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Before Restoration |
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"The Mutt" was
my first attempt at a Super Strat that was planned in late 1978 and finished on January
26, 1979 - my 15th birthday. It consists of a DiMarzio body (which has the infamous
"Boogie Route"), a licensed Strat neck, X2N pickups, a Power Pot (why in the
hell I needed this with X2N's I'll never know, but when you're 15 you tend to do stupid
stuff!), and originally had a nice Shecter vintage type trem - the ones with the heavy
brass blocks. The Kahler was added in 1983. This was my main road warrior during my band
days, as can be seen from the various bumps, bruises and contusions. |
After several years of
gathering the proper parts to rebuild and restore this guitar, I finally stopped
procrastinating and took everything to Tim & Harry at Atomic
Guitar Works to have her completed properly. |
As my friend Jim Shine
suggested, I decided to go with an oil finish for the body. The stock Fender neck was
replaced by an early oil finished Charvel-like 21 fret neck with a 1-3/4" nut width.
All electronics have been replaced - the power pot and X2N's are gone. She now has a
Duncan EVH in the bridge position and a Duncan Alnico 2 Pro in the neck. The tone control
functions only for the neck pickup. |
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After
Restoration |
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I was originally going
to have the Kahler replaced with a Floyd, but decided against it at Tim's suggestion to
keep the guitar more true to it's origins and avoid the necessity of patchwork, which
would surely have remained visible to some degree with this finish. The Kahler was
completely serviced with a rebuild kit and the addition of heavier springs to stiffen it
up a bit. The mini-switch is now non-functional, but was left in place instead of having a
hole or a visible patch attempt. In spite of their light appearance in the picture, both
pickups are cream colored. |
Just to be perfectly
clear - this guitar is NOT a Charvel. It is merely a Charvel replica, although I'm fairly
certain that the body was built by Charvel for DiMarzio as it is widely known that Charvel
did supply bodies for DiMarzio at this time. The body also has the identical route as the
black and gold guitar pictured on the Van Halen 2 album which is known to have been built
by Charvel for Edward. |
Last but certainly not
least, I want to thank Tim & Harry at Atomic
Guitar Works for the wonderful job they did on this restoration. They are a pleasure
to work with and their work is first class. I would not hesitate for a minute to recommend
them to anyone. |
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Vintage
Charvel Guitars, San Dimas Charvels, Wayne Guitars, Gibson,
Fender, J-Frog, Soldano Amps, Marshall Amps and more ...
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