I hope some of you can shed some light on this. I bought a used 1994 Rickenbacker 330/12 MapleGlo back in 2008. Some of the frets, when viewed from the bass string side of the neck, appear to be surrounded by some cracks and/or repairs in the fretboard wood. I've attached a few pictures so you can see.

I'm wondering if this may be the result from some re-fretting or other fretwork done to the guitar, or that this is a normal result of the manufacturing process.

The lacquer on the top of the fretboard is not cracked near these frets which makes me believe that the frets have not been removed, but I'm not sure.

Bass side near the body:


Bass side near the headstock:


Treble side near the body:



Thanks for any insight you may have

That's normal, no work has been done. What you see is the finish that has been pushed away from the fingerboard from the normal seasonal contraction and expansion of the wood relative to the metal frets which do not move. This is known as fret sprout and occurs quite often with fretted stringed instruments. On instruments that don't have finished/lacquered fingerboards you will feel the ends of the frets protruding beyond the edges of the fingerboard.

A little late - but to add to the above I agree - looks absolutely stock.

As far as fret sprout goes it can be avoided. It occurs mostly in warm or hot climates where AC units and/or heaters are run fairly often. Both lower the interior humidity by huge amounts, and low humidity is terrible for musical instruments made of wood - including electric guitars.

If you keep instruments in one room you can use a $35-80 room humidifier. If you keep them in cases an acoustic instrument humidifier will work, but don't leave it in all the time or metal corrosion might occur.

If you keep instruments in various rooms a whole-house humidifier is far better. Roll-around ones cost $150-300; there are also hard-wired ones that use furnace ducting for a few hundred.

Really, any house or apartment where AC, a gas heater (or furnace) or fireplace is used should have some kind of humidifier. I'm near the beach and even here much of my minor repair/setup work in the winter and summer is related to low humidity.