Greg Lake's Ripper

[Denis]

I believe all the Rippers with the original style pickups (two mounting screws through the pickups themselves) and a single ply tortoise shell pg. When they went to the three screw mounted pups is when I think they changed to the b/w/b pgs.
Certainly the color photos of his black Ripper posted earlier show no signs of a b/w/b pg.

[nofi]

i have never seen a ripper with a 3 ply pg. doesn't mean it didn't happen. mine had a single ply tort.

[ilan]

All black Rippers I had seen had that white contour line around the pickguard, or two - could be 4-ply or 5-ply.

[Denis]

Those are the later Rippers with the 3-scew mounted pickups. Those had 3 ply b/w/b pickguards.

I think around the time they changed from the 2-screw mounted pups to the 3-screw they changed the pickguard design from single ply to the b/w/b configuration.

[neepheid]

I thought it was 5 ply BWBWB - that's what I put on my restored Ripper - not period correct for a 1975 but I don't really like single ply guards.

[Denis]

I thought it was 5 ply BWBWB - that's what I put on my restored Ripper - not period correct for a 1975 but I don't really like single ply guards.

Yes, sorry, that's right: BWBWB. My mistake. My statement still stands though, that the early ones had a single ply pg and later ones had multi-ply.

[Alanko]

You sure it wasn't BBW?

[Denis]

Here's my '73 with the original, single ply pick guard.



Here's my '80, all original. And yes, I was corrected. Not b/w/b, but b/w/b/w/b.

[patman]

Seems like it would have been more efficient to just have one pickguard

[Denis]

I'm sure. Around '75 or so Gibson made a few changes to the Ripper: resized and reshaped body, different pickup mounting designs, etc.