How many Charvel or Jackson guitars are made - ever?

[Jaska]

Do anyone have (detailed) statistics how many Charvel or Jackson guitars have been produced each year? Which models are the most rare? Has the soloist been always the flagship?

[Number Of The Priest]

Which models are the most rare?

How do you define "rare"?

There are one-of-a-kind guitars made for individual customers. For example, Custom Shop pieces.

There are guitars made in tiny numbers. For example, 12 pieces, like the SL2T-CHL seen below.



There are guitars made in limited batches where we might not know how many were made. For example, the 2008-09 Charvel USA Production Models were comprised of black guitars as standard but each batch had a different mix of limited non-black "Custom Colors" (https://www.jcfonline.com/forum/equi...ls-catalog-ads) that were never repeated. No idea how many of each Custom Color were created, but they were 'limited" in the strictest sense of the word.

There are guitars in made in limited amounts where we do know with more certainty the numbers associated with them. For example, the 1998 Jackson Shannon Soloists had defined numbers of pieces made. 56 in Blue Ghost Flames, 50 or 52 in Black, 6 in Slime Green, 1 in White, and 1 rumored (but never photographed) in Sherbet Orange. There was also a 1-hum/1-volume variant that sported a Blue Ghost Flames finish but I am unsure if that is part of the normal 56, or if it's a "57th" one (technically it would be the 1st, as it was a 1997 NAMM prototype).

There are guitars that were production models but are discontinued. This is probably the broadest and loosest category. For example, the Japanese DK2 is discontinued (the current Mexican DK2 is a completely different guitar that happens to sport the same model name) and could be considered "rare" since it is not readily available in stores. However, it's a very common model made in such large numbers for a long period of time that they are not difficult to find secondhand. Would you define that as "rare"? There are "rarer" variants of the Japanese DK2, such as the DK2FS which was only made from 2002-05. Those are slightly more difficult to find secondhand, so that might be considered "rare" depending on your perspective.

Has the soloist been always the flagship?

This is probably subjective but I would argue that the Randy Rhoads model is the flagship (after all, it was the first true Jackson guitar), with the Soloist being possibly the most important, innovative, influential, and quintessential superstrat (alongside Eddie Van Halen's superstrats).

[Jaska]

How do you define "rare"?


This is a good question. I could give some kind of academic definition, but instead I sketch an everyman's version: rare means to me a (Charvel / Jackson guitar) that I dream to find someday (typically secondhand) AND I am able to buy it.

If I was a millionaire (do they follow this site?), sure I would buy limited edition SL2T CHL stuff. But at the moment I have to settle for e.g. Japanese Charvel 1989-91 Fusion Plus or USA Fusion Pro. Stealth Pro could be nice, and why not Jackson XL 750. As far as I know, at least some of those are quite hard to find nowadays. Does it mean they were produced only few or what? Statistics could give some perspective.

This is just my opinion and it should not prevent people to write down their understanding of "rare", or what guitars they are after.

What comes to flagship thing, it would be interesting to hear valid opinions about it. Maybe a better question would be "what is the most famous Charvel / Jackson guitar model"? Has it changed over the years? Like Mr. Priest put it, RR would surely be number one - at least in the 80's. But has Soloist overtaken it since then? What do you guys think?

[pianoguyy]

If I was a millionaire (do they follow this site?

A million dollars is not that much in 2019. Nor is it that hard to achieve. Especially since you are talking about a brand who's fans date back 40 years. The accumulation of wealth over one's lifetime can easily add up to $1m.
Or, at least, it was easy prior to all of these monthly bills that people have today that they didn't have 20-100 years ago - things like phone, cable, internet, mandatory car insurance, mandatory health insurance. All of the things you are spending money on today, turning someone else into a millionaire, instead of being able to pocket the money to turn yourself into a millionaire.

[diablomozart]

every usa jackson pre-dating the 88 ltd series, was in fact a custom order...you would see them in stores because the buyers specced them out that way (some namm examples excluded)...so there are many many one of a kind c/j's out there...rarity could be driven by a couple of things though...the original king kelly was reshaped and changed after not many were made...also on charvels we all rave about strat heads but there tele heads and even gibson explorer looking headstocks on a few...back on body shapes anything based on a gibson was pretty quickly frowned upon legally so a roundhorn gibson style v or a firebird, while some exist, are pretty tough to come by (a little better these days) or even an explorer....the import charvels started the whole model thing (bad pun intended)...and those things were everywhere in the late 80's...yet even they have gone up in the used market (i have a charvel spectrum that apparently is worth quite a bit more than i paid for it as those tend to be sorta scarce)...to put it bluntly, there's a lot of c/j guitars out there...d.m.

[Mudlark]

I'd pick the RR as the flagship.
I feel safe in saying there's been in the low, possibly mid-hundreds of thousands of Jacksons made including USA and imports from '80s-present.

Checking serial numbers would narrow it down, but...
off the top of my head: 10's of thousands USA's, the rest imports.

Just the MIJ bolt on import serial format counts sequentially from 9600000 to 985xxxx circa '96-2011.
This format would by far be the most plentiful in numbers, and of course, there are errors in the sequence...but I feel it's a very good reference in getting a ballpark figure of numbers produced.

edit:
The Indian models made from the later '90s-2012 could easily rival the MIJ numbers I'd suppose. Problem is those serials were date coded, not sequential.
Yeah, I think I'd bet mid hundreds of thousands easily. Could be more, can't imagine less.