My Charvies

[JZ06]

Most of you guys n gals know the deal with my guitars. LOL, I only have two charvels left.

One is my beloved 1982(the other is an '05 that was a v trem equipped I had switched to floyd) to me "jack butler clone" it originally began life as a jazz guitar with some weird trem and a custom in the bridge coupled with a pearly gates in the neck. No wonder it had no nads for shreddin' The custom was moved to the neck(If I remember right) and an 80's JB resides in the back. Originally, it had a strathead(curly maple) with an ebony board. I HAD to have a Floyd on there, so one was installed in 1986(a year after I bought it with my paper delivery money). I was left the option to a free recess job(that was the up and coming thing at the time) and decided against it. I was just happy to jam it. It played beautifully. Prolly a year and a half later,I decided to take the offer and have it recessed. Little did I know that would be the beginning of the end of this fine neck.

We used to have a bar downstairs that was very wide, it looked cool with my guitar on it on the stand. Well, I had it up there one day. The night before I did a string change and never trimmed the ends. We had a cat who was very playful and once before, he liked playing with the dangling strings. No one was home during the day and I can only assume what I came home from school to find was my guitar with the headstock snapped clean off!! My guess is, the cat hopped up on the bar, played with the dangling strings, somehow was startled or something, bumped the guitar and knocked it off the stand allowing it to crash to the floor. I almost cried when I arrived home from school.

I didn't know anything about repairs...but i asked a friend, and after he viewed it he said it prolly could not be repaired. I'd seen jobs close to how it was on ebay and could kick myself for throwing it away! Definitely would have been worth big $.

I tried to have the exact replacement neck for it...but it was out of my price league and would take well over a year to receive. I did ask for a factory Jackson(it had a woodburned logo on the rear, no cap, logo or anything on the headstock) maple with ebony fretboard neck to replace it. Sure enough, it came in, on went the floyd nut(I actually traded it to Twisteramps for his maple/maple '86 that resides on my '82 now) and so on. That neck was nice....but I had the chance to try another friends Charvel with maple/maple and a floyd. I was hooked! Many years later, as I'd mentioned I got in touch with Pete and did a trade. My former ebony/maple neck for his maple maple.

Right off the bat, the guitar looked soo much better(I wish I still had the pics of when it went together) with it's new neck. I was in search of the ultimate action....so my tech suggested a custom fretjob using 6105 wire and he said he'd make the neck compound radius 12-16"(originally it was straight 12") The guitar could practically play itself it was soo nice! I also had the second volume knob(front pup knob) removed and some foam plugged it. A shelf mod floyd toplock was put on to keep things in tune. It's been the same way since early '02 when this was done. I simply switched the floyd which was gold to chrome last june. This is still my favorite guitar and means very much to me!!

Sorry that was soo long.

NEXT: 2005 charvel h-h. Just like the '82(I bought this from circle of the tyrants) it had a v trem and a pair of humbuckers. I had a chrome floyd laying around, so I decided to have it put on. There's no long story with this one

I had a few more, but sold them.

Here's a pic of the '82 SN 1424 with the original neck/twin knobs and weird trem:


Here it is with the chrome floyd and maple maple pointyhead '86 SD neck:


One of the '05 w/v trem:

Floyded:


That's my story with charvies