Another guitar body and a Charvette neck.

Hi everyone,

Last week, the same guy who gave me the Black guitar body that I'm planning on making into a Charvel model 1 guitar, also gave me another guitar body, plus a nice Charvette guitar neck, complete with the original tuners on it, but minus the nut and string-lock, the body has a Kahler Floating Bridge installed on it which features piezo-electric pickups on each of the string saddles, there is also a single Shadow Active Pickup installed in the bridge position as well, inside the control cavity there is a PCB with some pots soldered to it, which I'm assuming is all the active circuitry for all the pickups, and a 9V battery clip.

I'm thinking of stripping the body back to bare wood and re-finishing it in an EVH 5150 style and then seeing if I can source a Kramer Banana-Head stock neck for it on eBay, there are some cracks in the original finish that look a bit unsightly.

I'll see if I can post a pick of the guitar for you guys so you can check it out, just need to find my digital camera first though.


Looks like finding my digital camera is going to take more time than I anticipated, will post some pics when I do find it.

Those old Charvette T-style guitars were really good for budget Charvels (which at the time were budget Jacksons)

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Originally Posted by Fretworn

Those old Charvette T-style guitars were really good for budget Charvels (which at the time were budget Jacksons)

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That's something I didn't know, I always thought that Charvels were high-end models, I'm still looking for my digital camera, will have a good look for it tomorrow and if I manage to find it I'll get those pics sorted out.

Why don't I not know guys who gives things like that to me... :o

Hope you find your camera soon!

All the pics ive poster here were done on a phone camera...
awesome projects in the making Doc

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Originally Posted by stan

All the pics ive poster here were done on a phone camera...
awesome projects in the making Doc

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The trouble is I've got two phones, one is an old school Nokia that doesn't have a camera function on it, and the other one is a Samsung Galaxy Y that does have a camera on it but it is incompatible with Windows 10 which I'm running on both my laptop and desktop computers, so I'm stymied both ways.

Assuming you have WiFi why not connect your phone and email it to yourself and retrieve on the PC

My first thought too, DK.

I do it all the time, save faffing around with finding a cable and waiting for windoze explorer to work its way to where it needs to be.

Using home wifi and a pretty big cap I always send the highest resolution by email so I can do what I want with it

Yeah, have to agree with you Dave as I take all my shots on an iPhone 4 and then email up to 5 shots at a time to my gmail address then upload to PGB forum from anywhere. Just need to have access to something to resize shots so that they are less than 1500 x1500

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Originally Posted by dave.king1

Assuming you have WiFi why not connect your phone and email it to yourself and retrieve on the PC

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I guess I could try that, but I don't have any internet credit on my Samsung Galaxy Y phone, and I don't have enough money to buy some, I could see if I can connect it to my Laptop via bluetooth, and then I could transfer the pics from the Galaxy Y phone onto my Laptop via bluetooth (both the Laptop and Galaxy Y phone have bluetooth connectivity) and then post it here, although the image quality won't be as good as the camera, I've been looking for my Digital Camera all afternoon and it's looking like it is well and truly lost, and I don't have the foggiest idea where it is.

Alright then, I'll see if I can use my Samsung Galaxy Y phone and the Laptop computer to get the pics sorted out for you guys, I'll post them here once it's all sorted.


Note that this may take a bit of time because my Galaxy Y phone is complaining that it's memory simcard is full up, and I'm trying to work out how to free up it's memory, it's an Android phone and it is running very slow and clunky, the OS is apparently a hacked version of the Gingerbread Android OS from what I've read online, my guess is that the memory simcard is full up of apps that I don't use, or are unusable cause they don't run very well.


Update:

I think I've got it all sorted now, just need to re-size the pics before I can post them for you guys.


Here we go, some pics for you to check out:


This is the second guitar body that I was given by my classmate:

Attachment 17526


And this is the Charvette neck I was given with the guitar body:


Attachment 17527


Here's a closeup of the headstock of the Charvette neck:


Attachment 17528


I'll see if I can take a closeup pic of the Kahler bridge that's installed on the guitar body.


Here's a closeup of the Kahler bridge installed on the body, you can also see the Shadow active bridge pickup too:


Attachment 17530


I've got no idea what all the control pots do though.


Note that I installed the Chrome Kahler String Lock on the Charvette neck after I got it home from uni.

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Originally Posted by DrNomis_44

I guess I could try that, but I don't have any internet credit on my Samsung Galaxy Y phone,

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If you've got a Wi-Fi connection for your laptop (you've obviously got a non-mobile phone based internet connection available as you are posting stuff), so if you connect your phone to your own Wi-Fi, then you won't be using the phone's data service to connect to the internet and won't need any credit. You've obviously got on OK using Bluetooth, but bear it in mind for the future.

Square-ended neck and round-ended neck cavity on the body, but you should be able to do something about that. Just check the scale length before you screw everything together, just in case the original body had a 24-fret neck fitted.

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

Square-ended neck and round-ended neck cavity on the body, but you should be able to do something about that. Just check the scale length before you screw everything together, just in case the original body had a 24-fret neck fitted.

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The square end of the neck is actually the edge of the fretboard overhang, the neck heal underneath it is actually rounded and fits the neck pocket pretty well.

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

If you've got a Wi-Fi connection for your laptop (you've obviously got a non-mobile phone based internet connection available as you are posting stuff), so if you connect your phone to your own Wi-Fi, then you won't be using the phone's data service to connect to the internet and won't need any credit. You've obviously got on OK using Bluetooth, but bear it in mind for the future.

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Might give that a go later on, but my Galaxy Y phone is running a bit sluggishly, might need to do an OS re-install (shuddering at the thought of that).


What I think I will try doing is a factory hard reset of my Galaxy Y phone just to get it working a bit better, everytime I boot it up it displays error messages about Google Play and that it has stopped working, I do remember trying to download updates for my Galaxy Y phone and the updates failed to install properly, it also complains that it's memory is full too (probably explains why it runs so sluggishly).


I do seem to remember trying to send files from my Galaxy Y phone to my Desktop PC via WiFi, but I couldn't get it to work at all, on the other hand, I had a lot more success with getting the Galaxy Y phone to connect to my Laptop via bluetooth, just wished the Galaxy Y phone wasn't so sluggish when booted up, and yes it was fully charged up too.


Update:


I just finished doing a hard factory reset of my Galaxy Y phone and it seems to have sorted it out, haven't had any of those annoying error messages popping up so far, fortunately I haven't lost any of the pic files though.

Good news about the neck pocket.

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Originally Posted by wazkelly

Yeah, have to agree with you Dave as I take all my shots on an iPhone 4 and then email up to 5 shots at a time to my gmail address then upload to PGB forum from anywhere. Just need to have access to something to resize shots so that they are less than 1500 x1500

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I use a bit of software called Irfanview to resize all the pics I post in threads, i resize them to 1500 X 1250 and that seems to work fine for me, not sure if there's a version of Irfanview for iOS but I think there's a Mac OS version.

Just been doing a quick Google search to find out what type of Kahler bridge is installed on the body, and apparently it is the Kahler Fulcrum bridge, but the one shown in the pic has string saddles with piezo-electric pickups on them.


Also, I decided to go ahead and take a few more pics of the body and the neck to post here for you guys, will post them in this thread shortly so stay tuned.


Here's a pic of the back of the neck heel,showing the fretboard overhang:


Attachment 17536


Here's a closeup pic of the back of the trem spring cavity, you can see the signal-wires for the string saddle piezo-electric pickups near where the springs anchor to the sustain block:

Attachment 17537


And finally, here's a closeup of the control cavity PCB that contains the active circuitry:


Attachment 17538

Looks pretty high tech. Hope that the surface rust on some of the hardware does not mean corrosion has also found it's way into those electronics.

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Originally Posted by wazkelly

Looks pretty high tech. Hope that the surface rust on some of the hardware does not mean corrosion has also found it's way into those electronics.

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As far as I can tell, the electronics seems to look fine, the circuit board looks to have been coated with a fine layer of lacquer to protect the copper tracks from corrosion, the 9 V battery holder looks to be made from brass which gives it a greenish colour.

I'm in the process of deciding what I'm going to do with the neck and the body, the body needs to be re-finished because there are some obvious cracks where the finish has lifted up from the body wood, I was thinking of stripping all the finish off the body and then re-doing the finish in an EVH 5150 Red/Black?White Striped style, if I do that then I might see if I can get a Kramer-Style "Banana Headstock" neck that'll fit the neck pocket, and then replace the original Trem bridge with a Floyd Rose bridge, the Charvette neck could then go on the other body (it seems to fit pretty well), this is just still in the debating-it-in-my-head phase, and my plans for it could change.

That headstock is pointy enough or you could round off the triangular bit in front of high E tuner to get a bit closer to the banana/hockey stick/explorer shape.

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Originally Posted by wazkelly

That headstock is pointy enough or you could round off the triangular bit in front of high E tuner to get a bit closer to the banana/hockey stick/explorer shape.

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I guess I could do it that way, but I don't really want to anything to the neck just in case it could be worth something, but I should do a quick internet search just to be sure.

Simpler to leave as is. In fact, how bad is the body? Does it really need a full strip and refinish? Might just be starting show some reliced battle scars perhaps.

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Originally Posted by wazkelly

Simpler to leave as is. In fact, how bad is the body? Does it really need a full strip and refinish? Might just be starting show some reliced battle scars perhaps.

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The cracks in the finish are pretty long, and I think the wood of the body has also cracked too from swelling, it's hard to see if this is in fact the case, if I could find my digital camera I'd use it to take some better quality pics of the body so you can see what the cracks in the finish look like.

The other body I got from the same guy who gave me the second body and the Charvette, looks suspiciously like an 80's Charvette 150 from comparing it to some pics of Charvette guitars that I found on the internet, except that the body I have has either been finished in black paint from the factory, or has had black paint applied to it's original cream coloured finish.


This is what I think the other body looked like originally:

Attachment 17616


I'll post a pic of the other body shortly so you can compare the two.


This is what the other body currently looks like:


Attachment 17617


They look suspiciously very similar to me, even the exposed finish under the black paint finish is the same colour, so I reckon I have a Charvette 150 body that was either finished in black at the factory, or was re-finished in black by someone later on, what makes me think it was re-finished is that there is evidence of some control cavity holes having been filled in before re-finishing, and the positions of the filled in holes are in the same position as the cream coloured Charvette 150 in the above pic, even the bridge routing looks the same too.

The guy who gave both of the guitar bodies and the neck, also gave me the neck plate, mounting screws, and string lock today, so, what I think I will do is see if I can restore the Charvette 150 body and neck to the point where it's a playable guitar, the neck seems straight enough, the frets could do with some work on them, I might have a yarn with dingobass and see if he can do a refret-job on it for me on it.