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A little pawnshop 80 miles away out in boonies, nowhere near any city of any size, lists a rare Ibanez RG on Craigslist for a good price and I decide to make the trip to get the Ibanez. While there I noticed a strange white Charvel on the wall. This place was just a little wooden shack pawn shop out in the country. They had about 200 rifles and handguns and about 15 guitars if that tells you anything. There was no logic whatsoever to how the guitars were priced. They had a beat Korean POS Kramer with a potmetal single-locking Floyd for $699.99. The pawnshop owner told me "I know Fenders, don't know anything about these rock n' roll guitars".
So this strange white Charvel is hanging on the wall with a $199.99 price tag. I get to looking at it and am more intriqued in the "what the fuck is this thing" factor than actually being interested in purchasing the guitar. From best I can tell, it has as Japanese neck but this is not a model series neck from 86-88. The logo is a little larger, lettering just a tiny bit different and the logo placement is a little further to the left than on the model series. The body is not a strat body, it's more like a Dinky or Soloist. The belly cut is like a USA Charvel/Jackson and the control cavity cover looks correct for a Charvel. The really weird part is that it's a string-thru-body. The paint is a nice shiny bright white that looks factory quality. Being a sucker for a single-humbucker shred machine, I kept walking back over to it and checking it out. I kept talking with the pawnshop owner and the price kept coming down. I wasn't there to buy this one but when he finally agreed to sell it for $125 out-the-door, I couldn't pass it up. The final deciding factor was that it played amazing with insanely low action. Somebody had it setup for low-action shred. Final bonus, a Seymour-Duncan cream/black zebra pickup(not sure what it is yet).
I'm going to take it apart here in a bit and see if I can find anything else out about it. I suspect the neck is a post-1988 Japanese neck for the Japanese market. What the body is, I have no idea.
Take your best shot............ what the hell is this thing ?
So this strange white Charvel is hanging on the wall with a $199.99 price tag. I get to looking at it and am more intriqued in the "what the fuck is this thing" factor than actually being interested in purchasing the guitar. From best I can tell, it has as Japanese neck but this is not a model series neck from 86-88. The logo is a little larger, lettering just a tiny bit different and the logo placement is a little further to the left than on the model series. The body is not a strat body, it's more like a Dinky or Soloist. The belly cut is like a USA Charvel/Jackson and the control cavity cover looks correct for a Charvel. The really weird part is that it's a string-thru-body. The paint is a nice shiny bright white that looks factory quality. Being a sucker for a single-humbucker shred machine, I kept walking back over to it and checking it out. I kept talking with the pawnshop owner and the price kept coming down. I wasn't there to buy this one but when he finally agreed to sell it for $125 out-the-door, I couldn't pass it up. The final deciding factor was that it played amazing with insanely low action. Somebody had it setup for low-action shred. Final bonus, a Seymour-Duncan cream/black zebra pickup(not sure what it is yet).
I'm going to take it apart here in a bit and see if I can find anything else out about it. I suspect the neck is a post-1988 Japanese neck for the Japanese market. What the body is, I have no idea.
Take your best shot............ what the hell is this thing ?
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