the history of wayne charvel

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I bought my first new Fender strat and amplifier in 1959; I wish I still had that guitar. I was working in a sign shop at the time as a spray-painter, and in about 1960 I decided  to take my strat  apart and paint it Candy Apple Blue. It was then that I became interested in repairing and refinishing guitars.

At the time, Fender Guitars needed someone to do their out-of-warranty refinish work and asked me if I would be interested. I said yes, and worked for them for about three years. I also recovered amplifiers and electric pianos as well in tolex. I repaired guitars in my garage for about a year. My first customer was Jeff Ross, a great tele player. He later became lead guitar player for the Bellamy Brothers.

I opened Charvel’s Guitar Repair in 1974 in Azusa, CA. It was in this shop that I continued to do work  for Fender. Fender sent me my first “rock star” customer, Deep Purple. They wanted custom work done to their instruments, such as humbucking cavities routed in the bodies and custom pickups installed. In those days Fender did not do any custom work except for finishes. Somehow the Who found out I was doing custom work and Alan Rogan, their main roadie and instrument buyer  commissioned me to build a clear plastic bass for John Entwistle. Soon  after that I started making after-market custom guitar parts that fit Fender and Gibson Guitars.

At that time my best friend, Lynn  Ellsworth was interested in what I was doing. He was an excellent wood worker, but he had never made any guitars, so I showed him how to make bodies and necks. He later started Boogie Body Guitars.

About eight months or so after  opening my shop, a local music store owner asked me if I could make a jack plate that was unbreakable for a Gibson Les Paul. I said yes, because I had already made a few jack plates out of aluminum. This triggered an idea to make jack plates and trem arms for strats that would not break. These were made out of stainless steel and were four times stronger than the original ones.

I advertised in Guitar Player  Magazine, and received excellent results, but was only making enough  money to pay for the ads. None of the distributors wanted to carry my  parts, so I added more and more parts to the line and increased the size of my advertisements.

I was doing quite well, until the Asian markets caught on to what I was doing. They copied my parts, and sold them for about half of the price. At that point, my guitar parts business drastically decreased. The one thing that the Asian market couldn’t do was make guitars.

My first hand-made guitar was made  in about 1962. I still have the original neck. It was my love for the  guitar and the fact that my parts business was decreasing that I decided  to make guitars. My first customer was Tommy Bolin of Deep Purple. My next clients were Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill from ZZ Top.

In the early 1970′s a young man came into my guitar shop in Azusa, CA, and introduced himself to me as Eddie Van Halen. He asked me if I could stop his Dimarzio pickup from squealing. I told him I could. ( a trick I had learned from an  electronics genius, Bob Luly) The pickups would be soaked in hot wax,  which is now known as “potting”. To the best of my knowledge, we were  the first to “pot” after-market pickups. Eddie was happy that the pickup didn’t squeal anymore.

After that, Eddie would come by the shop a lot, and sometimes he would sit on the floor and play the guitar while I repaired some of his other guitars. He also did some of his own work. About eight or nine months later, I moved my shop to San Dimas, CA. Eddie and Michael Anthony, (also from Van Halen) used to come over to the new shop and hang out. We would talk about show business, managers, etc.. I gave them some World War II Atom Bomb Blast glasses and some old paint respirators. They used to wear these on stage for some of their Hollywood shows! (Don’t ask me why!)

In that same time period, I teamed up with Dave Schecter from Schecter Guitar Research. He also made bodies, necks and pickups for guitars. One weekend, Dave and I made one hundred bodies and finished sanded them. I was already in the mail order business selling guitar parts, so it made sense that I would sell Schecter bodies and necks. We also sold Boogie bodies and necks.

Shortly after that I purchased two overhead pin routers and made my own bodies and necks. We sold everything, including Dimarzio pickups.
Randy Zacuto, from JB Player also purchased parts from me. He hired a friend of mine named Seymour Duncan, who had been making tele three piece bridge saddles and rewinding pickups to make Mighty Mite pickups for him. A short time later, Seymour came out with his own line of pickups. 

One day Eddie came over to the shop and asked if I had an extra body and neck. I told him that I had an extra Boogie Body neck, and an older body that I had constructed in my shop. I  gave Ed the parts, and the next time I saw the guitar, he had painted it white with a spray can, and put black tape on it for the  stripes. He used nails to hold the pickup in the body.By the way, the first Dimarzio  pickup I potted for Eddie, got too hot and the cream plastic bobbin  shriveled up. It looked bad, but it still worked fine. Eddie liked the way it looked. (He liked funky things in those days.) He asked us to build a guitar that was black with yellow stripes. It had a birdseye  maple neck, only this time the stripes were painted on. In those days we used laquer and polyester.  Eddie was and  still is a nice and down-to-earth  guy, and so is Michael Anthony. I’ve seen Eddie and Michael over the  years, and I am happy to say that they haven’t let their “rock star” status go to their heads. When I was in Hawaii for a Van Halen concert, Eddie introduced his beautiful wife, Valerie Bertinelli to me. She’s even prettier in person.

I worked for Fender  Musical  Instruments for three years in the 1970′s, Gibson for three years as a guitar designer and artist relations, and B.C. Rich for one year as a  guitar designer and pattern maker. I also owned the W.C. Guitar Company, and the Ritz Guitar Company.
 

My oldest son, Michael, and I own and operate Charvel Music, a full line music store in Paradise, CA. We are currently manufacturing the “Wayne” guitar as a joint venture. Our new rock legend guitar line is a high quality guitar for the player who wants to get that early “brown” sound.