The Kramer droopy pointed heads are very similar except the curve is slightly rounder as opposed to Jacksons/Charvels which had a more angular and sharper end. Hamer adopted this design for the Chaparral.

All very good points - unfortunately I've never played an original Charvel Strathead; I was living in Louisville, KY in the early 80s and we never got a dealer until 1984 (after the early pointies were released). My fingers are just too short for those wide/thin necks; I prefer ones that have narrow nut widths and a medium depth.



Actually that isn't true; he was using that guitar with the '61 body before he bought the parts for the Frankenstrat from Wayne and only used the trem bridge from the '61 Strat. The body was one of 75-100 that Wayne cut at the Schecter shop (Schecter and Charvel shared the same financial backers - International Sales Associates or ISA - at the time) with Dave Schecter and Tom Anderson from a template that Tom Anderson designed for Wayne. That was verified by Tom himself on his forum. You know he did some design consulting for Kramer - he designed and actually built the first 10-20 of the Elliot Easton Kramers (the ones Elliot used and the hardtail one that wound up with Mick Jagger plus a few others likely considered prototypes). At any rate he built and installed the first Explorer headstock on the Frankenstrat and he discovered the body was in fact one of the ones he had worked on 7 years earlier based on a specific hump in the routing near the neck pocket that was only on that template he and Dave made for Wayne. Tom was also the guy who put the bridge in the right place so it didn't need that quarter to make it sit right.

Tom certainly doesn't need any name cred for claiming the body as one from that batch so I tend to believe his story.




Thanks for the link.





Great info; as you can tell I love this history stuff. One of these days I'm going to try to put all my research notes down into a blog (or try to self-publish a book or something like that).

Good deal; I was just going by what I had found in my on-line research but I haven't done any in-person interviews with the principals as of yet (never have been able to fit in stops at Anderson or Suhr on the rare occasions I've been to CA). Just out of curiosity where did you find the proof on the EVH body - you've obviously done a lot of research on the Charvel side of the equation where my research has been more on the "Schecter family tree" of luthiers. Feel free to PM if you don't want to post in the open forum - one research to another.

I started seriously playing in 1979 but didn't really start keeping track of things until 1983 or so when I was in college. What really put me over the top in getting somewhat obsessive over this was bypassing a '67 Strat in 1985 - I could have gotten it for $500 because the seller had replaced the original plastic with late 70s-style black plastic. I didn't realize that these were at the time considered "players near-vintage guitars"; I just thought it was an "old Strat" that should have gone less money. The original plastic hardware was in a bag in the case; whomever bought it put the original plastic back on it and flipped it to the local vintage dealer who priced it at $900. Lesson learned and I started paying much closer attention to things.

Schecter was an interesting case - in the early days they probably did more business in parts than complete guitars, and a lot of factory-looking Schecters were assembled by their dealers like Valley Arts Music, Strings & Things in Memphis, Rudys Music in NYC, and several others. When they stopped selling parts to focus on completed guitars several of their former "Schecter Shops" started their own lines. I think Towhshend's Schecters were built by the dealer in London, and I believe at least one of Knopfler's was build by John Suhr at Rudy's (maybe the red Strat?), which started Knopfler's relationship with them.

So the "Family Tree" included (definitely not a complete family tree, just some of the better known offshoots):

First Generation:
Tom Anderson - direct descendent since he worked for Schecter
Pensa-Suhr - former Shecter Shop
Valley Arts Guitars - former Schecter Shop
St. Blues - from Strings & Things, former Schecter Shop.

Second Generation:
Suhr Guitars - John left Rudy, did some other things then finally started his own company
Pensa - Rudy kept the models and kept producing them
Don Grosh - worked for Valley Arts just before the owners were forced out by Samick

Ah. Now this I do know something about.

During 1980 Pete Townshend phased out his Les Pauls and started playing black Tele-style guitars that were built by Roger Giffin in his workshop beneath railway arches beside the river in West London. At that time he was also building for Gilmour, Clapton, Knopfler, Entwhistle and many others. Giffin used Schecter necks for the Townshend guitars - I don't really know why, because he's a fabulous builder and more than capable of carving a neck for himself. He went on to design the prototype for the Steinberger and then spent several years running Gibson's LA custom shop, before restarting his own company.

For anyone as likes eye candy timber in electric guitars I can't strongly enough recommend a tour through the gallery pages on Roger Giffin's website:

http://www.giffinguitars.com/custom_guitars.htm

A-a-anyway. In 1980 The Who toured for the first time since the death of Keith Moon, and the young Ceri spent one of the shows pressed against the front of the stage with his nose between Townshend's monitors. I saw him play a Les Paul for one of the last times in public, and most of the evening he played these Giffin/Schecter T-types:



Cheers - C

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Aha - I though that Giffin had built some of Townshend's "Schecter" Teles; I just couldn't remember if he was on his own or if he was working for a retail store in London at the time (kind of like John Suhr working for Rudy's here in the USA).

I didn't get to see The Who unitl their "original" farewell tour in 1982; he was all Teles by then (probably a mixture of the Giffin built and Schecter built by that point). Their stop in Louisville was fairly early in the tour; I remember being a bit dissapointed that we got T-Bone Burnett as the opening act instead of The Clash - nothing really against Burnett but more really would have like to have seen The Clash.

Ah well, I didn't get to see The Clash either: it was Paul Young's Q Tips supporting on the show I saw (I have no idea if Paul Young was known in America or not?). Not bad - but The Clash on tour with The Who is an all-time epic chapter from rock and roll history. Would have been nice to glimpse it!

However, after the show I did sneak myself in backstage. I had the pleasure of annoying Townshend with a load of dumb adolescent questions while he drank half a bottle of vodka, till he snapped and asked me, "who the f___ are you anyway?" and threw me out and slammed the door in my face. That was about five seconds after I took this photo (with my first, brand new SLR, which I didn't really know how to use - apologies for picture quality)



Happy days.

Cheers - C

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Interesting. I didn't figure juvenile delinquent into the equation. I'll bet you drink Dos Equis.

He was damn lucky to have met you.

This was the one I had, I got it in 1980 for my 16th birthday it was a 76. It came from the factory like this. This is also what his looked like at that time. Pink Floyd was huge at this time.

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https://www.facebook.com/groups/fenderguitarandamp/

Roger Giffin had also built guitars for Eric Clapton during that period.



One of these came in Daphne Blue (not certain) and was set up for slide.

The guitar in question was sold at the Clapton Guitar Auction that took place in Los Angeles in July '99. It was auctioned off at that time for $42,000.

Hahaha - The Who were a badly behaved band to say the least, so I had the idea they'd certainly appreciate the presence of a smart-arsey, impudent teenager backstage. They didn't.

I hope I've learnt a thing or two about communication skills over the decades since - but who knows?

Cheers - C

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