How to Date Neck Through Charvels

[bratfink]

Hi guys,

I have never had a Charvel before but one has caught my eye so I thought I would do some research (that means ask you lot).

How do you tell:

a) If you are looking at a USA or Jap Charvel?
b) What year it is? Is there a serial code table like on the Jackson website?

The guitar in question is claimed to be a Charvel model 6, but to be fair I never trust what sellers tell me I trust what I know about the guitars. With Jackson's it's fine since I know enough to find a good axe, Charvels I don't know much about though.

[Guitardude86]

I think that's a good and fair question, I've been wondering about the same thing since I got my Charvel.

What do you think guys (and girls for that matter), anyone who can help?

[diablomozart]

usa charvels are rarely seen in a nech thru capacity...the easiest giveaway is always looking at the logo on the headstock...it'll say made in usa right there under the logo...if it says by jackson/charvel it is an import...also usa charvels serial numbers are not preced with any sort of letter and have not made it up into 5 digit (10,000 or higher) serial numbers...d.m.

[rjohnstone]

Pretty simple for one part... there are no production USA neck-thru Charvel's. Some custom ones out there I'm sure though.

There is no official chart for tracking what year an import was made, but there are some here that are pretty good at figuring it out.

Hardware, body design, logo design, these are some things that can tell you what year or year range in which a guitar was built.

[RacerX]

Well, what's the ser#? Pic would help also.

Here's a Model 6 with a JT-6

[JACKSONFREAK]

Typically the model series neck thru's will have a C followed by some numbers. The first number next to the C is usualy the yerar of production.
(ie C6xxxx) would be a 1986 year of produstion. Also the hardware type mostly the trem system is an indicator of year. IIRC the Kahler trem was only used in 85. All other years of production of the model series were the JT6 Jackson trem like the one in the pic above.
BTW get a pic if you can.
Gil

[RR05xx]

FYI - just so you are aware, there are five digit serial number original early 80s San Dimas Charvels out there, but I doubt there are any neckthrus in that bunch - there are also 6 digit serial number originals - but I beleive these are rare as hens teeth and were all base guitars. I am not talking about the 90s reissues, those were jacksons plated. The early ones I am refering to were issued just prior to the standardization of the 4 digit 3D charvel plates that everyone is generally familiar with.

[bratfink]

Cheers for that guys. I could post a picture... but I don't know how .

From what you are telling me this is a Japanese one. It has a Schaller trem so I guess we are looking at somewhere around 89/90. The headstock logo is similar to the one you show Racer. It is claimed to have the active mid boost circuit (not played it yet so I couldn't tell you if it actually does or not), but unlike the JE1200 system on my Soloist this guitar had 3 control knobs and 3 flick switches. Pickup arrangement is H, S, S.

Is it a fair assumption then that these guitars would have been made at the same factory as the Jackson Professional lines? And is it therefore an equivical guitar to one of the better Professional line Soloists? Or is that utter rubbish and the Jap Charvels stand apart from the Jap made Jacksons?

Since we have found this to be a import Charvel, mods feel free to move the thread to the Import page.

[RacerX]

The Japanese Charvels changed to a "toothpaste" style logo in 1989. Yes, the same factory produced Charvels & Jacksons.

Here's how to post pics: http://www.jcfonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29708

And here is a site with old catalogs put together by our own jackson1:
http://www.audiozone.dk/index-filer/CatalogScans.htm