Gilmore along with any other private person can leagaly place the fender waterslide decals on the aftermarket necks without any ramifications as long as they are not trying to sell them or pass them off as a fender neck. What makes it even more acceptable is that the rest of the guitar that it is attached to is a fender.

John C, thanks, those last bits of info were pretty interesting!


Luckily, I yet have no need.


Tepidy, that rises yet another question: what makes a Fender a Fender? Is it the body? Why? Is it because the body is most of the guitar mass? Gilmour's Black Strat is considered a Fender even though it only has the original -and heavily tinkered- body.

man what a question that is. for some, it takes a life time to answer. some get it right away. to each in his own time. either way after the guitar gods reveal thee the answer unto which we all at one time have seaked, we all end up embracing the answer
and the Fender. in time you will too grasshopper.

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63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."

The body is what everything else attaches to. Its like buying a 57 chevy and replacing the engine,transmission,tires and wheels, at the end of the day its still going to be called a chevy

bastardizes maybe, depending, but a chevy yes.

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63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."

Mike Eldred's roots are at Charvel. Might be interesting to find out if he has anything on the inside skinny regarding that issue, in that Charvel was building replacement necks for Fender.

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"Another day in paradise!"

John C
Didn't Wayne Charvel start out making replacement parts for Fenders, spurred on by Larry Dimarzio's success's?

Mike and (sadly infrequent) forum user RedMax both worked for Wayne Charvel.

Sorry to say I gotta take a hardline view on this one. Even now, you shouldn't put the Fender name on a aftermarket neck. With all the people out there making quality guitars, there's simply no need for it.

If your guitar came with a Suhr, Anderson or Tyler logo, would you knock it back? Thats where Wayne Charvel was at the time.

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No no and no

Your point is well made but I would infer that is was less of an issue with them 25 odd years back than in the present, otherwise it would not have been done.

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"Another day in paradise!"

Doc does that make it any less illegal though?

I believe, here we see one law for the masses and another for the elect. There's no justification for a two tier system. Ok we can debate whether Fender could have seen it as a worthy case to persue, given circumstances. But that doesn't change the black and white of today. Don't forget the vigour we see in action today regarding similar cases was first demonstrated around the time were talking of in Gilmour's case. With the uprising of Japanese guitars.

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No no and no

You realize that I'm not challenging the basic issue you raised, merely pointing out why Fender might not have bothered. I do recall them having siezed a shipment of Fernandes Stratocasters and having the headstocks knocked off. Their reproductions were so dimed accurate, who could tell the difference. In the case of Gilmour, he, through Phil Taylor, had a working relationship with Charvel and, through the licensing agreement with Fender, might have been able to get a 'pass'. What would really support your argument would be evidence which I have submitted in the past which attests to the fact that the further you get away from spec, the further the original is permitted to be known by its brand name. Hence, the wiring changes, the bridge changes, and the pickup changes the guitar underwent really distanced it from being referred to as a Fender Stratocaster.

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"Another day in paradise!"

From my research it was really Grover Jackson that made Charvel what it was; Wayne Charvel gets a lot of credit from the endorsement of Eddie Van Halen. What I pieced together is that Wayne made certain metal parts like neck plates, metal replacement output jack plates for Les Pauls (back then they all came with plasic jack plates), and some other parts such as that in his shop. He also was a dealer for the other early parts suppliers like Mighty Mite, Boogie Bodies (which is now Warmoth) and Schecter. Charvel and Schecter both had the same financial backers, who really wanted Schecter to move into the pickups and hardware business and wanted Wayne to start into the wood parts business, so Wayne bought some pin routers using this backer's money. Grover Jackson was working for Wayne; in 1978 Wayne couldn't pay him Grover agreed to work for free for a percentage of the company. At that point in time the company had never milled their own bodies and necks in-house; Grover Jackson has said that while they had the routers they didn't even have bits for them until he bought some used ones and started milling necks and bodies in 1978. By the end of '78 the financial backers wanted their money back from Wayne because they weren't happy that they really hadn't ramped up body and neck production; he couldn't pay them without losing his house so Grover agreed to buy the business by taking on Wayne's debts and buying it away from this company.

Now Wayne did cut a bunch of bodies circa 1976 at Dave Schecter's shop; that's where the famous EVH body came from. However, since they weren't doing necks in-house Wayne got EVH his neck from Boogie Bodies.

I've read that Wayne actually only assembled about 15-20 guitars prior to selling out to Grover over the course of his ownership of the company; all used necks from other sources and less than half of them used a body that Wayne cut.

John C
You're a well spring of knowledge. Thanks very much for clearing that up. I'd heard snippets here and there. They always seemed disjointed nonsense. However thinking of them whilst reading your post. They all make perfect sense now.

Doc, of course I know you view things the same way I do about the decal issue. The real crux of the issue is that Gilmour sold umpteen million records, whilst sporting a non Fender neck, claiming to be a Fender. I'm sure they didn't mind the free advertizing. Especialy that they didn't have to give away any freebies to gain it.

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No no and no

nikininja,

Thanks. I've toyed with the idea of trying to put all this down and turn it into a freelance article for a guitar mag (or a book on it if I got really lucky and was able to travel to interview Tom Anderson, John Suhr, etc. in person).

John you should. That was a clear and concise piece. Lord knows what you could accomplish given enough time. You obviously have the motivation to do it. The desire to create is obviously there. Talent will out. There's nothing more that talent wants than to be used.

The Development and History of the Super Strat.

I can just see the hardback copy now. We'll have to set about buying a certain forum users wife flowers, choc's and Bonemassa tickets in a bid for her to publish the book.

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No no and no

Seems to me either Guitar Player or Premier Guitar did a history of Jackson/Charvel recently. You might want to check their archives on that.

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"Another day in paradise!"