FEATURE
was due to the flatness of the radius, and I felt like a better
guitar player simply by virtue of that.
Charvel and Jackson guitars would soon be seen with
lots of players on the world scene, from Gary Moore and
Iron Maiden to RATT and Jeff Beck. With such high-profile players involved, Jackson’s marketing got the word
out that there was a new production standard entering
the game. These were manufactured guitars derived
from the customizations done on guitars at Charvel’s
original shop. They included angular body shapes, high-output pickups, various electronic switching, flat-radius
necks and stunning graphic paint jobs. Not only did they
make the Randy Rhoads signature model, but they also
made other Vs, an Explorer-styled guitar called a Kelly
and the Strat-shaped Soloist, which was the first “
super-strat” to appear on the market.
Using the Rhoads model as its flagship, the neck-thru-body models were designated with the Jackson label,
while the bolt-on, Strat-shaped models went under the
Charvel name. Clearly, these didn’t resemble anything
Randy Rhoads with his famous polka dot V guitar, built by Karl Sandoval, and offset V-shaped guitar, built by Jackson.
