Yeah it wasn't a coincidence that Zangetsu and Bach look exactly alike. As the original quincy Bach literally is a part of every quincy. It's part of why his and Uryu's mother dies. When Bach starts awakening after a thousand years he starts leeching powers back from all of the quincy descendants. When Grand Fisher attacks Ichigo by the water and his mom comes to help she should have fended it off no problem being a quincy. But she lost her powers right then and she died. It's like 100 issues ago.
He never had a real zanpakto. He had to go to the royal palace with that one particular guy and all of the unformed zans were "alive" as ghost like creatures. He had to figure out how to find his zan. The zans were chasing him around. The manga was confusing but something clicked in his head and he just stops and picks out one of the ghostlike things and says something like it's you.
So he's got a normal sized long sword with no guard with a hole in the middle. His other weapon is a shorter dagger like weapon. Almost like one fits into another. As for his original weapon remember a quincy absorbs reitsu. He literally takes all of Rukia's powers for the duration of the entire first arc.
Think about his bankai sword. The guard is a wan symbol (inverse swastika). The entire quincy motif is german. Just like how arrarncars are all spanish related. Ex heuco mundo, espasda, resurrecsion. Anyways remember the fight with Byakuya when they rescue Rukia. Byakuya was insistent that wasn't a bankai. Sure he goes bankai but it's a bastardized version since Ichigo is the only known quincy (mom), shinigami (dad), human (born in human world), vizard (hollow), fullbringer (mom attacked by a hollow while he was in the womb) combination in the manga.