Charvette?

[Junior]

This has probably been covered a hundred times, but what actually is the Charvette line? It seems to be a lower end Charvel, but are they made in Korea? And out of plywood?

Junior

[surfdork]

Re: Charvette?

The lowest of the low. Mostly plywood...rumors there may have been a few solid bodies.Cheap hardware and pickups. Not bad necks though. [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

[Junior]

Re: Charvette?

Thanks! I guess their built like the Korean Kramers.

[RacerX]

Re: Charvette?

[img]images/icons/mad.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/evilimages/icons/tongue.gif[/img]
That's an insult to Korean Kramers!

[zeegler]

Re: Charvette?

Originally posted by surfdork:
The lowest of the low. Mostly plywood...rumors there may have been a few solid bodies.Cheap hardware and pickups. Not bad necks though. [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not always cheap hardware either. Mine had a JT6 and decent tuners on it.

[Junior]

Re: Charvette?

Originally posted by RacerX:
[img]images/icons/mad.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/evilimages/icons/tongue.gif[/img]
That's an insult to Korean Kramers!

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Last summer I was looking for a 80's single HB Kramer, so I refered to the Kramer forum for advice. They said to just look at the serial numbers. If it begins with a "S", it's Korean and plywood. Found four guitars that began with a "S", took off the control cavity cover. Plywood.

[RacerX]

Re: Charvette?

Well, my point was not all Korean Kramers are krap, er, I mean crap. [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

The MusicYo Barettas are pretty good, they're neck thru with alder bodies. [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img]

[JACKSONWOLF]

Re: Charvette?

Late on, in the Charvette production run, the guitars were built in Japan. You can tell (if the Made in Japan sticker is missing) by the distance between the 12th fret dots, the Korean instruments being further apart. Also, I`m pretty sure that all the Korean ones had silver plastic inlays as opposed to white plastics on the Jap built guitars.

[zeegler]

Re: Charvette?

That's interesting Jacksonwolf. I have a Charvette model 270 which is their version of a Fusion. It is plywood, but came with decent hardware, and has a truly awesome neck. I'm not sure whether it is Korean or Japanese, but the inlays are the fake MOP, and the 12th fret dots are wide spaced. I also have a minty Charvette neck that I bought off Ebay that has the white dots, and the close spaced 12th fret dots. In fact, other than the logo, it looks like a San Dimas pointy neck.

The weird thing is, a friend of mine has a model 270, but the neck on it is WAY different to mine. It is quite thick, and the bridge on his is a real piece of shit.

[442w30]

Re: Charvette?

I found a Charvette today, asking price was $85, so I looked up close. The body had been mutilated(painted with flat krylon, plenty of dings and stenciled stuff), HSS config and missing some locking HW. The bridge was the worst thing I had ever seen with an actual 'license' The weird thing was, the neck was nice and thin, it even had some birdseye in it. I almost bought it just to practice painting and graphics, I still may. On a side note, I saw a Kramer striker 100ST (neptune, NJ) with a single hum (Ibanez flying Fingers Super 80) and a real chrome OFR for $140 decisions decisions. I dunno what to do, I don't need either, but now I can't sleep cause they are so cheap..I haven't bought a cheapie in a while.

[JACKSONWOLF]

Re: Charvette?

I`ve just spotted a couple of Japanese Charvette`s on e-bay. They have closer together dots than the Korean built models.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...category=33044

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...&category=2384

[zeegler]

Re: Charvette?

The black one is like mine, only mine is day-glo orange. It has the dinky body, treble horn scoop, H/S/S configuration, and JT6 trem. Now if you could find a lonely Charvel Fusion body, swap out the hardware and neck, you would have a killer player.