DoctorPaul's Guitar Emporium

c.2001 GMW Strathead 'Green Meanie'

"John Doe"

 

Now then.. THIS is a lovely guitar.  In fact, it's a VERY lovely guitar.  I will go as far ad to say, that it is one of the best, sweetest playing, best sounding guitars that I own.  In fact, it's one of the best guitars that I've ever played ... and I've played lots and lots of pretty nice shit over the years.

 

This is made by Lee Garver (like 'Allan', my GMW SS), so you know automatically that you're almost certainly onto a winner.  What IS unusual is that this has no distinguishing markings.  Nothing.  There's a reason for that, of course.  As I said in the write-up for "Allan", Lee started out making his own take on the old-school Charvel strathead guitars, logo'd up as 'GMW', and they were very good guitars indeed.  But when the 'cease and decist' letter arrived from Fender (see the write-up for Allan), Fender told him to stop making guitars with strat-style headstocks, or they'd send the boys round to break his knees.  Or something.  Anyway, before he designed his NEW headstocks, there was a period during which he ... er ... (cough) allegedly ... carried on making guitars with strat headstocks, but left them entirely anonymous to cover his tracks.  No logo, no stamp on the neck plate, no signed pickup cavity, nothing.  Just like this one.

 

This started life as a replica of Steve Vai's 'Green Meanie' Charvel (so would have had pink/blue pickups and a centre single coil) but was tamed by its last owner, who added the very smart-looking green pups and a black guard that you see here.  Lovely.  The pickups are a DiMarzio Tone Zone at the bridge and a DiMarzio Air Norton at the neck, with  simple 3-way selector.  Nice and easy, and entirely toneful.  There's a German Floyd Rose mounted over a 'lions claw' recess (like Vai's), and that lion's claw is an original feature.  Lovely.  The finish is a "makes-your-eyes-bleed-green" with an added pearl top-coat, that I'm informed was sprayed by Dan Lawrence.  So, its all good so far. 

 

The neck, however, is where things start to go wrong. 

 

Not really of course (are you KIDDING me?!).  Let's talk about that neck.  It looks pretty inoccuous, and so it should, being an un-marked strathead.  Teh finish is a beautiful matte oil, whic hfeels velvety and smooth ... SO very nice to use.  Maybe one fo the reasons that it feels so good is that it was made by none other than Mike Shannon (who is now with the Charvel Custom Shop), and Mike knows a thing or two about making tasty necks.  The result is ... maybe ... the perfect neck?  For me, anyway.  

 

Acoustically, this one is crisp and bright, with a great resonant body.  My usual check is to grab the body on the upper and lower bout with both hands and then give the open G string a firm pluck ... when you do that to this one, the whole thing is ALIVE with vibrations right up to the headstock tip. Which is good.  Plugging it in doesn't disappoint, of course ... it absolutely screams!  Very, very good. I want more like this one. 

 

The link is to Lee's website ... to the section that pre-dates his own headstock designs (when he was using 'that' headstock). Note that you don't SEE the headstocks that he used. Wonder why that is! There are a couple of Green Meanies there (he seems only to have made two ...) and as they aren't serialised, I can only guess which one mine is, although the one on the page linked below APPEARS to be mine).  All part of the fun, right?!