Guitar Story A Brand Lineage Research Project

Plant

Rickenbacker Santa Ana factory: guitar plant in Santa Ana, California, USA · Guitar Story

owned factory

Rickenbacker Santa Ana factory

Name: Rickenbacker Santa Ana factory
Address: Santa Ana, California, USA

Santa Ana, California, USA^{[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]}. Built for 1 brand on record.

Official site: rickenbacker.com ↗

3895 South Main Street (Wikipedia, community). Production moved from Los Angeles over about six months in 1964 (ChasingGuitars). Acoustic department 1996 to mid-2006. Rickenbacker's factory-tour page shows US factory building the 330 and 4003. Unverified. [2026-10-16, Rickenbacker brand job] Address is primary-sourced: the company's own 1989 drawing header reads 'Rickenbacker International Corp. 3895 S. Main Street Santa Ana, Ca. 92707' (S725). Coordinates (lon -117.868124, lat 33.695489) are the US Census Bureau geocoder's rooftop-less address-range match for '3895 S MAIN ST, SANTA ANA, CA, 92707' (geocoding.geo.census.gov, Public_AR_Current benchmark, TIGER/Line side L, id 655817423), read via a summarising fetch tool on 2026-10-16; accurate to the street segment, not the building. 1964 opening confirmed by S718/S722.

More: every plant in the USA, the Rickenbacker lineage.

Every date on this page is unverified. It comes from an internal draft and has no source attached yet.

Where it is

The point marks Santa Ana, California, USA at city level. It shows the town, not the factory gate. Recorded place^{[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]}.

Brands built here

Every headstock this plant has built for, on record. A contract plant can sit behind several brands at once.

Brand	Lines	Years
Rickenbacker	Rickenbacker USA (electric guitars and basses), Rickenbacker acoustic guitars (Santa Ana 1996-2006; licensee 2006-2013)	1964–now^{[5, 6, 7, 2]}

Who ran the plant

The operator is not always the brand owner. Follow a company to see every plant it ran.

Years	Operator	Source
1964–now	Rickenbacker International Corp.	unverified^[2]

Production record

Years	Brand	Line	Role	Source
1964–now	Rickenbacker	Rickenbacker USA (electric guitars and basses)	full build	unverified^{[5, 6]}
1996–2006	Rickenbacker	Rickenbacker acoustic guitars (Santa Ana 1996-2006; licensee 2006-2013)	full build	unverified^{[7, 2]}

Where its materials come from

No supply records for this plant yet.

Sources

Every numbered marker on this page points here: the document, its grade and the passages relied on. An era is computed, so it cites the facts it was derived from. A fact marked “no source” has no claim attached yet.

1
Factory Tour (rickenbacker.com/factory, viewed through a Google Translate proxy)graded primary
2
Rickenbackergraded community
3
List of Rickenbacker productsgraded community
4
Schematic, Power Amp RG180, RB120 (Rickenbacker International Corp., dated 2/27/89)graded primary
5
The Story of Rickenbacker: Influencing Music Historygraded primary
6
The Industry Interview: Rickenbacker CEO John Hallgraded secondary
7
Rickenbacker (Wikipedia)graded community

See something wrong, or know a better source?