Are you a vintage Charvel expert? What do you think?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fiesta Red
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Chubtone said:
I'm not certain I'm a Charvel expert anymore. I bought my 1984 brand new from Guitar Center Chicago and it was $864 including hard case and tax. I got it the same week and from the same batch as Lynch bought his black pointy Charvel with brass trem. I played the black one George ended up getting but instead bought my candy purple one. Then my sales guy called me and said "Remember that black one you almost bought? We just sold it to George Lynch" or maybe they traded it.

It is so easy to fake or do a replica of a Charvel it has become almost impossible to tell what is real, what is parts, and what is half real etc.
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Man, I remember that store. It was on Western Ave in Evergreen Park. I bought my first amp there a used Fender Champ for $35. And I also remember seeing all those candy colored Charvels hanging on the wall
 
Racerxrated said:
That must’ve been before Kramer had the exclusive rights to Floyds. My remaining original from 84 I bought as a parted out neck/body. Originally it had a V Trem; then the owner had it routed for a Kahler. Ugh. I had it filled, re cut for a Floyd then refinished.
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Ouch. My '84 went straight from vintage to Floyd sometime before I owned it. Mine's had an extra electronics hold or two added too, but I don't care. It's still the best neck I've ever played.

There's some weirdness throughout this era too. I have an '87 Jackson strat that came with a Floyd, but had a standard nut and Kahler nut behind it: PITA since you need both standard and metric wrenches to change strings, but it plays very nice. It's my S/S/S strat.

The prepros are out of my league with the lack of serial numbers, etc. I mostly assume they're all parts mutts......which isn't the worst thing for players. My two most played guitars over the years are total mutts built decades ago. They play great, sound great, and aren't worth anything (well something, I guess as they do have Charvel necks) so I never had to worry much about them.
 
Racerxrated said:
Maybe there’s a few JCF guys still here to comment. One thing I do know is, the pre pros are the target fakes for scammers. They aren’t asking pre pro money for this one though. I still think that neck is probably legit.
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The JCF forum still exists and has enough activity, I'd go ask there if anyone is serious about it. I've been there for years, but honestly never figured out all the minutia on the Charvels.
 
no Charvel expert here, but that is a cool paintjob. Add a white headstock with black lettering... :love:
 
Chubtone said:
When I went to work at the pizza place that night, all my friends and the boss knew I had been painstakingly saving for a new guitar and that I had come home with nothing and wanted some special custom made guitar from California and I had to save another $275. That was pretty tough to do at $3.35 an hour minimum wage. My boss pulled me aside and told me he would front me $275 to get that new guitar. The next day I broke my parents rules again and was in Chicago buying that candy purple Charvel. I still have it. #04 was my sales guy
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Well, you've always been a solid dude and I could see you doing something similar if a kid walked into your shop and you were familiar with the circumstances.... You get it. Squid Music. Fuck yeah.
 
Chubtone said:
I'm not certain I'm a Charvel expert anymore. I bought my 1984 brand new from Guitar Center Chicago and it was $864 including hard case and tax. I got it the same week and from the same batch as Lynch bought his black pointy Charvel with brass trem. I played the black one George ended up getting but instead bought my candy purple one. Then my sales guy called me and said "Remember that black one you almost bought? We just sold it to George Lynch" or maybe they traded it.

It is so easy to fake or do a replica of a Charvel it has become almost impossible to tell what is real, what is parts, and what is half real etc.
Click to expand...

@Chubtone - I recently acquired my 1st Charvel. It is an unmodified pointy candy purple '84 (s/n 33xx), similar to yours. Brass "U.S. PAF APPLD FOR" Kahler trem, behind the nut string lock, black SD humbucker pickups.

I took a very different route to Charvel... paid $350 for a pimped out/used '76 heritage cherry Gibson SG '61 reissue back in 1980. Kept it for 25 years before selling for a black 1980 SG-R1.

 
edubfromktown said:
@Chubtone - I recently acquired my 1st Charvel. It is an unmodified pointy candy purple '84 (s/n 33xx), similar to yours. Brass "U.S. PAF APPLD FOR" Kahler trem, behind the nut string lock, black SD humbucker pickups.

I took a very different route to Charvel... paid $350 for a pimped out/used '76 heritage cherry Gibson SG '61 reissue back in 1980. Kept it for 25 years before selling for a black 1980 SG-R1.

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Yeah, mine is that exact same color and a very low number in the 3400's. It had the brass vintage style trem on it and I had a Floyd put on pretty quickly. I still have the guitar though it has a different neck on it now as the headstock got snapped off of it in a painful to watch vacuuming accident. lol.

I had the guitar leaning in the corner at my guitar shop and my 17 year old employee had told me 100x, don't leave that thing there it's going to fall over and break the headstock. Yeah, yeah, yeah, kid what do you know? So I'm sitting in my lesson room one day teaching and the door is glass and my guitar is sitting in the corner out there and my employee is vacuuming like I told him to. Through the door I see him go around the corner and the cord of the vacuum hooked on the tremolo bar and pulled the guitar over while I watched in horror and SNAP! I couldn't even get mad at him. He was doing what I told him to do and he had told me 100x it wasn't safe to leave my guitar there. I am still friends with that punk though he is now 46 and I still bust his balls about breaking the headstock off of my Charvel. ha
 
Chubtone said:
Yeah, mine is that exact same color and a very low number in the 3400's. It had the brass vintage style trem on it and I had a Floyd put on pretty quickly. I still have the guitar though it has a different neck on it now as the headstock got snapped off of it in a painful to watch vacuuming accident. lol.

I had the guitar leaning in the corner at my guitar shop and my 17 year old employee had told me 100x, don't leave that thing there it's going to fall over and break the headstock. Yeah, yeah, yeah, kid what do you know? So I'm sitting in my lesson room one day teaching and the door is glass and my guitar is sitting in the corner out there and my employee is vacuuming like I told him to. Through the door I see him go around the corner and the cord of the vacuum hooked on the tremolo bar and pulled the guitar over while I watched in horror and SNAP! I couldn't even get mad at him. He was doing what I told him to do and he had told me 100x it wasn't safe to leave my guitar there. I am still friends with that punk though he is now 46 and I still bust his balls about breaking the headstock off of my Charvel. ha
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Ouch.

My 1980 SG face planted off of one of those cheap chrome guitar stands years back. A drunk idiot clipped the tuners on one side as he was walking past. The headstock fell flat on a slate floor Lucky for me the backs of the Grover tuners popped off. The neck did not show any signs of damage and the headstock did not break!

The trem on the Charvel works well (seems like it was a case queen for a long time). Haven't been able to go full bore on it yet as I need to find (what I think is) a 6mm trem arm. The other ones I have are Strat 5mm.
 
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