Desolation Revealed

[MakeAJazzNoiseHere]

It is a genuine Charvel Produc...



I can't believe you didn't spot that typo Ron hehe.

They probably left a fret or two off, as well.

[Hellbat]

It is a genuine Charvel Produc...



I can't believe you didn't spot that typo Ron hehe.

[RacerX]

Well, at least we got the serial # format for future reference: 10 digits starting with CJC then the year.

CJC - Chinese Jackson Charvel (?)
11 - year of manufacture
then 5 digits

[Flatpicker]

Here's confirmation of the worst. Made in China. Grover tuners on a Charvel ??? Do we even need to go into how cheap that fretboard and those inlays look ?

Where are these pics from?
I didn't realize any dealers had them in stock yet.

[RacerX]

Here's confirmation of the worst. Made in China. Grover tuners on a Charvel ??? Do we even need to go into how cheap that fretboard and those inlays look ?

"Crafted" in China! Hohohohohohohohohohoho!!!!


Ho, that's rich! Ah, I'm dyin' here!

[Rich#6]

These Desolation guitars were designed in the Custom Shop here in Corona CA... and they are made in China. There are USA versions coming out of the Custom Shop. By the way, I have the original single cuttaway proto that Mike Shannon built... it's AMAZING. When you touch or play these guitars, you will know that we spent our time making it right. I have been working on making sure these play like Charvels. The necks are what you would expect...and guess what... now we can attract players looking for set necks and neck thru...single cuttaway etc... too many people asked me.. "wow I love this neck...when are you going to make guitars with other shapes?".

We didn't do away with anything that was Charvel... we simply added more shapes and expanded the line. Keep that in mind!

for those to lazy to go back to the start of the thread. Charvel from the start said these are made in china

[Devotee]

Grover tuners on a Charvel ??? Do we even need to go into how cheap that fretboard and those inlays look ?

EDIT:

Yes The Charvel website said Korea. They can't even get their own info straight.

Where did it say that?

[lepard]

Yes The Charvel website said Korea. They can't even get their own info straight.

[Jack Napalm]

Here's confirmation of the worst. Made in China.

Were you hoping that a Charvel employee was lying to you when he stated they were made in China?

[Devotee]

Yeah yeah, made in China, boo hoo. That's all well and good but how does it play/sound?

[lepard]

Here's confirmation of the worst. Made in China. Grover tuners on a Charvel ??? Do we even need to go into how cheap that fretboard and those inlays look ?

[MakeAJazzNoiseHere]

They didn't even call them Charvettes this time. :dunno:

[lepard]

Epic failure on so many levels. These guitars should NEVER have been given the Charvel name.

While the single cut Floyd'd model looks somewhat interesting to me, I would NEVER buy a Chinese Charvel, never in a millions years. I can tell you how this is going to go. This is what the Chinese factories ALWAYS do. They will produce the first batch as quality, well made instruments. Then they will start cutting corners and building guitars out of 10 pieces of wood, poor fretwork, crap hardware, etc.

DBZ made this mistake trying to launch a line of Chinese guitars. The first few were good, then total crap. DBZ had to retool the entire line to Korea.

All this is going to do is give all Charvels a bad name. Huge mistake.

[markD]

well said, sir!

[Flatpicker]

Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

That's basically the problem in a nutshell.

Charvel is in the unenviable position of being almost famous.

They are not a Fender, but look like it.
Not a Gibson with their history.
Not Boutique like a Tom Anderson (Schecter old school) or Suhr or others.

A lot of their key endorsers were either a) bought out by ESP (Lynch) or Ibanez (Vai).
or b)The ones who stayed were swept away in the 90's.

They lost their direction under Akai.
Lost their identity to competitors.

So, from a business standpoint, how do you recover? You have to forge a new identity.
Take some of the money from those who remember you from the past (Pro-Mods). Leverage what's left of your goodwill.
Create a new line to make some inroads into new markets (Desolation).

Bringing Charvel back to life from a business standpoint is an incredibly difficult project. You have worse than nothing to work with. You actually have some negative goodwill due to your history of Charvel = Hair.
FWIW FMIC has done some really good things here. I may not like or agree with them all, but they keep the brand viable as an entity.
Just look at how badly GMI has mishandled Kramer...

One of my concerns is that Charvel has taken away FMIC money from Jackson. But that's because I'm more a Jackson Fan than a Charvel one.