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| Bodies |
| Very early pre-serialized Charvels were assembled
using bodies supplied by Lynn Ellsworth and manufactured under the "Boogie
Bodies" moniker. EVH's first black and yellow Strat was made with this particular
body; easily identifiable by the unusually-shaped small control route. By late 1978
Charvel was not only manufacturing their own bodies, but also manufacturing bodies for
DiMarzio, which were sold via mail order and bore a woodburn "DiMarzio" stamp in
the neck pocket. An identifying feature of these early DiMarzio/Charvel bodies was that
they had the traditional small recessed rounded/triangular Charvel electronics route on
the back. Oddly, it would seem that the bodies were shaped first with the electronics
cavity, and the pickup routes followed sometime later. As evidence, some of the
"Traditional Strat" bodies bore both the Charvel electronics route in the rear,
as well as the full Strat route in the front. This made for a body with a "hole"
completely through from front to back where the two routes overlapped in the electronics
area. Actually, this made for convenient access to the Strat's electronics without having
to unstring the guitar and remove the pickguard. Where designed for convenience, or the
result of the manufacturing process I cannot say for certain, but the feature is unique to
some Charvels, and DiMarzio-branded Charvel bodies manufactured during the late '79-to-'80
period. To be perfectly clear, not all "Traditional Strat" bodies manufactured
during this period had both the Strat route, and the rear route. Depending on the
electronics to be loaded and the body shape, different electronics cavity routes/shapes
were used. |
| Bodies were made with two different finishes in
mind; transparent (to show off the figuring of the wood), and opaque (solid paints). Body
wood for opaque guitars was generally heavy northern ash, poplar, mahogany, or maple.
Often, these "Opaque" bodies were laminated of two pieces of wood. |
| The transparent-finished guitars were generally
very special, and were made of such exotic woods as birdseye'd maple, flamed maple, flamed
redwood, Honduran mahogany, and figured ash. Often, an "exotic" guitar would
feature a mahogany back and a thick two-piece "book-matched" figured top. The
finish would often be "two-tone", with a transparent color on the face, and a
natural or wood stain finish on the back and sides. Sometimes the same transparent color
would be used over the entire guitar. Some exotics were made of solid two-piece
bookmatched woods, other times one piece solid figured woods were used. There were also a
number of "Butcher Block" laminated wood bodies made. The 1979 Charvel NAMM
booth featured just such a laminated exotic body. |
| The bulk of early Charvel bodies were made in the
traditional Strat shape. An identifying feature that is demonstrated on most genuine
Charvel Strats is that the lower horn route is not exactly semi-circular, but rather has
an enlongated shape to it, effectively moving the lower horn further away from the neck
for greater access to the upper frets. Some top-routed Strats were "Traditional
Strat" setups which included a pickguard, while others were routed for one or two
humbuckers in the "Super Strat" configuration; other times three singles without
a pickguard was used. The configuration most commonly associated with the prepro Charvel
would be definitely the one hum/one knob/tremolo configuration. It is almost certain that
"oddball" configurations such as hum/single/single and hum/single made it out
the door as well. I have personally owned one Prepro Charvel Telecaster that featured a
traditional Tele bridge single, and a hot P-90 at the neck. Anything was possible and did
happen at Charvel with regards to pickup configuration and options. |
| Other body shapes included the Explorer, Star,
Flying V, Telecaster, and Firebird shapes; both in guitar and some in bass. There were
some one-off oddities that did not follow "traditional" Charvel format as well
including a neck-through bass, Rickenbacker-shaped neck-through guitar, and "Vic
Vergat" flying V shapes. These are mentioned only in passing as they do not adhere to
the spirit of Prepro Charvel production. |
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