Charvel: Difference between revisions
From Allan Holdsworth Information Center
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No, actually the basswood’s the lightest. The Jelutong and the spruce are about the same, which is probably about the same as alder or something like that. The spruce one sounds stiffer, or harder. Very quick. I wanted to find a real resonant wood, and spruce is often used for the tops of acoustic guitars. I didn’t believe the normal stories that said, "the heavier the better for a solid guitar." And I’ve never believed that. Most of the old guitars I’ve ever played -- the good ones -- have been at least half the weight of their modern equivalents. If you feel the weight of an old Strat or an old Les Paul, it seems to weigh much less than a new one. The wood gives so much to the sound, just like in an acoustic guitar, whereas if the body is really heavy, it just sort of soaks the sound up, and you’re left with a string talking down to the pickup. Then you’d might as well have a concrete body or build it into the ground. I really like when a guitar feels as if it’s got some sort of acoustic thing going for it. | No, actually the basswood’s the lightest. The Jelutong and the spruce are about the same, which is probably about the same as alder or something like that. The spruce one sounds stiffer, or harder. Very quick. I wanted to find a real resonant wood, and spruce is often used for the tops of acoustic guitars. I didn’t believe the normal stories that said, "the heavier the better for a solid guitar." And I’ve never believed that. Most of the old guitars I’ve ever played -- the good ones -- have been at least half the weight of their modern equivalents. If you feel the weight of an old Strat or an old Les Paul, it seems to weigh much less than a new one. The wood gives so much to the sound, just like in an acoustic guitar, whereas if the body is really heavy, it just sort of soaks the sound up, and you’re left with a string talking down to the pickup. Then you’d might as well have a concrete body or build it into the ground. I really like when a guitar feels as if it’s got some sort of acoustic thing going for it. | ||
==[[No Record Contract, No Big Hoopla, But The Fans Have Kept The Faith For Allan Holdsworth (Guitar World 1982)]]== | |||
Though for Allan it’s "all in the hands", his hardware setup facilitates his playing style. His single-humbucker, Strat-like guitars are set to play easily, to offer almost no resistance with extra-super-light gauge strings and a very low action. He speaks of equipment with precise glee, and since he maintains his own guitars, he knows what he likes: "At the moment I’m using two '''Charvel''' Strats that '''Grover''' '''Jackson''', of '''Charvel''', did especially for me - they’re made out of slightly different wood and the neck dimensions vary slightly. They’re wider at the top of the neck, I think it’s two and a quarter inches, than at the body end, which is nice ‘cause normally Fenders are very narrow there, and the strings pop off the end. So there’s an eighth of an inch on either side of each E string all the way up the neck. I hate it when you go off the fingerboard, which is easy to do when you use thin strings." | |||
==[[Allan Holdsworth (Music UK 1983)]]== | ==[[Allan Holdsworth (Music UK 1983)]]== | ||
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Holdsworth’s current lead work is especially unusual because although his tone is as fluid and nimble as a synthesizer, he uses virtually no signal processing at all (he did use a Scholz Rockman for the sax-like bite of "Three Sheets To The Wind"). "I’ve noticed for a long time that lighter bodied guitars always seemed to sound better. ['''Charvel'''’s] '''Grover''' '''Jackson''' was unbelievable, going to all lengths experimenting with different woods. We finished up using bass wood; it’s a little bit like alder, but it’s lighter, very resonant. '''Grover''' made four '''Charvel''' guitars for me. He also widened the neck dimensions, more like a Gibson. The bridge is an aluminium DiMarzio and the pickups are Seymour Duncans, similar to a PAF but with two rows of pole pieces so that both bobbins are absolutely symmetrical; it makes the magnetic field more uniform." For strings, Allan uses .009 Kaman Performers. His favorite amp for lead playing has been a Hartley-Thompson with an occasional Fender. | Holdsworth’s current lead work is especially unusual because although his tone is as fluid and nimble as a synthesizer, he uses virtually no signal processing at all (he did use a Scholz Rockman for the sax-like bite of "Three Sheets To The Wind"). "I’ve noticed for a long time that lighter bodied guitars always seemed to sound better. ['''Charvel'''’s] '''Grover''' '''Jackson''' was unbelievable, going to all lengths experimenting with different woods. We finished up using bass wood; it’s a little bit like alder, but it’s lighter, very resonant. '''Grover''' made four '''Charvel''' guitars for me. He also widened the neck dimensions, more like a Gibson. The bridge is an aluminium DiMarzio and the pickups are Seymour Duncans, similar to a PAF but with two rows of pole pieces so that both bobbins are absolutely symmetrical; it makes the magnetic field more uniform." For strings, Allan uses .009 Kaman Performers. His favorite amp for lead playing has been a Hartley-Thompson with an occasional Fender. | ||
==[[Reaching For The Uncommon Chord]]== | |||
'''CHARVEL STRAT | |||
''' | |||
I met Grover Jackson in England. He was given my phone number by Steve Blucher, a friend of mine at DiMarzio. Grover and I met at a pub, and we started talking to each other about guitars, and I told him about how I felt about light wood and how I had found that really light wood worked great for me. I also told him my thoughts on neck dimensions - 11/16" to 214" (I think all Charvel necks are like that now). He told me that when I came over to the States, he was going to make me a guitar. When we came to California, I didn’t have a guitar (I had a guitar, but it was just a cricket bat). Then Grover made me two really fantastic ones - the one I preferred was made from basswood. But basswood varies in weight. Up to a point, the lighter the wood, the better the guitar sounded; but if they were too light, the sound regressed. He used the new neck dimensions - the top is actually a Fender measurement, and the bottom is a Gibson measurement. We used Gibson string spacing and Seymour Duncan pickups. Seymour Duncan worked with me on numerous custom wound pickups. I played the Charvel for about two years. | |||
==[[Allan Holdsworth (Guitarist 1985)]]== | ==[[Allan Holdsworth (Guitarist 1985)]]== | ||
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Yeah, they’re usually 11/16ths at the nut to 2 1/4 at the bottom of the neck, pretty much like the '''Charvel''' necks that '''Grover''' '''Jackson''' made for me back in the ’80s, which is not standard at all on a Strat, because Strat necks are really narrow at the top, and the string spacing is really wide, so my problem with Strats was first of all I didn’t like the radius. And then the second thing is that the necks are so narrow at the top, compared to wherever the string spacing is at the bottom, that I would roll the strings off of it on each side of the fretboard. So I just decided to ask '''Grover''', originally, if he’d make a nice wide at the nut neck. But then make it as wide as a Gibson Les Paul at the end of the fretboard. And of course then you look at a Gibson, and the spacing’s down on the bridge end of the fretboard, but the neck is wider. So it seemed completely illogical to me that the Fender neck is really not quite right somehow. It’s just personal taste, that’s all. So I’ve had all my guitars made with pretty much those dimensions. And with just about as big a frets as you can get, and then a pretty flat radius: 20 to 25. | Yeah, they’re usually 11/16ths at the nut to 2 1/4 at the bottom of the neck, pretty much like the '''Charvel''' necks that '''Grover''' '''Jackson''' made for me back in the ’80s, which is not standard at all on a Strat, because Strat necks are really narrow at the top, and the string spacing is really wide, so my problem with Strats was first of all I didn’t like the radius. And then the second thing is that the necks are so narrow at the top, compared to wherever the string spacing is at the bottom, that I would roll the strings off of it on each side of the fretboard. So I just decided to ask '''Grover''', originally, if he’d make a nice wide at the nut neck. But then make it as wide as a Gibson Les Paul at the end of the fretboard. And of course then you look at a Gibson, and the spacing’s down on the bridge end of the fretboard, but the neck is wider. So it seemed completely illogical to me that the Fender neck is really not quite right somehow. It’s just personal taste, that’s all. So I’ve had all my guitars made with pretty much those dimensions. And with just about as big a frets as you can get, and then a pretty flat radius: 20 to 25. | ||
==[[Interview with Allan Holdsworth (Jazz Italia 2005)]]== | |||
ALEX: Could you describe the qualities of your guitars starting with the legendary Charvel, right up to the current Carvin? | |||
ALLAN: Actually, before using the first Charvel, I bought a Fender Stratocaster during the time I was working with Tony Williams. I used a white Gibson SG Custom. It really was a great guitar! I lost it ... but I bought a Stratocaster that I used for a while with a single coil but I did not like it very much, so I redid the wiring so that the tone knob worked on the treble pickup. I connected the tone knob to the rear pickup so that it sounded a bit thicker ... then I played ... hell, I did not like it at all so I took some humbucking pickups and put them in. Since I had PAFs from SG - I owned 3 or 4 SGs - from which I always eliminated the middle pickup, I used 2 on this guitar and it sounded very good. It was a light body, as if it were alder... ... [Machine back translated.] | |||
ALEX: Do you prefer alder or ash? | |||
ALLAN: I do not like ash. It's too hard. In my opinion, alder sounds much better. Then I realized that I did not really like the neck because it had Fender spacing. I needed the Gibson spacing and I wanted the neck to be wider ... On the Fender with the double strings [“Sulle Fender con le corde più doppie”] and the narrower neck I had the neck really bent and the strings tended to come out from both sides. So, I went to a luthier and I had a neck built, a maple neck with an inch and 11 / 16th up to 2 and ¼ ... it was practically the size of a Gibson neck ... then I got built a vibrato with Gibson spacing, and it was excellent. It sounded really good. A fantastic guitar. I used it on everything I did in England. With that guitar I made the album IOU. We had to mix the album and we did not have a penny. We had a deadline so I mixed side 1 in a day from midnight to 7 am and the next day still from midnight to 7 I mixed side 2! But I had to sell the guitar to pay for the recording so ... I did not have a guitar! When I moved to America, I contacted Grover Jackson who was the Charvel guy. He is a fantastic person. He built me 5 or 6 guitars, we talked about the type of wood to use and he took the size of the neck from inch and 11 / 16th to 2 and ¼ making it standard so that after making those guitars for me, the Charvel people liked it so much that they started doing all the Charvels with that dimension. They no longer made a guitar with the regular size neck! Jackson also introduced me to the American basswood which may be lighter than the alder. I had two or three made of this wood, a red one ... it was beautiful. I never wanted to sell it! [Machine back translated.] | |||
==[[A Different kind of Guitar Hero (BAM 1983)]]== | |||
BAM: When you replaced your guitar, why did you have a Charvel made instead of getting another Strat? | |||
AH: Because my guitar really wasn’t a true Strat. It was an old Strat body that had Gibson humbucking pickups in it. I’d gouged out a place for them. Fenders are good for experimenting, because they’re modular, easy to take apart. | |||
AH: Just before I came over here, I met Grover Jackson [Charvel guitar maker] in London. I talked to him about specific ideas I had about making guitars. I knew my guitar was really light and it sounded really good. So I thought that there was maybe something to that. Because, for a long time, there was this kind of fashion to make electric guitars really heavy, the thought being, the heavier they got, the more sustain they’d have, which I never believed. | |||
AH: Guitars don't need to be heavy at all. They generally sound better when they’re lighter. And what Grover did was make me exactly what I asked for in terms of neck dimension and kinds of wood. He made four guitars for me out of different woods and my favorite is the basil one. It's almost as light as balsa wood. It's real springy and has a lively kind of tone. It's not hard at all. It almost has a real resonance, like an acoustic guitar, the guitar actually vibrates as opposed to being like a rock. | |||
BAM: How was the Charvel neck dimension different? | |||
AH: Well, on normal Fender guitars, the necks are narrower at the top of the neck than they are on the Gibson. Yet the string spacing is wider on the Fender, which never made any sense to me. So what Grover did was make the necks the same width as the Gibson and set the strings slightly closer together. So there's about an 1/8" gap on the side of each E string. When I used to move the strings on my Fender, for vibrato, I used to pull them off the edge of the fingerboard. It was very easy to do that and it would drive me nuts. That's why I wanted the necks made special. | |||
[[Category:Guitars]] | |||
