Charvel Desolation DS-1 ST

Charvel now that it is owned by Fender is looking to expand their market share in the guitar industry. Recently they have come out with the Desolation line of guitar. These guitars have more modern designs that what Charvel usually makes. This is the Charvel Desolation DS-1 ST. It is a hardtail. Something you do not see much from Charvel. It has a familiar singlecut shape. The body is mahogany with a mahogany neck through neck. The back of the neck is stripped of its finish for a fast feel. The neck also has 24 frets. This model comes with a set of Seymour Duncan Blackout active pickups. The bridge is a tune-o-matic. The controls are simple with a volume and tone for each pickup and a 3 way toggle. The whole body is bound with thick alabone. It looks good on this white model but on some others it doesnt look good.

UTILIZATION

The back of the neck is super smooth and fast. Not often do guitars come with mahogany necks that are raw. It feels different than maple because it is a less dense wood but it is fast nontheless. The single cut body design on this guitar gives you some bad upper fret access. The guitar has the 25.5 inch scale and this combined with the single cut body means you have to struggle to reach anything above the 19th fret, and this guitar has 24 frets. The neck is nice and thin and has the Jackson/Charvel compound radius on it. Near the headstock the radius is about 12 so it is comfortable for playing chords and up by the 24th fret the radius is about 16 so the action is nice and low for shredding and bends.

SOUNDS

Seymour Duncan Blackouts are some of the newer activep ickups on the market. They are built to fill the voids that EMG pickups have in their sound. In this guitar you get the AHB-1 Blackout set which was the first set. Everyone knows what the classic EMG 81 85 set sounds like so I will compare these to that set. The bridge pickup unit is very aggressive but has nice bottom end. It has all the top end of the EMG 81 but with more of the bottom and thickness that you associate with the 85. The neck pickup is very fat but with some top end sizzle to add more clarity. With the focus on high gain tone the clean tones are a little lacking. This is a common problem among active pickups. Overall these pickups have a beefier sound than the EMG counterparts. This can lead to a muddier sound it some extreme gain situations.

OVERALL OPINION

When these Desolation guitars first came out I thought they were kind of strange but now I realize what Charvel and Fender are doing. These guitars are priced very well at around 600 bucks. That puts them right in the middle of any Schecters or higher end LTD guitars. If you are looking for a good budget middle end metal guitar Charvel is the new kid on the block again and their selection is quite good.