In my humble opinion, the B.C. Rich Mockingbird is the most symbolic electric guitar of the ’70s, both because it is so damn wickedly cool and because it checks all of the right boxes.
Natural laminated-wood hippie-sandwich with neck-through construction? Check. High-output humbuckers? Check. Custom electronics with a confusing array of switches? Check. Radical original body shape? Check. Just by strapping on a Mockingbird you can feel your mustache getting bushier and your heels lifting several inches higher.
The Mockingbird was conceived in 1975 when Johnny “Go-Go” Kallas drew a unique body design for a custom bass that he wanted B.C. Rich to make for him. Bernie Rico thought it would make a great guitar as well, and the Mockingbird was born.
Neal Moser, who designed a new electronic circuit featured on the guitar (which was also added to the pre-existing Seagull and Eagle models), came up with the Mockingbird name, which both reflected his circuit’s ability to generate a wide variety of humbucking and single-coil tones and conformed to the avian-inspired names of previous B.C. Rich models.
The original Mockingbird design is called the “short horn” because the treble cutaway horn is shorter than the bass horn. About a year later Rico modified the design with a longer treble horn that more elegantly complements the offset body’s lines and sweeping curves, also becoming the true godfather of the “pointy” guitar designs that proliferated in the ’80s.
Hardware on the original models was top-quality, with Grover Imperial “stairstep” tuners, a Strap Lock System and a Leo Quan Badass Wraparound bridge being standard features.
Pickups were a pair of custom DiMarzio Dual Sound humbuckers, which were Super Distortion models with four-conductor wiring to enable coil splitting for each pickup and master phase switching.
Moser’s circuit also included an active preamp with an on/off switch and level control for boosting the signal enough to overdrive an amp. A six-position Varitone-style rotary switch provided a variety of midrange tone presets by engaging different capacitor values at each setting. The other controls were a master volume, master tone and three-position pickup toggle.
During the late ’70s, the Mockingbird was available in “entry level” models made of walnut or mahogany, but most buyers paid the extra $100 or $200 for the more deluxe versions made of exotic koa or figured maple.
B.C. Rich was essentially a custom shop (with workshops in East Los Angeles and Tijuana, Mexico), so there’s quite considerable variation in examples from the ’70s, particularly in nut widths and neck carve profiles as each instrument was truly handmade and individual craftsmen had different approaches. If you have your eyes on a vintage Mockingbird, it’s highly recommended to try before you buy.
Dick Wagner was an early adopter of the Mockingbird, which he played in the studio and on stage with Alice Cooper. However, the Mockingbird’s popularity really took off thanks to Bob “Nite Bob” Czaykowski, who introduced the model to Joe Perry and Brad Whitford while he was doing sound for Aerosmith.
Other notable Mockingbird players over the years have included Rick Derringer and Elliot Easton during the ’70s and C.C DeVille, Lita Ford, Kerry King, Bruce Kulick, Chuck Schuldiner and Slash during the ’80s.
B.C. Rich has undergone a number of ownership changes over the years, and quality has varied considerably from the heights of the ’70s/mid-’80s to the lows of the ’90s. USA Custom Shop models have consistently been quite good but expensive, and under new ownership recent models are making an impressive comeback in quality and value.
