I'm looking at a 2002 360/12 (s#02 30297; "modern body" w/ burgundy finish) with 2 toasters and "raised letter" truss rod cover. I've never seen a "late model" 360/12 with toasters (other than vintage re-issues and signature models), so I'm wondering if the toasters are original or replacement?

many owners replace the pickups to match the toaster look. The question should be: are they Rickenbacker pickups or copies?

since the "replace your pickups with mine because mine are better" craze started in the late 1980's, you don't even know what is original or not. Unless you find a 1-owner guitar whose owner has never replaced the pickups. Needle in a haystack.

Rickenbacker pickup copies are being made all over the planet. Hard to distinguish between them and the real factory ones, other than maybe by the sound.

having said that, some copies have rivetts instead of screws and nuts at the four corners. Those are a giveaway, unless...Rickenbacker is now rivetting them too.

Riclover --- Did you ever buy this BurgundyGlo 360-12 ?? Did you or can you post some pictures of the Toaster pickups in question, of the screws or rivets on the covers and both sides of the pickups "under the cover" for identifying markings and to see the wires, etc.

Actually, it started in the late '60's with replacement ceramic bar magnets you could buy to swap out the alnico bar magnets in famous double coil pickups to get more output and brighter tone. Then in the early '70's Larry DiMarzio started making replacement pickups that were drop-in retrofits for those same pickups. Then not too long after that Seymour Duncan came home from working in London and started his pickup replacement business.

I'm not going into active pickups and other branches and approaches.

All this came about because, except for Rickenbacker, the other companies were cheapening up their stock pickups to where "they did not sound like they used to" and there were two camps: those that wanted the "older" tones back, and those who wanted to go in new directions.

What happened in the '80's and '90's is that everybody else jumped on the replacement bandwagon (pun intended) with either the "me too" or "niche" business models.

And as usual, Rickenbacker kept on doing what it does best and still does best.