Chubtone
Well-known member
As most of you know, my store is a dealer for the now discontinued Charvel USA production series guitars. My sales rep has been talking to me about becoming a custom shop dealer and I have been strongly leaning towards that for a few months. I've been playing Charvels since 1984 and have owned dozens of original San Dimas Charvels over the years so they pretty much had me at hello, ya know?
So the head of Charvel Jackson sales and my sales rep came to visit me Weds and show me some custom shop Charvels that were available. An invite for a factory tour happened and they said, "how about tomorrow?" So the next morning I headed out for the 20 mile drive to the Fender factory. Let me say I expected something massive. Once I get there, it's interesting that the building is not identified in any way as the Fender factory. It must be to keep out what would be constant "pop-ins' by guitar fans from all over the world. I wasn't even sure I was at the right building until I saw my old employees truck in the parking lot. He works in the Charvel Jackson custom shop so I knew I was in the right place. I walked to what looked like an entrance that had all these "warning", "do not enter", "building under video surveillance" signs and one way glass for the doors so I couldn't see in. A security guard came out and asked who I was looking for and he showed me the real entrance to the building which is almost hidden.
Once inside and met up with my guide, the head of Charvel Jackson sales, we start walking through the factory. He explains that when Fender bought Charvel Jackson that they didn't have room to just put the whole CJ factory in one area so they had to find space. A little space for assembly over here, a little space for wood working over there, etc. Anyway we walk through the main doors to the factory and I am expecting robots and computerized machines everywhere. It was nothing like that. The first thing we came to was a group of about a dozen people hand winding pickups for USA Fender guitars. I figured there would be machines cranking out 100 Fender USA pickups a minute. Not at all.
Our first stop was the Charvel/Jackson and EVH custom shop final assembly. Yes, that's right, the EVH guitars are built in the CJ custom shop. There were three guys assembling guitars there. Three guys assembling the entire output of the Charvel custom shop, the Jackson custom shop and the EVH custom shop. I saw some completed custom shop guitars, some Warren signature series, some Jackson Adrian Smiths and some EVH's and a few others. Must be a slow day I thought.
Then we headed over to the wood working area. Up some stairs, down some hallway, through some Fender assembly areas and then into the wood storage area. This got a little interesting. My guide showed me this area here is for the wood for USA Charvel/Jackson guitars and this area here is for USA Fender guitars. I never realized that there would be a difference. Want an alder body for a Fender, go to that area and grab two pieces of alder that are already glued together and planed and smooth and cut to the size of a body blank. Want an alder body for a Charvel or Jackson? You have to go to their seperate wood section and grab a plank that was probably 10-12' long and nowhere near as ready to build as the Fender stuff was. I asked why the difference in the wood's state of readiness and my guide told me that Charvel still sources their wood from the same places they have always gotten it and Fender lets them do that even though it isn't the most effecient or thrifty way of doing business. And he mentioned a guys name that has been buying and sorting and picking Charvel's wood since way back in the day.
Then we get to the CJ/EVH custom woodshop. My guide is showing me a bunch of woodworking machines that Grover Jackson had bought in the early 80's. I had walked past all kinds of modern looking wood-working machines in the Fender areas, but in here, it looked like I had walked into my grandfathers woordworking shop 30 years ago. Here I met Mike Shannon, and Red Dave and Pablo Sanchez and Pat (I think). This is where I started being really surprised by what I was seeing. These guys had been working at Charvel since way back in the day. These weren't some guys that Fender had thrown at Charvel once they bought them out and said "use these guys.... they only cost us $10 an hour". These were guys that Grover Jackson had hired and trained way back...... and this was it. There was no massive, modern, corporate factory with minimum wage workers pushing buttons to start machines. There were just skilled workers that the Charvel Jackson community talk about in whispered, hushed tones by name like they're saints. And they were operating the same old fashioned woodworking machines that they had operated when they were back in the San Dimas and Ontario shops.There was a "neck-shaping" machine that I was told Mike Shannon had shaped over 10,000 necks on. It was just a vertical cylinder looking sanding machine. How does he shape a neck on that? Where is the CNC machine where you punch a button and get the neck out. My guide told me that Mike Shannon can do things by feel on that machine that are just amazing and the Fender guys tested him..... "do me a neck taper that goes from .785 at the 2nd fret to .890 at the 12th fret" and when they put calipers on it, he said they all just start laughing at how inhumanly close to perfection he always is.
It was in this area I was shown how the body and the neck stay together throughout the entire build and assembly. How the guys hand press each fret individually into the neck. etc etc etc. I have to tell you that by this point I was FREAKING STUNNED at how custom a custom shop C/J/EVH guitar was and how much handwork went into each one. I saw hand carved tops, and bodies with maple tops being bent to fit the forearm contour by an archaic looking vacuum table with a thick, clear, plastic sheeting over the top. I asked again, what do the Fender efficiency experts think of all these old tools and construction methods. Mike told me that it drives them crazy but that the Fender people listened to the Charvel guys and let them build them that way still.
At this point, my guide asked me to come to the conference room for lunch. There were some execs in there grabbing food from a table that had quite the layout of sandwiches and salads and pastas. "Sweet" I thought, these guys get free lunch every day too. So about 8 of us are sitting at the conference table eating and they're all talking shop and some lady walks in to put some more stuff out on the food table. She takes one look at us and at our heaping plates and walks out of the room quickly. About 10 minutes later she is back and replacing all the sandwiches we grabbed with sandwiches from Subway. "That's kind of weird", I thought. And she shot us all a look. So we finished up and as we were leaving, a whole group was walking in to the conference room for their lunch that we had all just helped ourselves to. Oops.
So we head back to final assembly and these guys hadn't gone to lunch yet. I noticed that they were still working on the same guitars they had been on when I first walked in about an hour and a half ago. Now there were three guys in there and only 3 work benches. This is when things really started to click for me. I asked how many guitars a day these guys finished and my guide said, "I can't tell you that" but each guy here spends this much time on each guitar in assembly and set up. My mouth must have dropped. I did the math and figured out how many guitars a day were coming out of that custom shop. "That's crazy low" I said, "only __ Charvel custom shops a day?". "No" my guide said, "take that number, and DIVIDE it between Charvel custom shop, Jackson custom shop and EVH custom shop guitars." Then he handed me a couple of guitars to check out, including one that the customer had sent in a Bareknuckles pickup to be installed instead of the standard, Duncan, DiMarzio or EMG choices. "So I can still send you a different pickup to be installed in my guitar just like I could in 1984?". "Absolutely", Mike said. I asked, "how many people work in the Charvel/Jackson/EVH custom shop, maybe 15 total?". He couldn't tell me that either but intimated that might be high.
So what did I learn? I learned that this small guitar company that has been my absolute favorite company for 27 years is now owned by a huge guitar building corporation. A huge guitar building corporation that understands exactly what it means to build Charvel and Jackson custom shop guitars in the way they always have built them. A huge corporation that listened to the building philosophy of that tiny custom shop and it's employees and instead of modernizing, and replacing extremely skilled guitar luthiers with factory drones and listening to efficiency reports on "improving" Charvel and Jackson's custom shop, Fender allows Charvel and Jackson's custom shops to do what they have always done in the way they have always done it with the same people doing it.
What I saw was basically a mom and pop type business operating under the wings of the largest guitar corporation in the world. People say boutique this and boutique that and I NEVER would have thought of Charvel and Jackson's custom shop in that way. They must be huge I imagined with people bustling everywhere. I tell you, it was similar to my experience in touring Suhr guitars with the friendliness, and down to earth, and "how lucky are we that we get to build guitars for a living" vibe from the top down to the bottom.
So yeah, I'm sold. Just like I was in 1984.
So the head of Charvel Jackson sales and my sales rep came to visit me Weds and show me some custom shop Charvels that were available. An invite for a factory tour happened and they said, "how about tomorrow?" So the next morning I headed out for the 20 mile drive to the Fender factory. Let me say I expected something massive. Once I get there, it's interesting that the building is not identified in any way as the Fender factory. It must be to keep out what would be constant "pop-ins' by guitar fans from all over the world. I wasn't even sure I was at the right building until I saw my old employees truck in the parking lot. He works in the Charvel Jackson custom shop so I knew I was in the right place. I walked to what looked like an entrance that had all these "warning", "do not enter", "building under video surveillance" signs and one way glass for the doors so I couldn't see in. A security guard came out and asked who I was looking for and he showed me the real entrance to the building which is almost hidden.
Once inside and met up with my guide, the head of Charvel Jackson sales, we start walking through the factory. He explains that when Fender bought Charvel Jackson that they didn't have room to just put the whole CJ factory in one area so they had to find space. A little space for assembly over here, a little space for wood working over there, etc. Anyway we walk through the main doors to the factory and I am expecting robots and computerized machines everywhere. It was nothing like that. The first thing we came to was a group of about a dozen people hand winding pickups for USA Fender guitars. I figured there would be machines cranking out 100 Fender USA pickups a minute. Not at all.
Our first stop was the Charvel/Jackson and EVH custom shop final assembly. Yes, that's right, the EVH guitars are built in the CJ custom shop. There were three guys assembling guitars there. Three guys assembling the entire output of the Charvel custom shop, the Jackson custom shop and the EVH custom shop. I saw some completed custom shop guitars, some Warren signature series, some Jackson Adrian Smiths and some EVH's and a few others. Must be a slow day I thought.
Then we headed over to the wood working area. Up some stairs, down some hallway, through some Fender assembly areas and then into the wood storage area. This got a little interesting. My guide showed me this area here is for the wood for USA Charvel/Jackson guitars and this area here is for USA Fender guitars. I never realized that there would be a difference. Want an alder body for a Fender, go to that area and grab two pieces of alder that are already glued together and planed and smooth and cut to the size of a body blank. Want an alder body for a Charvel or Jackson? You have to go to their seperate wood section and grab a plank that was probably 10-12' long and nowhere near as ready to build as the Fender stuff was. I asked why the difference in the wood's state of readiness and my guide told me that Charvel still sources their wood from the same places they have always gotten it and Fender lets them do that even though it isn't the most effecient or thrifty way of doing business. And he mentioned a guys name that has been buying and sorting and picking Charvel's wood since way back in the day.
Then we get to the CJ/EVH custom woodshop. My guide is showing me a bunch of woodworking machines that Grover Jackson had bought in the early 80's. I had walked past all kinds of modern looking wood-working machines in the Fender areas, but in here, it looked like I had walked into my grandfathers woordworking shop 30 years ago. Here I met Mike Shannon, and Red Dave and Pablo Sanchez and Pat (I think). This is where I started being really surprised by what I was seeing. These guys had been working at Charvel since way back in the day. These weren't some guys that Fender had thrown at Charvel once they bought them out and said "use these guys.... they only cost us $10 an hour". These were guys that Grover Jackson had hired and trained way back...... and this was it. There was no massive, modern, corporate factory with minimum wage workers pushing buttons to start machines. There were just skilled workers that the Charvel Jackson community talk about in whispered, hushed tones by name like they're saints. And they were operating the same old fashioned woodworking machines that they had operated when they were back in the San Dimas and Ontario shops.There was a "neck-shaping" machine that I was told Mike Shannon had shaped over 10,000 necks on. It was just a vertical cylinder looking sanding machine. How does he shape a neck on that? Where is the CNC machine where you punch a button and get the neck out. My guide told me that Mike Shannon can do things by feel on that machine that are just amazing and the Fender guys tested him..... "do me a neck taper that goes from .785 at the 2nd fret to .890 at the 12th fret" and when they put calipers on it, he said they all just start laughing at how inhumanly close to perfection he always is.
It was in this area I was shown how the body and the neck stay together throughout the entire build and assembly. How the guys hand press each fret individually into the neck. etc etc etc. I have to tell you that by this point I was FREAKING STUNNED at how custom a custom shop C/J/EVH guitar was and how much handwork went into each one. I saw hand carved tops, and bodies with maple tops being bent to fit the forearm contour by an archaic looking vacuum table with a thick, clear, plastic sheeting over the top. I asked again, what do the Fender efficiency experts think of all these old tools and construction methods. Mike told me that it drives them crazy but that the Fender people listened to the Charvel guys and let them build them that way still.
At this point, my guide asked me to come to the conference room for lunch. There were some execs in there grabbing food from a table that had quite the layout of sandwiches and salads and pastas. "Sweet" I thought, these guys get free lunch every day too. So about 8 of us are sitting at the conference table eating and they're all talking shop and some lady walks in to put some more stuff out on the food table. She takes one look at us and at our heaping plates and walks out of the room quickly. About 10 minutes later she is back and replacing all the sandwiches we grabbed with sandwiches from Subway. "That's kind of weird", I thought. And she shot us all a look. So we finished up and as we were leaving, a whole group was walking in to the conference room for their lunch that we had all just helped ourselves to. Oops.
So we head back to final assembly and these guys hadn't gone to lunch yet. I noticed that they were still working on the same guitars they had been on when I first walked in about an hour and a half ago. Now there were three guys in there and only 3 work benches. This is when things really started to click for me. I asked how many guitars a day these guys finished and my guide said, "I can't tell you that" but each guy here spends this much time on each guitar in assembly and set up. My mouth must have dropped. I did the math and figured out how many guitars a day were coming out of that custom shop. "That's crazy low" I said, "only __ Charvel custom shops a day?". "No" my guide said, "take that number, and DIVIDE it between Charvel custom shop, Jackson custom shop and EVH custom shop guitars." Then he handed me a couple of guitars to check out, including one that the customer had sent in a Bareknuckles pickup to be installed instead of the standard, Duncan, DiMarzio or EMG choices. "So I can still send you a different pickup to be installed in my guitar just like I could in 1984?". "Absolutely", Mike said. I asked, "how many people work in the Charvel/Jackson/EVH custom shop, maybe 15 total?". He couldn't tell me that either but intimated that might be high.
So what did I learn? I learned that this small guitar company that has been my absolute favorite company for 27 years is now owned by a huge guitar building corporation. A huge guitar building corporation that understands exactly what it means to build Charvel and Jackson custom shop guitars in the way they always have built them. A huge corporation that listened to the building philosophy of that tiny custom shop and it's employees and instead of modernizing, and replacing extremely skilled guitar luthiers with factory drones and listening to efficiency reports on "improving" Charvel and Jackson's custom shop, Fender allows Charvel and Jackson's custom shops to do what they have always done in the way they have always done it with the same people doing it.
What I saw was basically a mom and pop type business operating under the wings of the largest guitar corporation in the world. People say boutique this and boutique that and I NEVER would have thought of Charvel and Jackson's custom shop in that way. They must be huge I imagined with people bustling everywhere. I tell you, it was similar to my experience in touring Suhr guitars with the friendliness, and down to earth, and "how lucky are we that we get to build guitars for a living" vibe from the top down to the bottom.
So yeah, I'm sold. Just like I was in 1984.
(and I'm glad that I did 
