Charvel Model 4

Everyone knows that The original Charvel company eventually turned into Jackson. This was one of their early real super strat guitars. Before this their guitars were more strat based. With this guitar they got closer to the neck through designs and the different woods. This is like a bolt on Jackson SL1. The controls are simple but they are very for the era. Guitars now dont have controls like this and I wonder why not because the controls on this guitar are pretty good. The guitar has a basswood body with a maple neck. The fretboard is 22 jumbo frets. The pickups are in an HSS configuration. There are single coil sized humbuckers in the neck and middle with a normal humbucker in the bridge. This example had active electronics. The controls are a master volume and a master tone with a active mid boost. There are 3 mini toggle switches below the knobs that control each pickup. You can have any pickup configuration this way.

UTILIZATION

This guitar plays very nicely and the controls are intuitive. The neck is nice and thin with a flat radius. This combined with the jumbo frets means you can really play it hard. The bolt on neck join is arched to give a little more easier access to the upper frets. Since it is only 22 frets upper access is pretty good. The controls are cool. You can turn on all 3 humbuckers or have them all off. With a normal blade switch there are some combinations you cannot have. On most strats you cannot have the neck and the bridge pickup on to get a tele sound. On this guitar you can have any pickup combination you want. The guitar has a Floyd Rose and locking nut so it stays in tune pretty well as well.

SOUNDS

This guitar sounds very 80s. With the basswood body and the active pickups you get a pretty bright screaming sound. The active pickups give a nice high end distortion that really cuts through the mix. With the mid boost the guitar really screams and can cut through anything. The bridge has a very crunch sound. It is not very searing. It is like a classic rock overdrive with a bit more punch to it. It is very 80s in voicing. When playing clean the bright tone still comes through. The guitar has a very snappy strat like clean tone.

OVERALL OPINION

These guitars are pretty cheap nowadays. You can get one of these used of course for the price of a new Jackson Dinky. This of course is the better guitar. This guitar was built when Charvel was one of the most popular guitar makers around. The electronics are top notch and it has some features guitars today rarely come with. If you see one of these pop up while you are looking for a nice shred guitar you should try it out. You will go back in time to when shred was thing with this guitar.