitar, revered by musicians around the world. And since 1953--before the Beatles began to play--it has been crafted in a Santa Ana factory.

The guitar manufacturer celebrates its 60th anniversary on Tuesday. The company was founded in Los Angeles in 1931 by Adolph Rickenbacker. The Swiss immigrant patented the first solid-body electric guitar four years later.

Thirty-eight years ago, Orange County resident F.C. Hall bought the guitar maker and moved it to Santa Ana. His son, John Hall, now owns it.

Rickenbacker International Corp. still carves, polishes and strings its guitars the old-fashioned way--by hand. Over the years, it has made almost 1,000 models of guitars.

Sales soared in the mid-’60s when the Fab Four adopted Rickenbackers. “Paul McCartney still owns several of them,” Hall said.