SeriesCharvel Pro-Mod

(Originally written by Endrix/translated from Audiofanzine FR) Charvel made in the USA. 22 frets, alder body with Stratocaster shape Two Di-Marzio humbucker pickups (Tone Zone in bridge position and Evolution in neck position) Volume control One-piece maple neck Original Floyd Rose tremolo Grover machine heads Green finish with wonderful one-ply black pickguard. Color availability is limited because they change them every three months. (luckily there are other finishes available because green won't be everyone's taste) UTILIZATION The neck is one of the most pleasant necks I've ever had in my hands. Its profile is great, modern but not too flat. It reminds me of the modern flat and fast Fender necks. This neck has an average width and will surely meet the taste of most guitarists. It reminds the Vigier Excalibur neck, which is the best regarding playing comfort. It is coated with a thin varnish that provides it a great playing feel. This thin varnish gives you a natural feel without the whole maintenance oiled necks need. Access to the upper frets is ok but it's not the main asset of the guitar like on some Ibanez models or the N4. The guitar is very ergonomic thanks to its Stratocaster-like shape. The sound is the main advantage of this guitar. In spite of its basic concept, you get a wide sound range with the three pickup combinations and the volume control. Clean tone: the neck pickup provides a fantastic full and smooth sound (not a "hard" sound as you would expect from a maple neck). The sound is very versatile and rounder than a standard Stratocaster. The combination of both pickups provides a typical Stratocaster sound. This guitar is amazing because it allows you to play everything. The distortion sound is enormous! It's the favorite playground of these DiMarzio pickups. You can easily get every sound you want. This guitar is one of my favorites when it comes to distortion and it reminds me of my Music Man EVH! There's something worth noting: whichever pickups you install on this guitar, the sound stays beautiful, musical and always pleasant. SOUNDS This guitar is great for my music style, but once again everything is possible with it. The DiMarzio pickups sound very well. The sound possibilities are endless and the application field is very wide. The manufacturing quality is perfect and you can hear it. Unplugged the guitar sounds perfect, without any fret noise in spite of the Floyd Rose. The manufacturing quality is wonderful and even much more expensive guitars don't have such an acoustic quality. It's really magic when you play this guitar. It's the best partner a musician can have. It's probably the first guitar I can improvise with so easily and play riffs I hadn't played in a very long time. This Charvel is absolutely incredible! Its acoustic quality gives you a good feeling. It's a real music instrument in the true meaning of the word. I'm ecstatic! It doesn't matter which amp you use it's a lot of fun to play this guitar. Even with a moderate amp like the 30-watt Roland Cube the guitar has a killer sound, however it's true the possibilities are limited and the instrument's capabilities don't come through entirely. But even with this amp the Charvel sounds much better than an ESP Horizon (with Seymour Duncan pickups) or an N4 which sounds pretty average with such an amp. OVERALL OPINION There's only one thing I cannot assess about this guitar right now and that's its aging because I've only had it for three weeks... But I certainly won't lose sleep over it. The manufacturing quality of this US guitar is just perfect. It's a high-class manufacturing quality so I don't have to worry about the future. Let me tell you something about the Floyd Rose tremolo: it's an original Floyd Rose not a cheap licensed one. I did a a hell of a good job bashing it the last three weeks and it always stayed in tune. I compared it with a Schaller made in Germany I have on another guitar and it seems to be lighter than the Schaller, but the alloy seems to be harder (which is the most important thing for the reliability and durability of the knife edges). I'm totally confident in Charvel, it seems to me they packed their whole knowhow in this guitar. I like most of all the playing feel, the soul of the instrument, the sound and the looks. It's a real American guitar with a soul. Before buying it I tried out more expensive models and I chose this one for its looks and acoustic quality rather than the price. It beats all competitor products. The value for money is impressive. I don't know many guitars that can compete with this one. It's a great deal for a real American guitar. I would definitely buy it again. I'm considering getting another one with Seymour Duncan pickups. The only weak point is the gig bag. Unlike many other products this detail makes evident that the manufacturer focuses its efforts on the instrument not the accessories, which sometimes add up to one third of the package's price. That's a nice feeling. Hats off Charvel! Excellent way to look after your corporate image. Compared to my other guitars, it is different from my Ibanez JEM, which is an excellent instrument but doesn't have the custom touch of the Charvel (whose color availability changes every three months) but I still like my Ibanez. On the contrary I sold my Washburn N4 because it was disappointing (it's a good guitar but it's too expensive and doesn't have the character of this Charvel).

If you are going to get an old school super strat you might as well get a Charvel. They were the originals when it came to this style of guitar. When you get one from them you know its not just a parts bin guitar someone slapped together in their garage. This is the Wild Card #2 from their limited run of Wild Card guitars. These guitars are made in Japan and have top notch fit and finish. This is a super stripped down model. The body is made out of alder. The bolt on neck is maple with a 22 fret rosewood fretboard. The fretboard features their compound radius design. Up top you get Grover mini tuners and a locking nut for the original Floyd Rose tremolo. The pickup is a single Duncan JB with a volume control. There is only 1 pickup so you dont need any switches. UTILIZATION The whole concept of a super strat is to make a super strat. The body is a bit smaller than a Fender so it is more handy. The neck is nice and thin so you can really get a grip on it. The compound radius fretboar makes it a real dream to play on. On the low end of the neck where you are normally playing Chords the radius is around 12 inches while near the body where you normally play leads the radius is about 16 inches. This gives you a flatter feel where you want it and a rounder feel where you want it. The Original Floyd Rose is great and holds tune perfectly. SOUNDS If you buy a guitar like this you know you are getting a one trick pony. This is how people had them back in the day. The single JB in the bridge gives you enough versatility to play many styles of music with just the single humbucker. The JB has a great all around sound. It has a good amount of mids that helps keep the tone from the guitar clear. It is like a super hot rodded PAF. You can play classic rock to metal with the pickup and it does it all well. If you are looking for even more versatility this guitar isnt for you. OVERALL OPINION A guitar like this is a niche guitar. It is for the old school player who was around when a guitar like this was cutting edge. It doesnt have active pickups or coil taps and it only has 6 strings but back then this is all you needed to be a rock star. Charvel was doing them then and they are still doing them now. They are made in America and Japan and the quality of guitars from both factories is top notch. Now that they are owned by Fender there is a real nice consistancy about them now. Now if something goes wrong with your guitar and you call them you can know someone is going to answer. If you are looking for an old school single hum super strat Charvel is making them in spades in limited run and production models

Charvel is one of the oldest names when it comes to shred guitars. They pretty much started it with their strat style humbucker guitars. This is one of their newer models and it has an old school look and feel to it. Thi sis the San Dimas Wild Card 7 primer scream. With Charvel making more and more LP shaped guitars its cool to see them come out with something that is part of their roots. You get the traditional Charvel stuff with this guitar. The strat style body has an Original Floyd Rose. There are two Seymour Duncan pickups in an HS configuration. The controls are a volume and a 3 way switch. The bold on neck is maple with an ebony fretboard. The Charvel logo and the fretboard dots are yellow and this stands out against the primer. UTILIZATION This guitar plays great like every Charvel. The neck is nice and thin so you can really get a grip on it. The fretboard has the compound radius design that Charvel and Jackson created. This means that the radius of the fretboard flattens out the higher you get on the neck. So when you are low on the neck the radius is nice and round so you can play chords easily. Higher on the neck the radius is flat so you can get a low and easy action for your lead playing. The original Floyd Rose is still one of the best tremolo units out there. Once setup it is very hard to put this guitar out of tune. The ebony on the fretboard is crazy. Its so perfect and dark its like a composite fretboard. It is very smooth too. SOUNDS The Humbucker and Single coil setup provides a good dynamic in sound. The bridge pickup is very nice. It is hot and crunch but it isnt harsh. You can play leads on the bridge pickup without them becoming harsh and painful to the ears. This is a good trait for a bridge pickup. The neck single coil is very single coilish. You get that neck position twang like on a strat. The single coil does not give a big decrease in volume from the bridge pickup so they are balanced well. Leads on the neck position pickup give me a kind of SRV type tone. OVERALL OPINION A few years ago everyone would be playing a guitar that looked like this. Nowadays it stands out and is kind of retro. You can play just about anything on this guitar. The playability is all there and no part of the playability leaves you wanting. The single coil in the neck is something some people like and some people dislike. If you want a humbucker in the neck there are plenty other Charvel models just like this that have a humbucker in the neck.

The Charvel San Dimas was introduced in 2008 as an attempt to bring back the hot rodded guitars that Charvel built in the eighties with the general motto to keep the prices down, but use the best parts possible and build them in the good ol' US of A. For the San Dimas model, this included an alder body, a quartersawn maple neck with oil finish, Strat style headstock (as featured on the earliest Charvels), Grover tuners, Original Floyd Rose Tremolo, Seymour Duncan humbuckers (a JB at the bridge and a '59 at the neck), a single volume control, and a 3 way toggle switch. There isn't a whole lot of crazy options here, but they eschew flash for just killer quality and playability in a price point that has many average guitars that focus more on looks. UTILIZATION The design of the San Dimas is basically like a refined Strat that is built for old school shredding. It's not quite as refined as many boutique takes on the Strat (IE: Suhr, Tom Anderson, Don Grosh, etc) but it's still extremely ergonomic and great feeling all around. The alder body is reasonably light in weight and is comfort contoured to fit to the body quite well. The only gripe I have is that the neck plate is rather bulky and sticks out a bit, impeding upper fret access somewhat. The neck is maple with an oil finish... can you say fast? There is no trouble moving up and down this neck at warp speed and it's perfect for the fleet fingered who really need to fly. It doesn't get sticky unless you really don't maintain it (easily done by wiping it down with a cloth) and overall is one of the nicest necks I've tried. I so liked the feel of quartersawn maple with oil finish that I requested it on a Suhr Custom that I had built. The upper fret access is fairly good on these guitars too. Getting a good sound out of this guitar is fairly simple. Since it lacks a ton of different features, you basically know that you're going to have to look to the amplifier that you're using to get a whole lot of true versatility out of the ax. The pickups are well suited to the guitar and work well for the classic vibe that Charvel was aiming for. They work for everything from clean to mean and a bit in between. They're not the best pickups for extreme metal or the cleanest of jazz tones, but the guitar was built for hard rock, so that's not a huge concern of mine. SOUNDS I've tried this guitar through a myriad of different amplifiers and had great success achieving the tones that I wanted to hear and that the guitar was built for. As I stated prior, it's not the most versatile guitar in the world, but if you're looking for an excellent tonal throwback to the days of big hair and spandex, this guitar is the best bet you'll find. The Duncan JB and '59 humbuckers are medium output affairs that offer a decent palate of tones ranging from clean to higher gain. The clean tones are fairly gutsy and rich sounding, great for bluesy or perhaps modern jazz or country. They're not quite pristine enough for certain things, but as far as a decent clean tone goes, this guitar does it. Slipping over to the dirty side, this is where the guitar shows its true personality. This guitar oozes harmonics and overtones, and when put through a high gain firebreather amp... that's when things just WORK. The Duncan JB in particular works really well and overall the guitar has a very EVH or George Lynch sounding vibe going on that makes me smile whenever I hear it. It works great for eighties rhythm and of course those gunslinger leads that everyone and their dog had to learn way back when, and when you're in the zone, it's just the perfect guitar to let the notes flow. It's fairly forgiving and doesn't expose mistakes like crazy, but it's also not quite as effortless to play as many modern guitars nowadays can be. OVERALL OPINION All in all I think the Charvel San Dimas is a total winner all around. They sell new for about $1000 and considering that price point, I don't know where you can find a USA made guitar that is a killer superstrat that combines good parts, good craftsmanship, great tones and the coolest vibe around that would compete with these. Unfortunately Charvel has discontinued these and replaced them with the admittedly less superior Japanese made models, so you'd have to find a used or NOS model if you want one.