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Pagan gold: get it while you can!

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The Southern Californian towns of Glendora and San Dimas, just 30 miles or so east of downtown Los Angeles, are inauspicious locations for an important shift in the electric guitar world.

Wayne Charvel set up what was to become a legendary repair and customising facility there in the mid-seventies, initially in San Dimas before moving to Glendora in 1980.

Although the name seems, on the face of it, to owe its existence largely to the skills of Wayne Charvel, it should be noted that the history books show that Grover Jackson did as much as anyone to keep the brand afloat back in the day.

We have on several occasions written of the time when a young Edward Van Halen walked into Wayne's repair shop in 1974 and put together an instrument from a Boogie Bodies neck and body upon which he'd go on to virtually reinvent the electric guitar, but it's the feel, the tone and the vibe that was inherent within the vast majority of guitars bearing the distinct logo of Charvel Manufacturing that caught the imagination of so many players.

"With a hefty DC resistance of 17.3k ohms, the bridge Tone Zone gives a wide, punchy and full-on rock rhythm tone."

It'd be fair to say that Charvel was the first company to popularise the idea of a wholly custom-made guitar for the rocking masses and, as was the prevailing wind in Southern California at the time, the more outrageous the design of your guitar the more likely your band was to be noticed.

Names associated with the brand read like a who's who of US custom building: there's Wayne and Grover, as well as Larry DiMarzio, Boogie Bodies' Lynn Ellsworth, Mike Eldred, and David Schecter.

If you can find an original 1979 'Prepro' model on Ebay, expect to shell out several grand; even original neck plates are topping £400!

Since Fender MIC bought the entire collection of Jackson/Charvel brands from Akai in 2002, players and fans alike have been waiting with baited breath for some affordable yet authentic revamps of the classic late-seventies Charvel hotrod. Now, finally, the release of these three USA Production Models represents an end to that wait.

The Guitars

Check out the So-Cal Style 1 in action in the following video, alongside the San Dimas Style 2:

"The Charvel is the hotrod guitar," says Charvel's Mick McGregor. "If you think about it, Charvel was the original blasphemy of the Fender Stratocaster.