Bruce | guitars

Wayne Rock Legend

"Bruce"

#192

This one got me VERY excited. It's a 'Rock Legend', made by Wayne Guitars in Paradise, California. If you know Charvels, then you will know PERFECTLY well who Wayne is ... Wayne Charvel, obviously.

After Charvel Guitar Repair was sold to Grover Jackson, Wayne Charvel made guitars for RITZ and Gibson to name a few, but only seemed to get into his stride when he set up with his son, Mike Charvel, to form Wayne Guitars. The relatively early ones were stellar guitars; those with a serial of below 250 (like this one), all of which had the skunk stripe necks and glued on boards with the truss rod adjuster at the heel.

Then (after serial #250) the neck profile was changed, and then the headstock design, and all sorts of rumours and allegations started to fly around about how Wayne had started to simply buy necks and bodies in from third-party suppliers. I'm not sure that I care about that, but lots of folks thought that saying that you make things by hand, but really buying them in, was severely uncool. Who knows if he did that. Whatever, this one, being an early one, was probably made by Wayne, not screwed together from parts. I managed to get to chat with Mike Charvel for a little while, and he's one of the NICEST guys ... he's also a killer player. Given my lifelong Charvel fascination (from the day I bought my first proper guitar through to today), it is cool to think that this was made by the real Mr Charvel. The link (pending) takes you to Wayne's website, and to a couple of videos of Wayne building an early Wayne guitar. Awesome.

Its got a one piece alder body (a lovely chunk of lumber) with a naturally worn, nitro sunburst. Its certainly not a relic, but is just sufficiently beaten so that you don't worry about getting that next ding or scratch. The single pickup is a "Voodoo Pickups '59", which is quite high output and packed with juicy tones (they're handmade in USA by Peter Florance, see the link). There's a German Floyd, Gotoh tuners, and THAT neck. Ha! The neck! THIS is what the fuss is about. Its not too chubby, but a perfect handful, and made from a beautiful chunk of birdseye maple ... lovely. The oil finish has aged over the years in the way that you'd expect (getting mucky). The result is a fantastic player ... one of the best.

Unfortunately, this had quite bad delamination of the headstock clear-coat when I got it, and it has got steadily worse, to the point that I threw a load of super-glue over the headstock face in order to save the "Wayne Made in USA" decal, which was already partially damaged. The headstock face now looks like a fat chick chewing on raw rhubarb (i.e. not good), but at least it is stable now. Pragmatically, the headstock doesn't matter a damn ... the fact is that this is a SUBLIME neck, so I'll put up with any associated nonsense.