In all honesty, I prefer the blank b/w/b pickguard and the all-nickel tuners, although those plastic ones are pretty stylish.Īs I'm trying to get the best sounding 12-string I can (with likely bridge mods) I'll not get too carried away with finding vintage correct parts.8 Parlour Guitar FAQ’s, History and Commonly Asked Questionsġ. Good point about the Fender comparison & the likelihood of mismatched parts (not to mention the factory fire making older parts scarce).įunnily enough, I looked at the Eko catalogues on the FetishGuitars site & the little cowboy dude is present on the first Ranger VI's but not the XII's.Īs there's no mention of the J54 & J56 in the actual catalogues I'm at a loss as to whether it was an original feature or not. My neck plate's the same as the one pictured - rectangular (50mm x 65m). I'll look out for a set for you if you don't find any at Brandoni. Good luck finding the nice old plastic button tuners if you decide to swap over. I would guess the last of the cowboy scratchplates went up in smoke, but you never know. As you probably know Eko's original Recanati factory was destroyed in a fire around the time of the J56 transitioning to the Ranger name. I guess the transition between models and years may have been similar to Fenders, with necks etc. I assumed yours had a typical Eko trapezoid neck plate too, unlike the one pictured is it just the angle that makes it look like that? I've never seen that Ranger 12 dude before. They're also listed as having ebony fretboards & simpler dot fret markers. There are plenty of images floating around of early 12-strings (and 6-strings) with a plain black painted headstock & a simple white painted EKO logo. I'm looking more into turning a great sounding guitar into a really great sounding guitar so bridge adjustments are definitely on the cards.įor the record, I've a feeling mine (and the one pictured here) is a 2nd version J56. I'm not going to concern myself too much with getting this vintage correct, especially as it's doubtful the pickguard I'm getting will have that cowboy design on it (although you never know). That funky all-metal bridge seems to be an original feature too. The original tuners would've been these cool 'cyclone' tuners, not all-nickel ones. The original b/w/b pick guards had a little cowboy detail.

I reckon I can put all the research to bed now as this looks to be pretty accurate. After more digging around I finally came up with what I reckon is a completely unmolested J56.

Eko ranger guitar serial numbers