When Rickenbacker owner F.C. Hall gave George Harrison a 12-string in February 1964, Beatles manager Brian Epstein shrewdly snagged a second one for one of his other artists, Gerry Marsden, front man for Gerry and the Pacemakers. In the hands of those two guitarists, the Rickenbacker 12-string was assured a warm welcome in Britain, and distributor Rose, Morris promptly began importing a model.

Like all of the models Rickenbacker made for export to Britain, Model 1993 featured a conventional f-hole rather than Rickenbacker’s trademark “slash” soundhole. It had a bound top, which the standard Rickenbacker did not have, but for all practical purposes it was a 330/12.

Instead of the typical, crowded, six-in-a-row tuner configuration of typical 12-strings, Rickenbacker came up with an innovative design that combined slot-head and solis-peghead configurations so that half the tuner posts pointed to the back of the guitar (as they do on a slot-head) and half were at a right-angle to the peghead. Consequently, the tuners were not only in their familiar places, they were also easily paired with their proper counterparts.