Brownie | soldguitars

1989 Charvel 750XL

"Brownie"

#C901596

This was my first decent quality guitar. After finishing up at school (before going to college) I had a long holiday ... a couple of months ... and decided to fill the time working in a fast-food joint (think McDonalds, only worse). I was paid about £10 a day for serving, wiping, clearing up puke and dressing in red overalls (... FFS). It was worth it though, as those crisp £10 notes were all saved for THIS, a bee-yoo-tiful Charvel 750XL.

I saw this in a music shop in Newcastle that summer and fell in love with it. It was surrounded by Ibanez stuff which, next to THIS, felt like little more than toys ... lightweight and flimsy. I paid my deposit, then watched as the balance due slowly wound down to £0.00. I left with it in a cardboard box (the cheap sons of bitches must have kept the 'Chainsaw' case that it should have come with) and never looked back.

What a guitar this is. This was my main player for about 10 years, and I gigged the hell out of it. Everything from poppy nonsense to full on in-yer-face metal. The problem WAS that I didn't know back then what a bloody awesome guitar this was, so I spent the next 10 years trying out other guitars thinking "... what the Hell is THIS shit?..." and always going back to Brownie. Its a set-neck Charvel made in the Chushin Gakki factory, Japan. Those guys know their stuff, and went on to make the Japanese 'Jackson Professional' range AND the very recent Charvel Japanese 'Pro-Mods'. The manager of the factory subsequently left and founded Caparison Guitars; these things are every bit as good.

The 750 was the flagship of the 'spaghetti-logo' Charvel range (also known as the 'toothpaste-logo' series). It has a body of dense mahogany, a thick maple cap (with a light flame) and a set mahogany neck. I understand that they used a standard thickness mahogany body (the same width as a standard 'Soloist'), then stuck the thick maple slab on top of that ... the result is one bloody enormous THICK piece of lumber. It's heavy too ... well over 10 lbs. With that construction, and with twin humbuckers, you'd be forgiven if you assumed that this was a tip of the hat to the Gibson Les Paul. And you'd be dead right; it also has a Gibson short scale length. However, these came with a five-way selector, with coil splits in positions 2 & 4. The result is a very meaty, Les-Paul-esque sound in switch positions 1, 3 and 5, but some unnervingly stratty sounds at positions 2 and 4.

It wears a pair of Jackson pickups, It also has a Jackson JT-500 trem, which is made in Germany by Schaller ... who also make the best Original Floyd Rose trems. As you might therefore expect, this is a great trem. Despite the fact that this one has been gigged a lot, it is still in A1, pristine condition. A lifetime 'keeper', which is registered on the 750XL database. The late, great Shawn Lane played one of these, by the way. As did one of the chaps from Uriah Heep, although you should try not to let that put you off. A wonderful piece of kit.