Neal Shelton’s Rare
Charvel/Jackson Guitars
Neal Shelton is a southern California music store owner who
for almost thirty years has collected many early Charvel and
Jackson guitars. Though he’s brokered hundreds of these rare
guitars through his shop, he has also managed to own quite
a few of the company’s true gems, including one-of-a-kind
custom models, pre-production versions, and celebrity-owned
Charvel/Jacksons.
His first exposure to a Charvel was in 1979, while he was
shopping for gear in Hollywood at a small store called Guitar
Center. Shelton says of his epiphany, “There was a wall of
these awesome guitars with custom finishes, crazy colors,
and graphics. My jaw dropped! The one that really caught
my attention was a Star body, pink with a silver lightning bolt
graphic. I really wanted it, but I was on a budget to buy a PA,
a Marshall half-stack and a guitar. I had to settle for a used
G&L F-100. I never did forget that day.”
With so many custom options available on Charvels and
Jacksons through the years, Shelton cites the differences that
set these guitars apart from the mainstream: “They had a nice
wide fretboard with a slim, fast neck. These guitars were built
for speed, not sluggish like a Les Paul. They were built to play
and perform metal.”
Shelton played the L.A. metal scene for many years, and
continues performing in Hysteria, the premier Def Leppard
tribute band. His store, Neal’s Music, is located in Huntington
Beach, California, where many of these gems can be seen. Of
these, the true treasures are the vintage Charvel and Jackson
guitars on display.
These guitars show an evolution of their own, which Shelton
describes as a progression. “The Charvels had a Strat-style
headstock, but due to Fender copyrights, they had to switch
to the pointy headstock that most everyone now thinks of
when they think of Jackson or Charvel,” remarks Shelton.
Of the guitars Shelton owns, one stands out as his proudest
piece. “I have a 1982 Charvel EVH black and yellow-striped
that belonged to Eddie Van Halen,” he divulges. “They only
made about a hundred of these guitars as a production run.”
He also has the original company invoice made out to Eddie.
This is the oldest Charvel guitar Shelton currently owns,
although he has had many that predate this one. “I have
owned many pre-production Charvels in the past, dating
back to 1977,” he remarks, “before Wayne Charvel put serial
numbers on the guitars, and some of them were even built
using actual seventies Fender hardware.” As a broker of these
rare guitars, Shelton can be considered partly responsible
for having fed the hot rod fever. As he says, “I have literally
had hundreds of vintage Jacksons and Charvels go through
my hands. I supplied many of the collections you see on the
internet today.”
Visit Neal Shelton’s 1982 EVH Charvel at: nealsvintage.com. |
The Hot Rod Movement Branches Out
In terms of historical importance, at this point Wayne Charvel was the
central figure in the west coast hot rod guitar movement. But, another
key player on this coast who would eventually do some work with Charvel
was Bernie Rico of BC Rich Guitars. His company was an established
guitar manufacturer, and enjoying success at the time. Based out of the
Los Angeles area, Rico was designing guitars with much more radical
body shapes. The names of these guitars became synonymous with the
brand name: Mockingbird, Seagull, Eagle and The Bich, to name a few.
Rico’s main contribution to going left-of-center was his refinement of
the neck-throughbody design and the development of a heelless neck
joint. To make a more affordable version of some of the BC Rich
guitars, Rico also produced bolt-on models, for which he contracted
Charvel to construct necks.
In 1978, Wayne Charvel decided to move on to other ventures, and sold
the Charvel company to an administrative employee, Grover Jackson. A
guitar player in his own right, Jackson took on the business end of the
Charvel company, but also had a genuine interest in transforming it.
Once he gained control of the place, he brought a major focus to the
company with marketing savvy and a much-needed artist relations
program. While maintaining the Charvel company name, Jackson took what
Wayne Charvel had started to the masses, by providing local and
national players with high performance machines. He started an
endorsement program, which meant high-profile players were constantly
seen with Charvel guitars.
In 1980, Jackson met with Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist Randy Rhoads to
design a much more unconventional guitar. It was an offset V-shaped
guitar, with one wing shorter than the other. Charvel Manufacturing was
still enjoying the success of Wayne Charvel’s designs and customized
Strat-like guitars. Jackson didn’t want to risk disrupting that success
by putting the Charvel name on Randy’s new guitar, so he simply put his
own name on the guitar’s headstock and the first Jackson was born. At
an Ozzy show the following year, I saw that guitar. The ferocity of
Rhoads’s playing made me notice the brand name on the guitar, a name
I’d never heard of. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I would later own
over twenty Jackson guitars!
My first exposure to a Charvel was at a local shop in 1983, and my
first impression was that it played much more easily than my Les Paul.
Like Van Halen’s guitar, it was strat-shaped, had a single humbucker
and a brass tremolo bridge. Even more striking were the hot rod flames
painted on it. The fastness of the neck was due to the flatness of the
radius, and I felt like a better guitar player simply by virtue of
that.
Charvel and Jackson guitars would soon be seen with lots of players on
the world scene, from Gary Moore and Iron Maiden to RATT and Jeff Beck.
With such high-profile players involved, Jackson’s marketing got the
word out that there was a new production standard entering the game.
These were manufactured guitars derived from the customizations done on
guitars at Charvel’s original shop. They included angular body shapes,
highoutput pickups, various electronic switching, flat-radius necks and
stunning graphic paint jobs. Not only did they make the Randy Rhoads
signature model, but they also made other Vs, an Explorer-styled guitar
called a Kelly and the Strat-shaped Soloist, which was the first
“superstrat” to appear on the market.
Using the Rhoads model as its flagship, the neck-thrubody models were
designated with the Jackson label, while the bolt-on, Strat-shaped
models went under the Charvel name. Clearly, these didn’t resemble
anything Gibson or Fender had produced. Eventually, the Charvel name
was phased out and Jackson flourished as the standard that other
companies would come to follow. At that point, it was clear there was
life blooming beyond the Les Paul and the Stratocaster. Rock guitar
playing was becoming more extreme, and the tools needed to accomplish
this more challenging playing style were being developed to make it
happen.