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B.C. Rich

Eagle

“You can’t play a Mockingbird, because I play one.” So Neil Giraldo took the Eagle.

1977. Neil Giraldo has just joined Rick Derringer’s band, carrying a red Gibson SG, and Derringer won’t have it. He’ll get the new guy a B.C. Rich. Just not the one Derringer plays.

Introduced
1976
Type
Solidbody electric
Class
Production
Read the story · 3 min

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The short version

  1. 1972

    The Seagull

    Bernie Rico’s pointed neck-through debuts at the NAMM show.

  2. 1975

    A bass player complains

    Bill Bodine’s Seagull bass gets a second cutaway and loses its top point. The six-string follows.

  3. 1976

    The Eagle

    The name appears. Some accounts say it didn’t settle until early 1977.

  4. 1977

    Standard and Supreme

    Rosewood and diamonds, or bound ebony and clouds. Neil Giraldo gets his.

  5. 1980

    The Nighthawk

    A bolt-on Eagle, same outline.

  6. 1982

    Eagle II

    A tremolo, where hardtails had been the rule.

  7. 1986

    Class Axe

    The imports change hands, and B.C. Rich starts making its own pickups.

Side A

A1

You can’t play that SG

  1. Neil Giraldo has just landed a gig with Rick Derringer, and he’s shown up with a red Gibson SG. Derringer plays a B.C. Rich Mockingbird, and he has opinions.

“You’re in the band, but you gotta get a new guitar. You can’t play that SG.” Fine. “I’ll get you a B.C. Rich, but you can’t play a Mockingbird, because I play one.”

Giraldo’s answer: “Okay, I’ll have an Eagle.”

Bernie Rico fixed him up with a couple of them. The consolation prize.

A2

The Seagull stuck you

The Eagle started as a complaint. Bernie Rico, who built his guitars neck-through with no heel at the joint, designed the Seagull in 1971 and showed it at NAMM in 1972. It had a point at the chest and a point at the leg. Neal Moser, who did the electronics, said only a flamenco player would design an electric like that.

Around 1975 a bassist named Bill Bodine complained about his Seagull bass. Rico added a second cutaway and carved off the top point. It was the Bodine Bass, briefly. Then the six-string got the same treatment.

What it was called next depends on who’s telling it: Seagull II, Seagull Junior, the Pointless Seagull. Moser said he worked the redesigns “into the Seagull Jr., Pointless Seagull, Seagull 2 into the Eagle.” Those names are how the Eagle happened. They aren’t the Eagle yet.

A3

A bird with no name yet

The name turns up in 1976, with a sharper, more Strat-like upper horn where the chest point had been. Another account says the name game didn’t stop until late 1976 or early 1977. The shape is older than the word. Keep both dates.

Dick Wagner, Alice Cooper’s guitarist, said it plainly: “Mine was one of the first Eagles ever made.” B.C. Rich built him a Seagull too, and it was stolen at the Boston airport. Steve Hunter, the other half of that guitar team, played Seagulls on the Welcome to My Nightmare tour. For Alice Cooper Goes to Hell and Lace and Whiskey, tracked together, he names a B.C. Rich Eagle and a Marshall. DiMarzio wound hot pickups for both of them.

So a 1976 session Hunter calls an Eagle, and a name that might not have been official until 1977. Both stand.

Flip the record · By the numbers

  • $999

    Suggested retail on the early handmade guitars. Seventies money.

  • 24

    Frets on the early neck-through.

  • 2

    Points on the Seagull, one at the chest and one at the leg. Only a flamenco player would design that, Moser said.

  • 40

    Eagles in the 2009 anniversary run, alongside 40 each of the Bich, Mockingbird, and Seagull.

Side B

B1

Handmade, more or less to order

Early Eagles came out of shops in California and Tijuana, by hand, with specs bent whenever a player asked. Koa or maple. A neck that runs the length of the body. Twenty-four frets. A stop tailpiece. Suggested retail was $999.

The circuit was Moser’s, carried over from the Seagull: an active preamp, a Varitone, a phase switch, coil taps, a master volume and tone. The taps give you single-coil sounds, the phase switch gives you the thin, hollow one, and the Varitone steps through tone settings. A lot of guitar out of two humbuckers.

From 1977 the trim split two ways. The Standard had an unbound rosewood board with diamond inlays. The Supreme had bound ebony and cloud inlays. DiMarzios were standard until 1986, though at least one 1981 Eagle has a pickup B.C. Rich made itself. That 1981 one also wears a six-in-line headstock, a new option that year, and a yellow a visiting rock star named “Jump-at-Me Yellow.”

Then the outline left the handmade bench. A bolt-on version, the Nighthawk, in 1980. The Eagle II, with a tremolo, in 1982. Kahlers and Japanese-made guitars in 1983. A new importer in 1986. Rico left in 1989, bought the name back in 1993, and died in 1999.

B2

The one I used on everything

Brad Whitford of Aerosmith often played an Eagle in the late 1970s, an unpainted one by one account. Nobody has pinned a song on it.

Giraldo’s, you can hear. He went on to Pat Benatar’s band, and on the first record, 1979’s In the Heat of the Night, he also used Strats and Teles. So don’t hang “Heartbreaker” on this guitar. By Crimes of Passion, he said, “Guitar-wise I had the Eagles.”

The main one was a tobacco sunburst. While he was writing, it fell off the stand and the top of the headstock broke off. It got repaired. Then it went right back to work. It’s the solo on “Promises in the Dark,” from Precious Time in 1981, and he called it:

“The one I used on everything.”

The guitar he got because the Mockingbird was taken.

Put this on

You’ve read about it. Now hear it. Here’s what this guitar sounds like, and what to listen for.

  1. Alice Cooper · 1976

    Alice Cooper Goes to Hell

    Steve Hunter names a B.C. Rich Eagle through a Marshall for these sessions, tracked together with Lace and Whiskey. He calls it an Eagle, even if the name was still settling.

    Find it on YouTube

  2. Pat Benatar · 1980

    Crimes of Passion

    “Guitar-wise I had the Eagles,” Neil Giraldo said. His tobacco-sunburst one was on just about everything here.

    Find it on YouTube

  3. Pat Benatar · 1981

    Promises in the Dark

    The solo is Giraldo’s tobacco-sunburst Eagle, the one with the repaired headstock.

    Find it on YouTube

The cast

The people, and the specific guitars, that made the legend.

  • 1977

    Neil Giraldo

    Tobacco-sunburst Eagle

    Got Eagles because Rick Derringer had the Mockingbird. Used one on just about everything on Crimes of Passion and Precious Time, broken headstock and all.

  • Dick Wagner

    Early Eagle

    “Mine was one of the first Eagles ever made.” Ran it through late-’60s Marshall heads.

  • 1976

    Steve Hunter

    Eagle

    Played Seagulls on the Welcome to My Nightmare tour, then an Eagle for Alice Cooper Goes to Hell, Lace and Whiskey, and the Goes to Hell tour.

  • Brad Whitford

    Unpainted Eagle

    Aerosmith’s other guitarist often played an Eagle in the late 1970s. No song pinned on it.

  • 1975

    Bill Bodine

    Seagull bass

    Complained about his Seagull bass. The fix became the Eagle.

Liner notes

Specs, construction, rarity, value, and every source we used.

B.C. Rich’s 1976 double-cut, the Seagull with the chest point gone — Eagle, not a Mockingbird, not a Warlock, and not a Bich.

Body
Neck-through solid, Eagle cut. Same lower bout as the Seagull; sharp upper horn instead of the sternum point
Neck
Heelless neck-through. 3+3 until a six-in-line option in 1981
Fingerboard
24 frets on Reverb’s Standard page. From 1977: Standard unbound rosewood, diamonds; Supreme bound ebony, clouds
Scale
Not printed in the sources read this pass
Pickups
Two humbuckers on the usual guitar. DiMarzio-until-1986 against a Rich-made pickup on one 1981 example. Not averaged
Hardware
Stop-tail. Badass and Grover Imperial on the fan history. Eagle II tremolo is 1982
Electronics
Moser circuit: active preamp, Varitone, phase, coil taps, master volume and tone
Finish
To order. Koa or maple are the woods the fan history names for the early guitar
Nut
Width unpublished this pass
Open the full research fileConstruction details, the complete player record, production numbers, dated value estimates, and sources

Classic living example = 1970s USA Eagle (East L.A. / Tijuana, neck-through). No current factory Eagle this pass: on 6 October 2026 bcrich.com/series/eagle/ listed no products, and the old Eagle Custom Shop Relic URL redirected home. No live cart, so no relic spec copied into this table. No millimetres in the sources below. None invented. Do not borrow the Mockingbird Legacy’s 24 5/8" or the Warlock Legacy’s 25.5". Nighthawk is the 1980 bolt-on Eagle — same plate, not a second slug. Eagle bass is not this guitar. Reverb’s “1976–1987” end date is a price-guide bucket, not a factory obituary.

Construction

The Seagull stuck you. Neal Moser, as Elizabeth Hanson quotes him: only a flamenco player would design an electric with a point in the chest and a point in the leg. Bernardo Chavez Rico already had the heelless neck-through. The job was that bird, without the stabbing.

Michael Wright (Vintage Guitar, June 2008): Rico designed the Seagull in 1971. It debuted at the ’72 NAMM show. Around ’75, bassist Bill Bodine complained about his Seagull bass. Rico added a second cutaway and carved the top point off. Bodine Bass, briefly. Then the six-string got the same makeover: Seagull II, or sometimes Seagull Junior. Hanson lists it differently. Seagull II lost the bass-side point. A “pointless” Seagull was rarer. A Junior had unbound rosewood and simpler electronics. Moser, on bcrich.net: he worked the redesigns “into the Seagull Jr., Pointless Seagull, Seagull 2 into the Eagle.” Those names are how the Eagle happened. They are not the Eagle yet.

The name is the fight. Hanson: it appeared in 1976, Seagull II’s body with a more Strat-like upper horn, and soon replaced the Seagull. bcrich.net’s history page: Seagull II in 1975, discontinued in 1976, Eagle born. Wright: the name game stopped in late ’76 or early ’77. Vintage Guitar’s Mockingbird article: the ’75 overhaul became the Eagle after interim names, and the Mockingbird came hot on its heels in ’76. This plate starts in 1976. The shape is older than the word. The word may have slipped into early 1977. Both stay.

Once it was an Eagle, the shop was still somewhere between a factory and a custom counter. Handmade in California or Tijuana, specs bent when a player asked (Hanson). Heelless neck-through. Moser’s circuit, already the Seagull’s and later the Mockingbird’s: active preamp, Varitone, phase switch, coil taps, master volume and tone. Hanson puts a suggested retail of $999 on those early handmade guitars. Seventies money. Not a tag in hand, and not a 2026 cart.

Trim, from 1977, followed the rest of the line. Vintage Guitar: Standard, unbound rosewood and diamonds; Supreme, bound ebony and clouds. Stoptails. bcrich.net’s history page calls the early Eagle solid koa or maple, a sandwiched wing body, 24 frets, Grover Imperials, a Badass, and DiMarzios, and says Moser redesigned the Seagull circuit for it. Reverb’s Eagle Standard page, the 1976–1987 USA bucket, also prints neck-through, a stop-bar, rosewood, and 24 frets. Marketplace fields. Not a catalog scan.

Pickups do not agree. Hanson: four-conductor DiMarzios were standard until 1986, when the company began making its own. Wright’s 1981 Eagle has one Rich-made bridge pickup, and he thinks a DiMarzio label is usually wrong. He calls that guitar atypical. Dots, no binding, thin mahogany, an early Rich vibrato, a finish called “Jump-at-Me Yellow” by a rock star visiting the factory, serial 85376, six-in-line head. Heads before it were asymmetrical 3+3. The six-in-line is a 1981 option. “The year this guitar debuted” is that headstock, not the birth of the Eagle. Wagner’s DiMarzios, wound hot for him and Steve Hunter, sit with Hanson.

Then the same outline left the handmade bench. 1980: the Nighthawk, a bolt-on Eagle (Hanson). Same shape, not a second object. 1982: Eagle II, a Strat-style tremolo where hardtails had been the rule. 1983: Kahler, and NJ Series guitars from Nagoya. B.C. Rico imports in 1981 and 1982 already included Eagles, and Hanson says they were the good ones. Class Axe took the imports in 1986. The work went to pieces. Rico left in 1989, bought the name back in 1993, and died in 1999. Wikipedia’s company page: a Bill Xavier team took the brand on 21 July 2019.

Not a Mockingbird, not a Bich, not a Warlock, not an Ironbird, and not the Seagull with the sternum horn still on it. Premier Guitar (Jordan Wagner, 18 September 2009) on the “40th Anniversary” Eagle: forty years of Rico’s electrics, not of this model. Bich, Eagle, Mockingbird, and Seagull, 40 of each. Koa, neck-through, DiMarzio Dual Sounds, a preamp he puts at 20dB, a 5-way Varitone. MSRP $5,399. Vintage Guitar, October 2005: Custom Shop Eagle Supreme retail $3,900. Neither is a 1976 guitar, and neither is on the factory page now.

A 1977 Hollywood Music Store ad, in Vintage Guitar’s Mockingbird article, shows an Eagle bass. That is a bass. It explains why the outline shows up with four strings. It is not this table.

Players

Rick Derringer’s Mockingbird stays on the Mockingbird plate. He is here because he would not let the next guitarist have one.

Neil Giraldo (Pat Benatar). Guitar World (Richard Bienstock, 7 July 2013): in 1977 he joined Derringer on a red Gibson SG. Derringer played a Mockingbird. “You’re in the band, but you gotta get a new guitar. You can’t play that SG.” Then: “I’ll get you a B.C. Rich, but you can’t play a Mockingbird, because I play one.” Giraldo: “Okay, I’ll have an Eagle.” Bernie Rico fixed him up with a couple of them.

Asked about Crimes of Passion, same interview: “Guitar-wise I had the Eagles,” and on the first record, 1979’s In the Heat of the Night, Strats and Teles too. Do not hang “Heartbreaker” on this plate. Guitar Player (Gary Graff, 14 May 2025): the solo on “Promises in the Dark,” from Precious Time (1981), is a tobacco-sunburst Eagle, “the one I used on everything.” It fell off the stand while he was writing and broke the top of the head. Repaired, “it was what I used on just about everything on Crimes of Passion, and then Precious Time.” In 2013 he also said the company had a Neil Giraldo Eagle, with a Kato 13 coming the next year. Nothing by either name is on the empty 2026 series page. No Kato serial invented here.

Dick Wagner (Alice Cooper). Vintage Guitar, February 1998: an Eagle through late-’60s Marshall heads. “Mine was one of the first Eagles ever made.” They also built him a Seagull. It was stolen at Boston Airport. DiMarzio wound the hot pickups for him and for Steve Hunter. He does not put the Eagle on the Nightmare tour.

Steve Hunter. Same interview, and the split is his. Seagulls for him and Wagner on the Welcome to My Nightmare tour. Goes to Hell and Lace and Whiskey were tracked together, and for those he names a B.C. Rich Eagle and a Marshall. The Goes to Hell tour: an Eagle. A later tour with Davey Johnstone: a B.C. Rich doubleneck, not this table. A 1976 session he calls an Eagle, and Wright’s late-’76 or early-’77 name lock, both stand.

Brad Whitford (Aerosmith). Guitar Player (Dave Hunter, 7 March 2024): he often sported an Eagle, or the 10-string Bich. The Bich, and Joe Perry’s Mockingbird and red 10-string, stay on their own plates. Wikipedia’s Whitford page says an unpainted Eagle in the late-1970s heyday. No song pinned on it. A later object: a 2004 natural Custom Shop Eagle, presented in Cincinnati, played that night and the rest of the tour, shown in the Las Vegas “Deuces Are Wild” display, signed in 2022 (Whitford-collection listing). Celebrity. Not a comp.

Also known stays short. Wikipedia’s company page names Whitford and Giraldo and stops. Craig Chaquico has talked about a purple B.C. Rich from the “Jane” years. He does not call it an Eagle. It does not go here.

Rarity

You cannot order an Eagle from B.C. Rich right now. The series page is empty. That is a shelf in 2026. It is not a count of 1976.

The factory has not published Eagle totals. None invented. Wright: serials were sequential, not a date code, and once the company passed 1,000 guitars in a year the numbers ran ahead of the calendar. The Eagle he dates to 1981 wears 85376. The digits do not count a year. That is why a first-year census is unknown. The 40 guitars in the 2009 anniversary run are one limited batch, not a seventies production figure. “One of the first,” from Wagner, is one instrument.

What is actually scarce is the early USA neck-through, East L.A. or Tijuana, before NJ and Class Axe. Nighthawks, B.C. Rico and NJ imports, and later Custom Shop pieces wear the outline and come from somewhere else. Giraldo’s repaired tobacco burst and Wagner’s early Eagle are single objects. They are not a vintage Eagle.

Value

Informal estimate, 6 October 2026. Not an appraisal.

Ask is not sold. Celebrity guitars are not comps. No medians invented. Reverb’s Eagle Standard 1976–1987 page shows a Price Guide header; the dollar widget did not print in the static fetch. Do not average a Japan import with a seventies USA neck-through.

New street. None this pass. Dated lists, not today’s money: Hanson, $999 suggested on the early handmade guitars. Vintage Guitar, October 2005, Eagle Supreme retail $3,900. Premier Guitar, 18 September 2009, 40th Anniversary Eagle MSRP $5,399.

Used modern. The only offer on that Reverb page in the static fetch: a 1980s B.C. Rico Eagle, light blue, Japan, Gotoh bridge where the original was missing, ask $1,985.78. Import. Replaced bridge. Not a 1976 USA hammer.

Vintage / collectible. No sold median in the static fetch. Flag: thin sold-comp access. The guitar collectors mean is the early USA neck-through. The Japan ask is a different market. Whitford’s signed 2004 Custom Shop Eagle is one object. The ended listing asked $13,912 (“serious offers considered”). Not a sold price, and not a comp.

See also

  • bc-rich-mockingbird — 1976 offset bird; the one Derringer would not hand over
  • bc-rich-warlock — 1981 jagged metal guitar; not this cut
  • bc-rich-bich — Moser’s notched 10-string; not an Eagle

Sources

Guitars this one gets compared to, confused with, or descended from.