Gobi | soldguitars

(FOR SALE)

c.1989 Charvel 375 Deluxe

"Gobi"

#330046

When I bought my first proper quality guitar (my Charvel 750XL ... "Brownie"), although the tight bastards that I bought it from kept the case that it should have been supplied with (... sorry, but that HURTS, even after 25 years!), they DID at least let me escape with a colour catalogue of the 1989 Charvel range.

Bloody hell. When you're in your late teens AND it's the late 80's, catalogues like THAT are read over and over, more so even than the requisite lingerie/swimwear sections in clothing catalogues. The guitars that graced those pages are burned into my memory ... I can actually SEE the pages if I close my eyes. I think I still have the catalogue somewhere. The Charvel one, not the swimwear one. Honest.

Now, as the 750XL was the top of the line, I didn't feel compelled to get another too quickly ... I was so happy with that guitar that I didn't need ANYTHING else to be honest ... but I couldn't escape the fact that these were wonderfully cool guitars, and my want slowly festered into a need.

Not too long afterwards, I bought "Hex", my Charvel Model 6. For the uninitiated, the Model 6 was one of the Charvel "Model Series" guitars (the clue is in the name, right?!), which was the first Japanese range, and was the range that caused all the fuss over here. The Model 6 was the range-topper. When that range was discontinued in 1989, it was replaced completely with a dozen new models, known as the "Spaghetti Series" as a result of their headstock logo, written in a font which looked like it had been squeezed from a toothpaste tube, or formed from wet spaghetti (the same font as the Jackson logo). That was the range shown in my catalogue. Whoa. As well as the 750XL, which was stunning, and the 650XL (essentially a Model 6), which was equally stunning, the remainder were firmly in "awesome" territory. The "Spectrum", "Predator", the "Fusions", and the "75-ers", which included the 275, 375 and 475. Back then, because the two Charvels I had at the time were quite fancy (both fixed-neck, binding, sharkfin inlays ...) I wanted the 275 and 375 most. Whereas the 475 also had binding and sharkfins, the 275 and 375 had no neck binding and dot inlays, which made them more in line with the original 80's San Dimas Charvels (like "Damascus").

In terms of finishes, three really stood out ... there was the cool flame of the high-end stuff (principally the 750XL), the extremely 80's magma finishes (called "Fire Crackle" and "Rainbow Crackle") where a black over-coat was allowed to crack and shrink, revealing either an orange undercoat or a fade of blue-red-yellow (hideous!), and finally the "Desert Crackle" finish, where a creamy white finish was allowed to crack, and the cracks were back-filled with black. Cool. That was the finish that I was after ... looking like the cracked up bed of a sun-baked river.

Fast-forward 25+ years (bloody hell ...) and I got a message from an internet-buddy asking me whether the guitar he wanted to buy was any good, and whether the (stupidly low) asking price was ok. My answers were "yes, definitely" and "yes, definitely". I also mentioned that if he didn't buy it, then I absolutely would, but I stood back and admired the listing, and somehow managed to resist the temptation to throw in a big bid ... how would I have explained THAT?! After getting involved in the deal a little to help things go smoothly, I threw in the condition that I wanted first refusal if and when it was ever sold on, and that it would be sold to me at the price he paid for it ... and that's precisely what happened a few week afterwards. He saw his holy grail guitar (something he'd been searching for for years) so needed rid of this. He very decently honoured our original deal, and here she is!

So, this is the "375 Deluxe" from c.1989 (although the serials are a little imprecise) in the achingly cool Desert Crackle finish. Awesome.

Now I'm sure that Chushin Gakki made thousands and thousands of 375s, but not many (as I understand) were in this finish, so this was a pleasant find. I'd argue, however that pretty much all of them will have been titted about with and modified (pickup swaps, trem mods etc) but this one appears to be absolutely 100% bone STOCK, exactly as it left the factory, apart from the odd ding an dent, obviously. Interestingly, the fret-ends appear not to have been pissed about with either ... their profile is as you would expect for a factory-fresh set-up, with no after-market rounding off. The fantastic Jackson JT-590 trem is present, and is PERFECT ... almost all of these suffered from thread-stripping at the base-plate, but this one is in excellent fettle. The pickups are all original too, and the control cavity looks to never have seen the end of a soldering iron since it was made ... that makes me happy ... properly gutturally, smile-out-loud happy. Those pickups are a J90 ceramic humbucker at the bridge (nice and zingy), and a pair of J100 singles at the neck and middle position. Controls are nice and easy, with a 5-way (no coil splits), a master volume and a master tone. Lovely.

As you might reasonably expect, this plays beautifully ... a kind of effortless pampering for your hands, like there's no resistance to what you want to play. The only resistance there is the resistance from my fat old pre-arthritic sausage-fingers. Tonally, it does harmonically-rich power at the bridge setting, jangly rhythm stuff at the neck (and the middle) with a restrained quack with the neck and middle together, so that's three of the four fundamental tones that I tend to use, all in one cool guitar.

I'm very happy to have this one around. Who knows what I'll feel like once the honeymoon period wears off, but at the minute this gets LOTS of play time, and I often grab for it in preference to some of the (really very nice) handmade luthier stuff that it sits next to on the racks!