Bringing Randy Rhoads Jackson Guitar Vision to Life: Interview with Tim Wilson

Hey, this is Tommy Colletti, The Music Zoo. Welcome to another episode of Electric history. Today I have the pleasure of talking to longtime friend Tim Wilson of the Jackson Custom Shop. Tim was there in the very beginning and can remember stuff that most people have forgotten. And I'm so excited to get into this and to really talk Jackson and Charvel in the early days and just everything about that time.

So, Tim, welcome. Welcome. Thank you. Yeah, man. So, and we've been talking about this for a while and I'm so glad you decided to talk to me about all things Jackson and Charvel. And my first thought, you know, the best place to start is always the beginning. And from our conversations in the past and what I know, I know you started around 1979.

That's correct, right? Yeah, it was actually December of '78. And the funny the funny story about that is I had been looking for a job and I knew about Charvel, which is a whole 'nother story, and I went down to the unemployment office and there was a notice on the wall that said, "Pin router operator, Charvel Manufacturing, $3.35 an hour." And I was married at the time and had a couple little kids and I thought there's no way I can work for $3.35 an hour, but Charvel would be cool.

And so I said I'll I got to pass on it. I got to find something that pays better and I started looking for other jobs and it the job search didn't pan out and so about a month later I went back to the unemployment office. The notice was still there and I said, "Well, it must be fate calling or something." And I so I applied for the job.

my interview was with Grover and Joanne together and Grover basically said, you you know, "You know how to work a pin router?" And I said, "Yeah." So, "Can you make jigs?" "Yeah." "Do you know what a Stratocaster is? I thought it was a trick question. I said, "Oh, well, it's a guitar." "How about a Telecaster?" Yeah, it's a guitar. And he said, "Okay, when can you start?"

from the Wayne era. So, you could say that you know, maybe Eldred was Grover's first hire, but there were some other people that were already there and Bob Bayless was one of them. there were a couple others. I don't remember their names. I don't know whatever happened to Bob Bayless, but he ran the pin router there. And what I remember is when I first started there Bob was going to show me how to route bodies.

And he would put the wood on the machine and he hit the pedal and the router bit would go like that, you know, just straight down, fast and hard, you know. And when you do that with a router bit, of course, it burns. It burns the wood. So, my early memory of those days was Bob Bayless routing bodies with burnt smoke ash, the smell of burnt smoke ash, you know.

So, I you know, those guys one of the nicknames for the place was Grover's Country Club because those guys they kind of came in whenever they felt like it. like I said, I was married and had a couple kids. I needed a job, so Right. I was there every day at 8:00. I did a full four, you know, 8 hours, a little longer if I needed to.

And those guys would kind of wander in at 10:00 or 11:00 and work a couple hours and leave or they'd come in late in the afternoon and work in the evening. So, it had this kind of weird loose vibe. You loose vibe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And at that point it was bodies and necks or just bodies and then the neck thing came when you got there.

Yeah, it was just bodies at first and I did I you know actually did the same thing that Eldred did when I first started the I think the first thing I did was glue up body blanks on that using that shaper machine. although I will say when you took them out of the clamp and you dropped them on the floor they didn't split apart.

somewhere in there, you know, as we started getting really busy, So, I You know, back up a little bit and talk about before Charvel. Do you want to do that a little bit? Sure. Yeah, wherever you want to go. I mean, it's you know, I'm curious of how I'm curious of obviously the history, what it felt like in the shop at that time, you know, cuz it was so early on.

You know, was it you know, I know he's I spoke with Mike Shannon a few weeks ago, and he mentioned the country club thing, too. So, that was That was a thing, apparently. You know, There was a little There was a little kind of like country store up the street from the shop. And in the back of the country store was an old field with a big oak tree.

And Mike Shannon and I used to go up there every day at lunch, smoke a couple of doobies, drink two or three tall beers, go back to work, and really struggle to finish anything for the rest of the day. So. So, saying that if you if you were purchasing a guitar from that area, you wanted the morning guitars. You wanted the morning guitars.

Believe yes, you wanted the morning guitars, not the afternoon guitars. You know, fortunately you know, I still have all my fingers. You know Thankfully. not everybody was that lucky. There was a couple of guys lost fingers in that shop. I believe it. Or pieces of fingers. Yeah. you know, you could run your hand across a joiner and all your fingers would be the same length in 2 seconds.

That actually happened to somebody. and it's so sharp it's almost like you don't even feel it immediately, right? It's just Well, I've never had it happen but I would imagine that, yeah. I grew up in Glendora. Right? And I grew up in the Beatles era. So I remember sitting in front of the TV watching the Ed Sullivan Show, all that stuff. I was about 8 or 9 years old.

and I wanted to play guitar so I got a hold of an old Yamaha acoustic guitar but the action was about this high off the fingerboard. Tony Wait used to call that real man's action. Like if you knew how to play guitar with action like that, you know, so and friend of mine taught me a few chords and you know, some basic songs and stuff like that and I used to go over to his house and we would play together and he was totally into Cat Stevens so all he ever

wanted to do was play Cat Stevens songs and after a while I got so sick of it I wouldn't go over to his house anymore cuz and to this day Cat Stevens comes on the radio, I kind of like, you know, I can't take it, you know. and I was actually about 20 years ago, was in a band and a couple of the band members wanted to do Cat Stevens and I just put the hex on that.

No, we're not going to do that. You quit. Yeah, I'm not. No, it's hilarious. But anyway, So, I learned how to play guitar and then one day my grandmother had a Harmony electric guitar that's kind of like a 335-ish or Country Gentleman or something, you know, it was a kind of like a semi-hollow archtop guitar that was in her closet. And she gave it to me.

Said, "You like playing guitar. I bought this for my daughter years ago. She never took an interest. You can have it." And I had that guitar for It was the best guitar I ever had. I loved that guitar. And I had that guitar for years. I ended up Well, one of my darker moments, I smashed it in a fight when I was drunk.

I've regretted it ever since. but You know, at least you know what happened to it. I've had some of my the first two guitars that I had, I just you know, I just sold for something better, you know? And I regret both very much, you know? And this guitar I had was just a Harmony Stella. It was a $40 guitar at the time.

But I still I that was started it. You know? And I And I regret both very much, you know? And this guitar I had was just a Harmony Stella. It was a $40 guitar at the time. But I still I that was started it. fan- It was fantastic. And You probably could have put better pickups in it, maybe, but the guitar itself was great.

you know, whether it's something that you gigged with and then at that period you're going to remember everything when you look at the guitar you remember things that happened around that era of your life. It brings it right back. It's almost Dude, completely different example but you know how sometimes you'll just get a smell and the smell will remind you it'll bring you directly to to a place from 40 years ago and you're just like, oh wow, how that's so incredible how that happens.

Well, guitars do that, too. One of the things I always found fascinating about them. Yeah, so whenever I smell walnut, you know, in a shop somewhere, it takes me back to junior high school wood shop class. wood shop. There you go. I just I'm right there, you know. So you So you walk into the Jackson You now you get hired, you walk in there and that even though the salary wasn't great at the time, you still you're surrounded by people I would assume that you're you're now getting friendly with and

creating bonds with. You're making guitars, which is fun. Right. Right. Everybody's sort of the same age, I'm assuming as well, pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we're all I think I was 20 21 maybe something like that. Already had kids, you know, too young. Young. Young. Yeah. Yeah. So my thing was when I took the job for me, I thought, well, this is a stepping stone to Fender cuz what I want to do is I want to work for Fender.

That's a real company and they do real stuff and I'll learn everything here and then I'll go down there and apply for a job. That never happened. But I want to back up again because you know, like I said, I was playing guitar as a kid. I never played in a band. I didn't I didn't really have the temperament for it. I was one of those kids that was couldn't get up in front of the class and read a report, let alone play guitar in front of people.

So for me it was more like a hobby than anything else. And you know, I lived in Pasadena and they used to have these parties, you know, the kids at school, you know, you'd hear rumors going around, oh, there's a party at Mary Sue's house Friday night, you know. And I remember one of them where the girl she was like a cheerleader or something and she was having a birthday party with a few of her friends.

Oh. So, what happened was when I got out of high school, I got a job in a little factory that made playground furniture and I worked there for about a year and I saved my money and then I quit my job and I got my pickup truck and I said, I'm going to travel the country and see the world. And I'm driving through somewhere in Colorado or something just at random and picked up a hitchhiker and the guy said guy said, yeah, I live in Kalamazoo.

I said, well, I'll give you a ride. So, I gave the guy a ride to Kalamazoo and guess what's in Kalamazoo is the Gibson factory. And I thought, you know, this is what I want to do. I think I'll go work for this Gibson factory and then I said, but I can't because I'm 19 years old and I know if I get a job there, I'll never be able to leave and I'm too young to settle down.

So, I came back to California. Got a job at a place making house wears. you know, like bread boxes and things like that. Place called knock on wood and that's where I met my first wife. And she was actually deeply involved with a band called Stormer. which was led by a guy named Jimmy Bates. And Stormer and Van Halen used to play gigs together.

And as I remember it well, it was always Jimmy Bates' opinion, we blew Van Halen away. We're so much better, you know? So, you know, I worked at that place for about a year and then Sherri and I packed up and decided to travel around the country or something, you know, we were still young. We went to Kentucky for a summer and then we came back to California and got a job working at the Woodworks, which is that furniture place.

And I'm working there and there's a woman working there who's you know, got a job there and it turns out she's Kirsten Bates. She's Jimmy's wife. So, I got to be friendly with Kirsten and Jimmy and you know, Kirsten would talk about Charvel and all the drama going on with Wayne and all that kind of stuff. So, I knew all this stuff and Jimmy said that Jimmy's claim was that he invented the tapping technique and Eddie stole it.

I don't know if there's what's anything in that or not, but Jimmy also claimed that he went into Wayne's shop with an Explorer that you know, cuz an Explorer is kind of butt heavy and he wanted to make it lighter, so he just cut a chunk out of the back and that became eventually the Charvel Star. So, anyway, I worked at the furniture place and that job kind of came to an end.

It was one of those places where when you got your paycheck at the end of the week, you had to rush to the bank, you know, before everybody else did. And that's when I started looking for another job and I saw the ad for Charvel Manufacturing. So, that's kind of how I I knew they were and all that kind of stuff and ended up working there.

So, then you was Grover leaning on you for the continued redesigns of the guitar? So, they So, you guys get to the point where you take a Fender neck and you're basically reverse engineering it to a point, cutting it in half, looking at how the truss rods put in, everything. So, then you start making necks, right? And Right. The original necks were they 12-in radius, right?

This is before compound. Is that correct? I believe so. I want to say so. 12-in radius, yeah. And then And a lot of those necks they were immediately going on Charvels or they were for DiMarzio and for for other companies as well. both. It was both. We were making guitars, but not an awful lot. I think most of what we were doing is making bodies and necks for DiMarzio and Mighty Mite Who else?

BC Rich. We made a lot of BC Rich stuff. S SG Curly guitars. Curly's, yeah. Yeah,

we made some of those. Okay. And then after a while, Grover just decided, you know, that stuff's just a distraction. I want to just focus on our stuff. So, you know, we kind of shifted gears and just did Charvel. How quickly from the time that you got there did it really feel like things were starting to take off? Was it immediate? Like, so if you're like number three, yeah, how quickly was Grover pulling in people and how quickly was just like, well, we're making X amount of bodies a week and

all of a sudden we're making X times two, and X times four, and you know, did it happen quickly? Well, I guess that's a relative term. I'm I know by the time a year had gone by, we probably had 15 people working there and we're doing a lot. Yeah. That's moving quick. There were a lot of Van Halen style stripe guitars on the paint rack, you know?

We did a lot of those. Yeah. Which I get I you know, heard different things from different people, but I think that there either was or wasn't a gentleman's agreement on those between Ed and Grover. Or Grover knew that was a hot I think there wasn't. I think there wasn't. I think there wasn't. And I think that I had heard stories about how was a difference of opinion about whether or not it was cool to do it or not, you know?

I mean, from Grover's point of view, and I remember at the time I tended to agree with him. I said, "Hey, we make you know, we're just painting a guitar, you know?" but apparently Eddie had trademarked that design somehow. Yeah. So, I think there was a cease and desist at some point and Yeah. which was kind of a bummer. so, they got it.

it was I know there was stories about early NAMM shows where Mike and Grover and Joanne were at and they were displaying those guitars and then all of a sudden the rumor was like, "Eddie's in the building." and they started hiding the striped guitars underneath the the table at NAMM, you know? Let's get rid of the striped ones, but he already I think he already knew cuz there obviously is people friends with him and it's probably somebody else walked by the booth and said, "You there's a bunch of striped guitars

and called Mike, and said, "Okay, we're back in business." So, Mike left, and he went back to the furniture company. And he was there for maybe 4 months or 5 months. They went bankrupt again. Ugh. Mike wasn't getting paid. He called me up, and he said, "Hey, you told me if I ever needed a job, I could come back." And I said, "Yeah, come on back."

So, he came back, and well, now the rest is history. Rest is history. Yeah. Mike is Mike Yeah. He said that one of those guys. He's a genius, you know. Yeah. one of the things I've always thought about those days was, you know, it was a collection of people that came together kind of by chance, but do you ever see a collection like that come together again anywhere?

There was something about it that had something to do with fate or something, you know. It was just amazing. Yeah. Even Grover, even Joanne, it was amazing, you know. Yeah. Grover, I spoke to Grover a couple of weeks ago, and we're going to do we're going to do one of these with Grover. He was traveling right now. When he gets back, we're going to do it.

And he was And was he was interested I guess he's apparently still friendly with Joanne. Yeah. You know, he goes, "Nobody gives Joanne the credit that she deserves." And he told me a story about, you know, I think she was on the phone with Richie or Sammy Ash. It must have been Richard Ash. And you know, Richard was supposed to buy like one guitar or two guitars for the Sam Ash chain.

And by the time she got off the phone with them, he had bought like 27 guitars from her. Like so she was selling the you know, she was in the operations part like selling the guitars and really kind of communicating with everybody. I do remember I have somewhere an original what I guess you'd call was an original Charvel catalog. And it wasn't a catalog, it was a photo album.

Which is like a album that you'd buy in the department store to keep all of your Kodak pictures. Right. With It must have had about 20 pictures of it. And it was at the Grayson's Hempstead, New York store. Right. Friend of mine worked there. And wound up when the store closed, he took that and he gave that as a gift to me cuz I still have it.

he can concentrate on making the guitars. At what point did the compound radius come much later or was it was it in the early still strat headstock Charvels? Or did it happen after that? I'm kind of It came Well, no, it was in the strat headstock Charvels, but not in the beginning. So, you know, in the beginning, when I went to work there, it was that little shop.

I forget the name of the street. It was on Gladstone. It was on the south side of Gladstone, a little like 1,500 square foot shop. And then things got busy, so Grover went across the street, a little industrial park, and rented a shop over there. So, we had two shops. And then eventually, he rented a third shop, and we closed the one on the south side.

And it was after that point is when the compound radius thing came in. And the way I remember it was Mike Eldred, you know, did all the setups on the guitars, and Mike was complaining. He said, "You know, I don't know what the deal is, but there's always a hump in the middle of the neck, right here in this spot, on every neck."

And it would be on the treble side, about halfway up the neck, around the 11th through the 14th fret, something like that. It's kind of like a little hump. And I'm staring at it, and I'm thinking, "Well." And this is There's a little disagreement between me and Grover on this, but Grover says that he realized that it needed to be a compound radius.

So, basically, maybe it was Grover's idea, and I came up with the why. And the why is because when you have a 12-in radius fingerboard, it's a cylinder, and the strings go from end to end on that cylinder at an angle. So, when you go at an angle, the underneath that the string, it's going to be a curve. It's not going to be a straight line.

So and that was happening, so then it would still we're still in the Strat headstock phase. Was this Right. Was it pre-serialized guitars, or was it right around the time that the guitars was starting to get serial numbers, or what was it like the new headstock? If you had to You know, the six the hockey stick. Boy, oh boy. And I should know something of this cuz I've had million Charvels in here and we usually obviously do every spec on them when they come in, but I'm just curious of like

what exactly the that whole switch changed cuz at some point As I remember was what I remember we were doing all those shapes by hand for a long time. you know, you get a neck in the neck department and you get your big block and just kind of like grind at it and you know, and try to make it try to make a compound radius out of it and put some gauges on there.

So we were doing that for a So I'm pretty sure most of those early Charvels and even the tilt-back necks, the early tilt-back necks all had compound radii done that way. It was somewhere around 82 I think where I just you know You know, during that period I was shaping necks. You know, Eldred did it in the early days, but then around 80 to 81 82 I did that every I did it every day.

I shaped necks, I fretted necks all day long and I went to school. That was one of the cool things about Grover. he was real supportive and I told him I wanted to go to school, you know, learn something about life or something. He said, "Sure." So I went to school, come in and work odd hours. But because I was going to school, I didn't have a lot of responsibility at around the shop for about a year.

So what I did was is I shaped necks and all that. And while I'm doing all that, it just dawns on me one day you know, maybe we can make a machine to do this. And so I went to Grover with my idea. There's still an old really shitty-looking drawing of that machine somewhere around here. I don't think I might have a copy of it of the original drawing, you know, the sketch.

you know, I had a my head was somewhere else. I had a different focus. I do remember that whole period when Allan Holdsworth was there. making loud music and I remember somebody coming in and we set up a guitar in the parking lot with some paint-filled balloons, throwing balloons at the guitars to make splatter paint. I remember who that was. Yeah, you know, they kind of came and went, you know.

Can we can we talk a Just so there's as far as the neck-through guitars and Yeah. Lee Jackson guitars, I want to go there and I don't know what order we should follow cuz I'm Right. obviously curious. And you've talked a lot about Randy and I think that most people watching this and listening to this still want to know like maybe details that have been left out through the years or little things.

and I certainly am. And obviously I've been a guitar dealer for years and followed you and you we've been friends for years and I've heard this but there's always some little other little trinkets that come out when we talk about it that I either don't remember you saying or that's something that, you know, just remember. You know, like just like a new thing that just hit you.

I want to talk about the Vic Verge guitars, but Right. That's what I was going to say. you know, cuz so there's a kind of evolution that happened here. you know, in the beginning we were making basically strats, you know, Fender strats with Fender strat heads. And at some point along the line Grover came to me and said, "Well, I want to shrink the body down a little bit, you know, make it a half an inch smaller all the way around or a quarter inch or whatever it was."

So, I said, "Okay." And I took the pattern and I made it. And that was the Dinky strat. Right. Then at some point we started mess messing around with Explorer heads, you know, the hockey the Explorer shape head and stuff like that. And somewhere along and doing tilt back necks and then Grover said, "You know, I want to take the dinky strat and I want to put it tilt back Explorer head on it and I want it to be a set neck."

there must have been close to 100 guitars. Yeah. And it was all the early stuff, you know, it was the set neck Dinky Strats. He had a bunch of those. He had the Victor K guitars. Yeah. just a ton of stuff, you know. And we had the So when I went there actually I went there I had a photographer with me. to make a long story short, I took a photographer with me and we spent 3 days at his house taking out all the guitars, specking them, hanging them up, photographing,

all this kind of stuff cuz my intention at the time was I thought, you know, there should be a book, you know, there's never been a book about this. Yeah. I was working at Fender. I did all this work as a preliminary. Here's a start. I said something to people at Fender about it and they said, "Well, that's fine, but at the end of the day they wanted editorial control."

So I wouldn't be able to say whatever I wanted to say. I would have to run everything through them. They were going to burnish it. They were going to polish it. They were going to do whatever they wanted. So I said, "Okay, I don't want to do that. That's not the story I want to tell is a sanitized Fender version or something, you know."

Yeah. So anyway, you know, the last the last page of the book of what I wanted it to be when we finally closed the Ontario factory, Fender, you know, they didn't want a lot of this stuff, like the compound radius fingerboard. And I took some of that stuff home to set up a shop. And there's some of the stuff I didn't need, whatever.

They bulldozed the interior of that building. You know, it was one of those concrete tilt-up buildings, and over the years we had completely developed out the inside. We had built walls, we had paint booths, we had this, we had offices, we had all this stuff. And they had to return it back to its native state. So, they actually brought in a bulldozer.

No, it's called Balboa which is the one where he they show him as a restaurant he owns an Italian restaurant small little Italian restaurant every day he goes and he buys all the all of the groceries and the and the produce and everything that he needs for the restaurant. He's got this beat up panel van that he drives. Adrian is now dead.

And he's got a son who kind of it doesn't I don't want to say doesn't appreciate who he was as a man like and he's tried to live in his own path and not have the shadow of Rocky Balboa in his path. And there's so many great lines in it about life and when you listen to his book it's although the writing of the movie and everything that he did is intriguing, it's all the stuff that happened to lead up to that makes it so interesting for me and that's why

I'm so happy that we're talking about this. So continue on. I digress. Well, let's well, we kind of got off track here. We were talking about the next your body thing. Well, yeah, I'd like to so I said was that the you know, first we did the Dinky Strat and then Grover wanted to do a set neck with a hockey head. And so, I worked on that for quite a while making the tongue and groove, getting it to fit right, gluing all the necks on and all this kind of stuff.

And as we were starting to finish them out, you know, the big problem the big flaw was that the heel was too big. So, if you were playing and you wanted to get up into the higher register, you there was just big lump of wood in the way, you know? Right. So, you know, we're just kind of scratching our heads thinking, "Well, what do we do about that?"

And I said I said to Grover, I said, "You know, honestly, I think it would be easier just to make a neck-through-body. Just do the whole thing all the way through the body and then you could shape it any way you want." So, okay. And that was the birth of that. And I think the Vic Verge guitars were the first neck-through-body Jacksons that were done that way.

And I've got pictures of those guitars around here somewhere. I don't know where they are, but And they came through here and they felt fantastic for what it's worth. The I had fallen in love. We sold We sold both of them to very good customers of the store here. Good. And that's customers/friends, so they're still kind of in the in our radius a little bit, but one of the one of the two guitars I was I was it was hard for me to let go.

thing. At that point, I think I kind of did all the rough shaping and sanding to get it ready and then gave it to somebody else who did the fret work and somebody else painted it and you know, and Randy ended up with it. that's kind of my memory of the whole thing. Okay. And then and as far as far as bodywoods or any of that stuff being decided, that was but your input was basically build the guitar and just keep shaping it like from direction from Grover and or Randy?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Gro- Grover was the real you know, he was the genesis of everything that happened there. It was always Grover. You do this, do that, let's try this, let's try that. My role, you know, I would make suggestions. Like the nectar body thing, you know, that was my suggestion. why don't we try it this way, you know. that guitar had a maple body, so it weighed a ton.

It was really heavy. And here's Randy, a small dude, and you're giving him this guitar that's 11 lb, 12 lb maybe, something in that neighborhood, I guess. Yeah, and you know, he was a Les Paul, basically Les Paul player. So was Grover back in the day, you know, they were Les Paul guys. So the neck was supposed to be similar to a Les Paul.

So the ame nut width, the same width at the butt. we did the same kind of thing with the binding where, you know, you had to file the binding over the sides of the frets, all that kind of stuff. I think it even had Les Paul style inlays in it, you know. Yeah. Yeah, block inlays, sort of like a Les Paul Custom.

Yeah. Okay, so that So he was chasing his Les Paul Custom to a certain degree. That's so interesting. But doing it differently. Doing it differently, right? and he was you know, the headstock Do you remember the Concorde? Sure. The airplane? The airplane, yeah. So is it basically the nose of the plane? Yeah, so that plane would take off and either while it I don't think it was in flight, but when it were ready to land it was certainly while it was landing.

that I had read, but never put the two together with the headstock pitch and the head and the the nose of the plane. So thank you. That's a new one. That's a new one. Well, I thought it was com- common knowledge, but Yeah. I For me, it's it never really You know, there was another thing happening right around that time. You know, Charvel was pretty successful at that point.

You know, lots of people were buying Charvels. So, the whole neck-through-body thing with the Jackson headstock kind of deal, that was a whole that was a whole different direction for us. And I always thought you'd have to ask Grover about this, but I always thought that Grover was concerned that if we went off in some weird direction with neck-through-body guitars and pointy headstocks, that it wouldn't go very well and it would damage the reputation of Charvel.

So, he decided to call it a Jackson. But, I As the years have gone by, I thought about it and I think, "No, I think Grover just wanted to put his stamp on a guitar instead of Wayne's stamp. He wanted it to be his." That actually makes more sense to me. And you know, of course, the rest Jackson for many years was way more successful than Charvel ever was.

Absolutely. Yeah, but I had heard it was different. You know, there was This is a guitar. Jackson, for what it's worth, you know, when you think of you associate certain guitars with certain companies. It's like when you think of a Strat, you can get a Strat anywhere. Everybody makes Strats, but when you think of a Strat, you think of Fender. You know, when you think of a Tele, you think of Fender.

When you think of a Les Paul, damn stupid phone calls. I'm getting texts like that They're all junk calls. Anyway, anyway, you When you think of a Les Paul, you think of Gibson. You think of a Flying V, you think of Gibson. There's very few companies can they can make the claim to a guitar design that's iconic to their brand. And Jackson is one of those.

it really defined part of the whole history of that musical movement, you know? And you know, people could say what they will about like the hair band era and all that stuff, but there was a lot of great stuff happening and the guitars were sort of the helping to define the look and the and the pop culture part of it to a certain degree.

It's really it's when you really think about it and you really melt it down, it was a part of pop culture. And certainly the Randy the shape of that guitar is sort of embedded in like if you show that some to somebody if you show that to like almost a random person off the street that could picture that guitar, they may actually reference the '80s.

They may go, "Oh, yeah, yeah." You know, so it definitely defined a moment and for Grover and for Jackson and for Charvel really definitively kind of put them beyond on the map, you know? And it's you know, with so now as Grover's hiring people and there's more and more people coming into the into the company and the factory and now there's two buildings or three at one point and it's starting to grow.

Right. What was the temperament there? Was were things growing too fast? Was was it all just exciting? Was Grover pulling up in Ferraris like did it did it did it ever go there? a Ferrari, I can tell you that. I think he drove an old That's cuz it's the freaking guitar business, that's why. I think he drove an old beat up Dodge or something.

You know all my customers look at the guitars, the expensive guitars on the website or in the store and you just make all these assumptions and it's really it's you know, if you want to get rich, don't don't sell guitars for a living. I guess it Yeah, Grover I was at I asked Grover about that once many years ago and he said, "If I had it all to do over, I think I'd be an investment banker."

Which I always thought was the funniest line. You know, I didn't get rich. I mean, I certainly didn't get rich. You know, I made a I made a living and I'm okay, you know. Yeah. But, No, I mean, Grover and Joanne had an apartment in San Dimas and they got up every day and came over to work in a beat up old car and, you know, we were busy.

That's this table. yeah. Look at that. I have that table here at my house, but so, the last thing I did when I worked for Grover was is I made this table for him, you know, and it took me about 2 weeks to do all the work, and I There you go, but you know, Grover was amazing sometimes. You know, in spite of the fact we had this disagreement, he still wanted, you know, I we still had this interaction.

Anyway, I went off and did that, and that's when the recession hit in 1980, right? And there was this huge downturn. business got really bad for everybody. Okay. The company that I was working for closed, and I was unemployed. is This is '80, not '86. This is still early. 1980. Okay. Okay, '80, '81, right in there. Okay, so it's it's it's Reagan just got in.

The all the all the the Iran crisis, hostage crisis, and oil prices were really high. Doesn't it sound familiar? Yeah. Yeah. It was Interest rates were through the roof. I think interest rates on home mortgages were like 17% or something. Yes. Yeah. And you know, the economy collapsed. And people lost their everywhere. And this factory I was working for, they closed. And so, I started looking around for another job, and one day I'm driving down to Gladstone Street and I said, "I'm just going to stop in and say hi to

Grover." And I walked in, and I remember walking in the door in the wood shop and seeing a table there that had a bunch of Charvel necks sitting on it that they were working on. And I just looked at that and I said, "This is what I got to do. I mean, this is art. This is not making cabinets or, you know, KD furniture all that other stuff that I've done.

This is This is like guitars, you know?" Yeah. So, I said to Grover, "Is there any chance, you know, I mean, I'll do any you know, maybe you need someone to do purchasing for you or something. I'll do that." And he said, "Well, I don't need that, but I'd love to have you back in the shop." So, I went back to work.

And by then, when I came back, I think those four prototype Randy Rhoads guitars that Mike Shannon made had already been done. Okay. Okay. And so, I had no involvement in that. but from that point forward, you know, when Grover decided let's go into production, well, that goes back to me. So, Mike, you know, I did designed out the production process, how we're going to do it, this and that.

and I remember I think I made some patterns, Mike made some patterns, you know, yeah, so there you go. Okay. When you when you came So, but at the time when you came back again, was it a couple of years or was it less than that? Cuz those guitars went into production. It was about a year. It was about a year. So, Randy was still Randy was gone at that point, right?

Cuz I would assume the production thing happened after he died. Yeah, so forgive me about this because, you know, memory's a hazy thing, but I think you know, they made those they made the they made the black Randy Rhoads and I think they made four of them. And I think one of them ended up under Joanne Perrow's bed in her apartment somehow and I don't know what ended up she sold it later to somebody.

one of them ended up at if you look at the logbook RR0001 went to I think Shibuya which was ESP. The president of ESP bought guitar number one. Ah, okay. Interesting. Because you know ESP came out with their version shortly after that. But So anyway you know I came back to work and like I said I at that for that so for that time period when I came back I was going to school going to the local college trying to learn something and working odd hours shaping strat necks for Grover.

And somewhere in the in there is when Randy's death happened and of course everybody was in complete shock. Sure. And then I think Grover decided to just shelve it would be tacky at worst to come out with a Randy Rhoads guitar Right after So I think he just shelved the whole thing for a while and I think it wasn't quite some time later maybe 83 when we started making them in production.

Makes sense. Cuz it was a it was a pretty famous for guitar players who were into Randy Guitar World and Guitar Player both had done small stories while he was still alive cuz he had won best new best new talent I believe it was 1981 in Guitar Player magazine and then you know Guitar World magazine was it was him spots well. And then after his death, Guitar Player magazine came out with a pretty lengthy interview with when they talked to everyone from Rudy Sarzo to Max Norman, the producer of those

the two the two early records of Blizzard and the Diary record. and in there they interviewed Grover, too. And somewhere Grover had mentioned that at some point they were going to do the guitar. You know, that they were going to produce that guitar. And they said that it's a Glenn Lafleur model, the picture of Randy with he's playing the black one and the white with the white one is behind him and he might have his Les Paul and it looks like he's they're probably backstage somewhere before performance.

And as a kid, I remember seeing that guitar going, I have to have one of those. And it and it wasn't necessarily as much as I love those two records and as much as I was loved Randy's playing, it was just the guitar it was so cool looking. It was just like, you know, I digress for 1 second. I have a friend that's much older that was a guitar player that grew up playing in the New York City scene.

And he describes the first seeing of the Stratocaster, you know, as a young kid Buddy Holly and every and he said it looked like a spaceship, you know, like it was real like, you know, excuse my French. It was mind-blowing. And that feeling that he got from like this is this is as close to Excalibur as you can possibly get. I got again with that Randy guitar.

maple. So, it's really dense and hard. Yeah. You make something out of mahogany, a lot of the frequencies get absorbed by the mahogany. You get a completely different tone. Yeah. heavy metal setup, when you're running everything through distortion, to have that clean signal come through into your into your rig, so yeah. You're just going to get a much better, much clearer Yeah.

distorted sound. And that was something that Elgin was talking about. those are like two sound like two contradictory terms, but I think you know what I'm talking about? I totally do. And you know, speaking of the maple, Elgin was talking about this. You know, the philosophy for and I'm kind of going there. The philosophy for the maple and heavy guitars was a thing up until a certain point.

Elgen pointed out that he thought that point was actually Allan Holdsworth who was going, "My back, I have to I need a light guitar. I don't really care to be a bit but this et certainly the right That was basswood. That was basswood and they carved out that whole thing, the swimming pool route, so it was even lighter. Right. And nowadays that's what everybody asks for.

Everybody wants a lightweight guitar. Nobody wants those heavy boat anchor guitars anymore. But there's but there's something to be said about it. I'm still I'm I'm probably the one of very few people who are in the camp that I felt like the brass nut and some of the brass hardware and the metal appointments on a guitar actually will aid in the resonance cuz every piece of plastic that you affix to the guitar is and maybe maybe this is psychologically I'm looking at this but like it seems like it mutes the

guitar a little bit. I could hear the difference between a poly guitar and a and a nitro guitar. Cuz I feel like you're sealing the guitar in plastic to a certain degree. so You know, a lot of guys can. I can't say that I have my ears are that good. I can hear it all the time. You know. I can't hear the Eric Johnson claims that he could tell the difference between a Duracell and like an Eveready battery in his in his tube screamer.

Okay. I could tell when I could tell when a battery's going, you know, like I could tell like, "Wow, this I feel like I'm losing some gain or something on a distortion box or something like that." But I don't know if I could distinguish the difference between two battery brands, you know, but he's he's Eric Johnson. Yeah, there's a whole you know, there's a whole thing about right?

is this, well, it's not just the pickups, it's actually the pickups and the harness. You know, Right. And it's you know, the nickel content in the metals and all of this stuff is different back then cuz they were able to use it and so a lot of this stuff has been outlawed because of the California law or different laws. So that all these all these materials slowly start to change.

So I think it's I think it's the combination of everything. but I'm absolutely with you in the in that the neck through construction and the way that guitar the Randy guitar would just resonate had a very distinct sound. Right. know what the that was popular wings at the time, right? The white one was all maple. It was all maple and then the black one was maple popular wings, I believe.

I'm pretty sure it was popular, yeah. Mike would know that. think as time has gone by they've actually changed it to alder. I did that. Oh, was that you? Yes, because Talk to me about that. Well, it was 1991 or something like that and we were doing production solos production Randy Rhodes. And I had just kind of just taken over full responsibility for the whole operation after Grover had left.

And I just thought, you know, I'm going to look at everything. You know, we were using cheap pots. I got rid of that. Spend the money, put a decent pot in this thing, you know, it's a expensive guitar. Put a decent pot in it, you know, stuff like that. And one of the things I looked at was the body wings. So I had the guys make some guitars with popular wings and make some guitars with alder wings.

We put them together. And we AB'd them and the alder sounded better. It had kind of a warmer kind of a more full tone to it. Okay. And it wasn't like a night and day difference. It was kind of subtle, but you could hear it. And you know, the way you do an AB is you put a blindfold on, you know. So I had several different people.

and here's you know you first as a kid first experiencing Ratt, seeing Warren playing a Charvel, you know, with this cool graphic image. They super cool guitar player. They look cool. and then Robin Crosby's playing the I believe he had the King V. It was a red King V on that show. And it said Jackson and it was like, "Oh my god, this is more than just the Randy thing."

So now this is yet another advertisement for Grover and for Jackson. And Jake E. Lee was playing a Charvel. so that whole show or at least the a good portion of the show was Charvel Jackson artists. And I feel after that kicked up even more. And it in New York, it wasn't easy to find, you know, I had a customer conversation with a customer friend of mine just last week and he's the one that kind of like I always remembered it but he re-reminded me.

Jay Schwartz, I'll throw his name out. And he just he re-reminded me how difficult it was to get those guitars at the time. You wouldn't walk into a Sam Ash necessarily or Guitar Center and just see walls of them. That wasn't the case. Right. There'd be one or two because they were selling very quickly to when they appeared at a guitar shop.

A lot of the is from what I remember a lot of those guitars were custom ordered. So the guitars would come in and go right to the owner and Right. the rest of the public wouldn't see it on display or anything. But you guys were making a lot of guitars at that point, right? Yeah, if you go back and look at the serial number logs, I think probably 60 or 70% were going to dealers as dealer stock, actually.

Okay. Just for what it's worth. They weren't hanging on the you got to remember, you know, this is a small operation. It's not like we're a gigantic factory, you know? And when you go to Fender and you walk through there and they're doing 600 guitars a day, you get lost. And you wonder 600 Where do they go? Where do they go? were a little shop and you know, back in that at that time period, we had 30 people, 40 people, something like that.

Grover spent a lot of time working on that and then on in Glendora at the old factory, we just shifted and stopped doing Charvel and all we did was Jackson and still couldn't meet the demand, but we just did just let's just focus on Jackson. Okay. So, the Charvel thing went to Japan, it was licensed. And then I want to say a couple of things kind of came together at the same time.

One of them was is that we were getting so big at that little industrial park in Glendora, you know, we had two units and we had like 50 or 60 people working there. We took up all the parking places in there. Everybody complained about us. There was the neighbors next to her complained all the time about the dust coming out of the wood shop.

We did our best to contain it, but they it didn't matter. They complained anyway. At one point, I'm going to drag Eldred into it. Sure. At one point, there was a guy across the parking lot that was complaining about how we took up all the parking places. And but he had a car that had been sitting in a parking place that hadn't moved in 6 months.

It just sat there and the tires were getting kind of old and cracky and stuff. And I think it was I want to say it was Mike Eldred went to the supermarket and got a fish and brought it back and Jimmy the guy's car open and had I think there was two fish and he put one like under the driver's seat of the car and then he put the second one back underneath the dashboard like this and the idea was is that someday the guy's going to open up the car

and it's going to be pretty foul and he's going to go through and he's going to find the one under the seat and think he solved the problem but to you know we even had at some point we had a we had a dumpster fire one day I think that happened a couple of times you know we were spraying polyester in the booths and polyester when it sets off gets hot so what you're supposed to do is leave the filters in the paint booth until they are done cuz they're going

to set off in the filter and get hot and sometimes somebody would just take the filters when they were done painting and throw them in the dumpster and then the having all these filters in there getting hot and the dumpster would ignite and that happened a couple of times so somewhere along the line in there the landlord decided not to renew the not to renew our lease so all of a sudden we were under the gun we had to move somewhere we had no idea what to do and it was

right around then when IMC came in and the licensing deal started happening for Charvel and you know what should have been a really nice source of revenue I don't know why you'd have to talk to Grover but I don't think they were paying out the licensing fees in a timely manner and we were trying to figure out where to move to and Grover would was looking for anybody as investors and he found a couple of guys that were willing to put up the money to help us move and find a

new place and all that kind of stuff. And it right before he got on a plane to fly to Texas to find out when he was going to get the licensing money, he got word from the investors that they had pulled out of the deal. So, he got on a plane with this bad news that now we're we're screwed. You know, what are we going to do?

We got nowhere to go. He went to Texas. When he came back, he had sold Jackson Charvel to IMC. So, apparently, he sat down and had a long conversation with them. And I think I really think he didn't have a lot of choice. You know, we had to do something. We needed a large infusion of cash to keep working. yeah. It was at that point had was becoming a pretty iconic brand.

You can't just walk away from that. And so, they offered to fund the move. And you know, next year or two, we you know, we built that factory in Ontario, moved out to Ontario.

Now, at that point when he made that deal, was he was he no longer there or was he still s- is operating and managing in some capacity? No, he became a partner in the business in the overall business. So, I think they gave him they gave him a 12 and 1/2% share in the larger corporation. you know, and a big pile of cash.

Yeah, actually made him kind of kind of wealthy at the time. Okay. I think he went out and bought a Mercedes-Benz. That's what he did. I don't blame him, you know. Yeah, that's what I guess that's the old The old Dodge was gone. And you know, he came to work with a Mercedes-Benz. I think he even had the little windshield wipers on the on the on the headlamps, you know.

Okay. nice car. You know. So, anyway, so, Grover stayed all the way up until 1990 and in 1990 I guess they had I guess it was a contract of some sort. He was under some sort of contract with them and in 1990, they decided not to renew the contract. Grover left. And when Grover left, at that point in the Ontario factory, it was just me and Joanne.

It was just the two of us and I was telling you earlier that I gained a lot of respect for Joanne and a lot of that respect came from that time period. Because you know, she was truly amazing as far as keeping things running and you know, all that kind of stuff. Right. So, and then And About a year later, they decided not to renew her contract.

Wow. And then they kind of dumped it on me and then so on and so forth. Yeah. And that was the Was that the period we had talked about where there was just a few employees and now Right. the grunge thing had started, music had changed. We were now We were now in the throes of Well, in '86 was the stock market crash.

the club scene and the rock scene and how many people were attending. And also and now you're in this banking crisis and recession and now all of a sudden 10 bucks to get into a to a venue is all of a sudden kind of a lot of money and kids are like, "Ah, I'll just watch MTV. I don't need to go to see my favorite band."

the I think the whole grunge thing had a lot to do at least with Absolutely. the downturn for us, you know. Yeah. That was so the at the peak of Jackson Charvel, I want to say in '87, '86, '87, that time period. you know, we had a factory in Japan that was making 175 guitars a day. A day. Six days a week.

And all those were going to the warehouse in Fort Worth, and they were shipping them all over the world. We had another little factory in Japan that was making 30 guitars a day. we had 107 people in the building in Ontario. 25 of those people were just making pickups. We made 10, 12,000 guitar pickups a month. Wow. that's who was that? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, we were supplying all the Asian factories for the Charvel Jackson stuff. Right. so, you know, when the management changed and, you know, Grover left and IMC came in and they were much more had much more of a corporate cost-cutting mindset. Right. And the first thing they did is kill the pickup thing, you know, we weren't going to make pickups anymore.

We kept on a couple of people to continue making so we could use up the inventory we had. But they started buying pickups for all the Japanese Charvels and stuff. They started buying pickups from Korea or somewhere like that instead of using the US made ones. it was around that time that we hired Abigail. You know, the old pickup lady from Fender.

you know, I think it was we hired her in the middle '80s, but yeah, as we were laying people off the pickup line, we kept Abigail. We kept her employed until we couldn't keep her employed anymore, and then I called John Page at the Fender Custom Shop said, "Hey, Abigail, you know, send her over." And they took her. So. Was she there first?

Was she Was she at Fender first and then came to Jackson? Yeah, she was at Fender, I don't know, I want to say from the '60s. Right. And I didn't realize I didn't realize there was a transition there at all. I didn't know that. Well, you know, in the early '80s, you know, the whole Fender CBS fiasco, Bill Schultz, and Fender actually shut down for a long time.

There was no Fender. you know, that actually had a lot to do with the success of Charvel. You know, you Fender Strats were kind of scarce in a way, I guess. Yeah. people needed guitars. They came to Charvel. They came to Kramer. It was good for PRS, you know. All these other guitar companies suddenly got a lot of business. Right. but when they Fender had this big layoff, Abigail was one of the people they laid off.

Another fellow named Scott Zimmerman. And then there was Paul Gagan and I'm not remembering all the names, but we hired them. You know, we hired these people. Paul Gagan came over for Fender and designed the Jackson pickup line. Scott Zimmerman came over from Fender supposedly to run the wood shop or something like that. And we ended up sending him to Japan to be an inspector on all the Japanese guitars.

Scott's still there. He loved it. He ended up getting married and stayed in Japan. Okay. and Abigail, right? And so Abigail was put in the pickup department and she just worked came in every day and made pickups for years and, you know, like I said, when when it came time where actually I'm the one that had to lay her off, I called John Page, you know.

I wasn't going to just dump her on the street, you know. I kept her as long as I could,

you know. Right. So, anyway, the IMC guys came in. They were cost-cutting mode and whatnot. And at the end of the day, about a year after Grover left, they actually laid off Joanne and left me there. And then one day Tommy Moore flew out from IMC and he you know, had a meeting with me about something. They said, "Well, we've decided to close the place down once and for all."

He said, "We don't really need this place. It's not really making any money and you know, all this other stuff, right?" And so I had this big kind of discussion with him about that and I made my case. I said, "Well, wait a minute here. it never really has made money. It's not been a profit center and probably the big reason is because it's always been run like a custom shop.

Why don't you change the product line and make a production guitars here? Make a standard soloist that people can't call up and say, 'I want 23 instead of 24 frets.' Just make a bunch of standard guitars. That's what everybody else does that survives in this business. And the other thing you got to have is you got to have a flagship operation. You've got this whole Jackson Charvel product line.

If you don't have a USA flagship operation, eventually it's going to kind of die down. It's going to be just some cheap import brand. I mean, do you really want to do that? So we had this long discussion. He went back to Texas and the next thing I knew his product guys flew out and said, "Okay, you win." And we came up with this you know, the soloist USA, the Randy Rhoads USA, the Fusion guitar, which is a short scale dinky strat.

And then they said, "We got to have a weird shape. So how about this one?" And they had some guy design the Warrior. So the Warrior was the fourth guitar. Yeah. So that's what we did and from 1990 to around 1996 or 1997, that was our primary focus. Okay. I just one thing I am proud about that during that time period, the factory actually made money.

people that are in the guitar business and some of this stuff you just don't you don't realize, you know, how it unfolds, you know, and I mean, we could even do a cross-reference to the music business. If you and we're talk we were talking about Van Halen and any of the things that I've read is the first couple of records you'd think as a fan you'd be like, "Well, those records are incredible.

So, surely they were making tons of money." And they were selling tons of records, but their debt to the record company was so high that they just had to keep moving to try to stay above water, which I don't know if they did in the first couple of two or three Van Halen records. And that's I'm using Van Halen as a reference, but I think it's it's true for some story in the music business.

I know that. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, nowadays I don't think anybody makes money unless they tour. Right? Correct. Yeah. Yeah, certainly. Not off album sales, right? Or downloads or Yeah, downloads don't pay anything. Yeah. Yeah. Listening to Spotify you make a half a penny a listen or whatever it is. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's pretty it's pretty it's you hope that at some point it changes, you know, cuz I wonder sometimes if it's discouraging people from from being musical, you know, and the things that were pulling people into the

you hope that it's truly just for an art form, but certainly the people that go I have no shot of making a living doing this. So, they could be very artistic and have really what it takes to entertain millions of people and write beautiful songs and do all this great art. And they just they make that decision just out of necessity, you know, where I you feel like you know from the 40s or 50s it was just like well I struggled but if I actually get to a certain point and

I sell some records this is going to happen and certainly record companies were developing bands back then and giving people the chance to develop. And how many how many musicians, bands, artists it took them two or three or four records before they really hit their stride. Right. Right. You know, it's like it I'm not a huge Yeah, you know and but Bruce is one of those people to say when I when I was a kid list just listening to music on the radio I remember thinking at the time you know

digesting art and enjoying art is such a is all part of that. And as it gets baked out because of all the software and everything, you wonder you wonder where it goes. So we I don't know if you want to call it a complaint of mine, but it's this my old guy comment, but you know, all of these all these bands that you're talking about are acts, musicians, artists, it was really still about the song.

If the if the guitar player happened to be fantastic, well, so be it. But it was still about the song and the and the band or the artist or the melody of the song. Right. And I want I because my algorithm on Instagram is guitars, I just get served up guitar player after guitar player and a lot of these kids are phenomenal musicians and technically adverse and play stuff that you go, I don't even know how that's even happening.

This is I can't believe humans can play that fast or technical or just the so that the technical part of it has gotten really extreme, but I wonder if the platform is enough to pull people in to make it more of a you know, a digestable thing to the masses. Yeah. You know, cuz they've losing that and Time will tell, won't it?

What's that? Time will tell. Time will tell, yeah. I mean it's just Things will Things will change. My it's my own personal feeling, but I wish the world would switch away and be a little bit less digital [sighs] Yeah. and a little bit more analog, you know. Yeah. yeah. I'll tell I'll I miss the days of being able to drive in my car and not being interrupted by a cell phone call or a text message Right.

any of that. And to me the to me the radio sounds a lot better than a Sirius XM or like any of that satellite radio. I could hear the And even listening Bluetooth in your car is just the sound quality is just completely different. So you become like the audio file and you listen to this stuff, it's really kind of compressed and Right.

I don't know. That's you know This is This is I said to you before a whole difference We're just a couple of old Luddites here, right? But I could say I could I could find a segue into anything. So here we go. Okay. So the moment where you where a company's a guitar manufacturer goes it goes man like we're out on the pin routers and hand shaping everything.

Let's start buying CNC machines and having the CNC machines do a lot of the work. Right. What is from this conversation that we're talking about, does anything change in that other than the artistic part of actually Geppettoing the guitar into the piece of wood into a guitar? Is What are the benefits and what are the In your opinion, what are the benefits and what are the maybe the downsides of just like I think the guitar community the guitar player thinks that like people put it take a big plank of wood

and they just put it in a machine and it just spits out the other side with strings and it's tuned to pitch and it's painted and it's like So you know like I would have thought that would be pretty cool if you do that. I always thought man I don't have to all this hassle, all these people all the time and like managing them then all the you know, I just make a machine and stuff wooden one in.

But I you know, I like CNC stuff. I think it's great. it's so much more accurate. It's you know? And nowadays you know, by the way, I'm these days doing work for Abasi, Tosin Abasi, right? So, they're they're doing probably 30 guitars a month USA and I'm building probably a half a dozen of those. You know, they're coming to me. and the place that's doing the CNC work it's actually pretty amazing.

You know, right down like I got to show you this I got to show you this picture, right? Okay. Can you see that? Let me see. Yeah. That's me somewhere in the '80s with an X-ACTO knife

carving out little cavities in a fingerboard to stick inlays in. And you know, they're always sloppy and you always have to fill it and all that kind of stuff. But nowadays on a CNC you can cut the whole inlay thing out. It's a perfect fit. You can't even tell there's filler in it, you know? That's what I'm talking about. I think I agree.

Okay. there are always some things I think that at least so far CNCs can't do. You know, at the end of the day a really good setup makes a night and day difference in how a guitar plays, sounds, and feels. It really does. good fretwork, you know? you know, that's all kind of still done by hand. Sure. So you know, the edges of the fingerboards, how they're rounded over and how they feel.

That's a huge thing. none of that's done on CNC. That's all done by hand. But if you're just talking about cutting a pickup route out to drop a pickup in, use a CNC. What's Yeah. What's the difference? Okay. What's the big deal? It's going to be nicer. It's going to come out nicer, you know. Yeah. And I guess I knew this from a from a guitar dealer, guitar player perspective.

And a few weeks ago I spoke with Rick Gembar who's the He was the senior vice president manager of the Gibson Custom Shop from I guess it was late mid I should know this. I just talked to him about it. I forget dates. Like mid '90s to early '90s to 2017. And he said that every '59 Les Paul that came in from artists or people that were just like, "Hey, you could spec this out."

He goes, "Everyone was different." He goes, "Everyone was completely different." You know, so they had to They when they started doing the reissue program, they really had to sort of take the combination of several and go, "Okay, I think this is the one that we like the most. Let's start here as a as a you know, as a baseline." Right. You know.

But every neck was rolled slightly different. The weights obviously of the guitars were different. the carve the top of the carve of the Les Paul, they all were shaped slightly different. Some were shallow, some were deeper. Right. And it's just you know And to say and to say when I was a kid, my dream was to work in that factory. I wanted to be a Gibson I wanted to work in the Gibson factory.

but it's So, we should start a guitar line and call it Versaci Versashi. You know. go. What's the other one? YSL, you know. Yeah. Who knows? How do you How do you How do you feel about this the current Stratocaster lawsuits stuff that's going on and what's your what's your two cents on exactly what's happening right now with the shape I'm I'm not I'm not familiar with it.

I've not been following it. I really Oh. No, I haven't I haven't been. So, my understanding is they're suing people for making Strats? Correct. The Strat shape. People have been using the Strat shape for 50 years? Yeah. And isn't it aren't you like if you don't defend your trademark design or something, then it's too bad. It's out there. Yeah. Yeah, there's a I don't know exactly what the what the time period is, but it's just about constantly defending it.

and it's it's cause it's it's interesting cuz cuz I've gotten called from different places go, "Oh, you're selling less, you know, Fender guitars or Stratocasters?" I was like, "No, not really. Not that I could tell." cuz I think it gets back to this fashion thing that we're talking about. You listen to I pick somebody, Stevie Ray Vaughan, you know, and then you're just like, "I need another Strat."

That's just the way I think we work as guitar players. And I don't I I don't think they're too concerned with the all of this all of this you know, kind of crinkly stuff that's just it's just it's just noise right now. And I think people would like to think, "Oh, that's the demise of Fender and they really shot themselves in the foot."

And they may have from a social media standpoint and whatever, it seems as if the people that are that are complaining about this are usually not the same person that's actually buying a guitar. Mhm. Or you know, that's that's at least at the at least what I feel about it. We'll see where it goes. They the quick version that I heard was they were in Germany and they were going to court with a some Chinese manufacturer that was producing Stratocaster shape guitars and maybe selling them on eBay or Amazon or

But just to back up a little bit, you know, IMC, you know, the guys in Texas at some point they had some change in management or whatever. It became Akai. And Akai USA was owned by Tommy Moore, who's the same guy that owned IMC. Now he owns Akai USA. And Tommy was getting old. And I think he was just thinking, you know, at some point I'd like to sell the business and retire.

And in the middle '90s, you remember the Charvel the Charvel San Dimas series that came out? I do. Yeah. So, at first I thought that was Oh, this is just, you know, we'll have it I mean, Charvel at that point was pretty dead. There were no Charvels being made anywhere. And I thought, oh, okay, they just want to revive that and try to make some money.

In hindsight, I think what they wanted to do was protect that trademark. -huh. So, they came out with the Charvel San Dimas series so that anybody later on couldn't like claim that trademark. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I do. And, so anyway, that's probably why it got thrown in with the deal. But they were hoping that there would be value in it, I think.

but anyway, things are going along just like kind of normal. And then I think the event that, the catalyst that spelled the end of the whole thing was, 9/11. You know? Everything stopped after 9/11. Yeah. we had to go through another round layoffs in Ontario, you know, it's 35 people suddenly down to 20. And, so that whole year after 9/11, things were pretty slow and we were just kind of struggling to keep going.

And, you know, that's when Tommy decided to sell to Fender. So, Fender came in 2002 at some point, right? Yeah. I was pretty excited about that because I thought, hey, you know, Fender's got deeper pockets and is willing to spend it, I think. Whereas Akai never seemed to be willing to put any money into it. And I thought, great, you know, we can get some backing.

They've got engineers that can come in and look at what we're doing and maybe design some more efficient machinery and whatever we need to do. it kind of didn't pan out that way, did it? Well, it did it didn't it didn't. I just, you know, from the dealer perspective it felt as if I was able to get guitars easier than at the IMC point was impossible.

and and there were people at Fender that were excited about building into something even though if their vision wasn't necessarily to recreate history, it was maybe sort of take it to a different place. But it you know, I was a frequent visitor at the custom shop back then. Mhm. And it seemed like things were going in the right direction. It seemed like everybody was sort of excited from 2003 to 2007 or so.

Yeah. like there was a level of growth. And at least for us, you know, and I think we were taking a lot of the build slots at the time back then, you know, cuz the Sweetwater wasn't selling guitars at that point. They were still just a just they were just selling hardware recording software and hardware and keyboards and things like that. They hadn't gotten into the guitar business.

I think that Chuck Surack had thought the guitar business was a waste of time. so they stayed away from it. So when these guitars were more readily accessible, what was happening for us is and I guess I'll I always drop Jeff's name because I feel like he was a very important part of this whole history if you're a Charvel Jackson freak. Jeff Kary was the head of the specialty division at Fender.

And that was basically anything that didn't have Fender on the headstock was his responsibility. Right. And he was taking Fender money and pulling it into specialty to fund a lot of the projects and I guess maybe the tooling that you guys need Mhm. and to get to get the message out. And I was

we became friends. I was you know, expressed my fascination with Charvel and Jackson and getting guitars built and I think we were taking a lot of the build slots for the Charvel stuff in the early days. Right. You know, with our natural guitars if you remember and things like that. So, from from my perspective was it was growing. Right. Right. but was something different happening on the floor at that time like as you were there?

know, for me cuz like I said, I was always you know, I spent the bulk of my career working at Jackson Charvel and I believed in the project. And like I said earlier, you know, it's one of the few guitar brands that's kind of iconic. It's got its own thing. Yeah. So, when Fender came in, I had great hopes. But it became apparent right away that their vision and mine weren't really weren't the same.

I had hoped that they would you know, upgrade the Ontario factory. I thought it was important that Jackson was separate from Fender so it had its own identity. but they ended up doing with Jackson the same thing they did with a lot of other brands. Where they just closed all the peripheral for and just kind of absorbed it into their own organization.

they did that they did that a Sunn amplifiers is the one I always remember cuz I had a Sunn bass amp around here for a long time. I sold it not too long ago. but you know, they kind of absorbed Sunn and then Sunn just disappeared. Rhodes piano, they absorbed that then it just disappeared. Right. SWR, same thing. A great amp. I've got a couple of them here and it's the same thing.

They just absorb So, I thought hopefully this will be different. That was my big fear. I'm happy to report that Jackson and Charvel are both still thriving. One of the few brands that Fender's taken over that has actually survived. Yeah. Gretches another one. Gretches another one. Yeah. But let's say let's add Tacoma and Hamer to the to the pile of brands that just kind of went away.

about a year and then they shut it down. and then he went to work for Warmoth and he worked for Warmoth for seven or eight years and he's out of the guitar business now, but Good for him. It's Yeah, so there's a connection there anyway. Yeah. The those guitars So, my thing was I thought I, you know, my nightmare was is that they would absorb Jackson, kind of absorb it into Fender and it would get lost in the DNA and lose its identity and not be a thing anymore.

And so in 2002, it started coming true for me because instead of like bolstering the factory and all that kind of stuff, they decided to close the Ontario factory. There's that story I told you about the pile of stuff in the building. Yeah, yeah. I wish I had a picture of it. And they moved us all down to Corona, but it's not like they carved out a corner of the building and put us there.

They scattered us over that entire plant. I mean, our paint shop was way over there, our assembly area was on the other end of the building, our wood shop was way over there. We were scattered all around and for me to I mean, I had to walk I walked that entire Fender factory from one end to the other every day, probably 10 times a day, you know, cuz I'd have to go over here and see what you're doing and go back over there and see So, it was kind of nutty.

It felt like an afterthought to them. Like the guys that were running that plant down there really didn't want anything to do with Jackson, but they were told to put us in there, so they just found some places to stick us. So, dare I say it felt a little disrespectful. Yeah. I don't want to go down that road, but it just felt that way.

And then Good. Yeah. So, It's It improved and you What year did you leave? I left in 2006. 2006. Spring of 2006. Which was upsetting for people it was 2007. I take it back. It was 2007. That's right. I was Yeah, cuz they you were working on that Eddie Van Halen guitar to a certain degree and that guitar came out in '07, I believe or It was yeah, I was I was upset when I heard that you were that you were splitting, cuz I knew that I knew how important you

anyway, it was just this spiral kind of started where it had nothing to do with the guitars or whether they were good or not, but just the way that they did their numbers there, they had to start raising prices. Yeah. And I think there was a point there where what used to be a $2,500 neck-through-body Soloist Custom was suddenly 4,000 bucks and not points.

So, And that And that happened over a very short period of time, and that certainly made guitar players and customers really upset. And then And then who's the bad guy? You know, like the dealers are the bad guys. Like they're they're like, "We have nothing to do with the pricing. This is we get delegated what the guitar has to sell for. There's a map pricing manufactured advertised price.

There's a specific margin that they give us to work with, and trust me, it's not big." And that happened It happened a couple of times, probably one after the first efficiency thing that they went through and then the prices jumped and then after COVID it happened again and it was pretty dramatic. It was just like the only thing that gives me solace in those price jumps that happened is that when I look at the rest of the guitar market where Gibson let's say the Gibson Custom Shop is selling a $6,000

or $6,500 or $7,000 custom shop guitar. That's right. But that's that's what they're asking for them and people are paying that. And here's Jackson on the other end that's probably doing more hand like the master built guitars are still a lot of pin routed and not CNC stuff especially if it's a cookie or good customer or whatever guitar. So there's a lot more hands-on work from one individual as opposed to going through like this whole mass team of people.

So you could almost justify the increase in price at least psychologically that's what I do. I go okay, this is it's way more money but let's compare it to other guitars in the same you know in the same you know kind of scope it starts to make sense. But it's a lot now and when those price pre-COVID before the pricing really went up I had most of my customers coming in here and incessantly trading one thing for another and it wasn't for a for a novice musician guitar player or somebody

I've been doing this for a long time. I know what I'm doing. You know, I mean I mean, even stupid stuff. Like, when every year when Fender did inventory, you know, all the managers had to inventory their areas. My area was always dead on. Everybody else was cheating the numbers to try to make it match up. Mine was always right, you know?

I'm a good manager. I knew what I was doing. so and Alex Nicholas without getting too much into it, he told me he had told me one day when with they first moved us down into the building down there, and I'm talking to him one day and he said, "I've always been a Jackson fan. I had a Jackson I had a It's always been a fantasy of mine to be the boss at Jackson."

So, fast forward a couple of years, all of a sudden he's the boss at Jackson and I'm reporting to him. And I just said, "Well, I'll see how this goes." And but the thing was is I had to go into his office every morning, I had to report to Alex, I had to sit down there at 8:00 in the morning and watch him deal with phone calls and other people coming in and asking questions and this and that, and I'm like, you know, like I work to do, right?

He'd finally get around to me at around 8:30 or so, and we'd go over a couple things. And so, it just felt like some kind of grandstanding. And to be honest with you, Tommy, that really hurt. It hurt. Sure. Of course. just began to reassess my life and what the hell I was doing. Didn't look like the future was very bright for me at Fender.

you know, hindsight's always 20/20. I, you know, in hindsight, maybe I could have gone to Jeff Karris or something and said, "Hey, find something else for me to do in the organization. Have me work somewhere else. Get me out of this situation." Yeah. but it is what it is, and I just decided "Hey, I'm I'm 50 years old now, and I know lots of people that have walked away from this business and gone into other things, and they're doing just fine, and maybe that's what I ought to do.

so many years been not only a guitar dealer, but I'm in the fold with you guys. I always felt like if, you know, if I didn't do this, I could always be in that factory in some way, shape, or form because I just know everybody there and kind of, you know, just from my side I always felt like I knew the product really well and just, you know, and so when I watch these moves happen it's always very frustrating me as an outsider to watch.

Right. It's like I don't know. They say sometimes when you watch, you know, when we watch movies or TV and you're watching something and you see something unfold and you're like, "Why would they do that?" It's cuz we're not emotionally involved in any way. So it's very easy to look at something from the outside and make a decision. So but somehow I'm still emotionally pulled into all this stuff cuz I'm friends with everybody, you know?

Yeah. So you you're the moment where you split it was it was upsetting to me. If It was a sad day, I have to say. Yeah. It was a sad It was a very hard decision. I thought I was I you know So like everything you do in life, you know, you think that every decision you make at the time you think is the right decision.

I don't know if it was or not, but I'm okay. You know? Yeah. That's with 2 and 1/2 I could keep going. We're 2 and 1/2 hours in we could keep going. I think there's stuff that we haven't covered yet. Yeah. Yeah, I'm kind of I'm kind of there's a lot we haven't talked about, but It always seems as if the I could say this.

It part one always does fantastic and then part two like, you know, it's like a sequel of a movie like it's it's hard to get people to watch the second one. So I'd like to include as much in part one as we possibly can, but there's a lot we haven't talked about. I want to talk about what you were doing with your guitars.

There's There's There's more there. I also wanted to talk about Meher Baba for a little bit, too, cuz we talked about this on the phone and it was something that I didn't really know about you, but then once you started talking about it was like, "Well, that makes a ton of sense. Why did I never put two and two together?" You know?

Everything he's built is gone. Everything he's done is gone. Everything is gone. It's a whole different situation for that individual. Right? Right? So, while we're sitting here, you know, lamenting our loss, maybe we should think a little bit about his loss, right? I just thought that was a very just an interesting take. I mean, I can't comment on it too much, but you know, one of the things it brings up is that you know, there's that whole movement nowadays, you know, YOLO, you only live once.

So, you got to do everything you can cuz you're only going to live once, right? But, there's another one, and it's like you can't take it with you. Right? You can't take it with you. So, why are you hanging on to things? Right? So, you know, there I was at Fender in 2006-2007, and I you know, my whole identity had been wrapped up in Charvel in a big way.

That was who I was. It was Jackson Charvel. It was you know, I was pretty invested in that. but at the same time, I knew that at some point in my life, I was going to die. And when I die, all that's gone. So, maybe you ought to let go of a little bit of that now, and just kind of like, okay, it was a fun experience, it was a nice ride, but let's let go.

And so, that was part of my thinking in 2006 of why I left. It just seemed like from maybe from a spiritual point of view, like it was probably the right thing to do. Yeah. Who knows? Did how if you could remember, how soon was it after that you felt Yeah, this was the right decision and I feel I feel better. In what way better?

I don't know. Like more grounded, more relaxed, less worried about finances or money or putting things into perspective like, you know, like what's important to you? Like the a Mercedes or just a car that gets you from play point A to point B? Like all these things. it took a while to actually kind of get used to the idea and feel better about it cuz you know, if you know, you can say whatever you want to say about Fender, but they do pay their people very well.

It's the people that have a purpose in life every day and they're getting up with some purpose and keep going and I mean, how many people can you count that retire and they die. Yeah. So, oh, I'm going to golf and I'm going to this and I'm going to that and within 18 months to 3 years they've died and it's like, oh, crap.

You know. so I every time every time I go there and think like, well, one day maybe I won't do this. I just I don't I don't know what I would do with myself. I think I you know, like and I could I tell my wife like I could do without the stress, but but everything else about the guitar business I kind of still really enjoy.

You know. Right. Right. Yeah, same here, you know. Same here. So, I went out I was working on some necks the last couple of days. I'm busy with other projects that aren't guitar related, so but Monday night and last night I did manage to get out in the shop and work on some necks. And yeah, it's different vibe. I can sit there and work on them and I'm totally into it and doesn't feel a whole lot different than it did back in 1981, you know, when I walked in the shop

and I saw all those guitar necks and I said, yeah, this is what I need to do. You know. Doesn't feel a whole lot different from that. Well, for what it's worth, any any guitar that you produce, if I'd always get behind. So, if you ever decided to pull a Mike Eldred and make a make a few guitars here and there just to keep your keep your head in the game, I would sell them in a heartbeat here at The Music Zoo, and I know that I'd have I'd have a

lot of customers interested cuz there's, you know, there's there's a tons of Charvel Jackson guitar collectors, players, and fans that shop here and keep an eye on what we do cuz I feel like we're we're one of few but that really love the brand that just continue to carry the torch but for vintage stuff and for the new stuff, and I would just love to have you a part of it in some way.

And for what it's worth, like Eldred and I have a having a ball right now. Mhm. It's, you know, he's and he's doing it Have you followed it What Did you watch any of the video with him? You did, right? I was kind of like, "I don't know if I want to watch, you know, cuz I don't know what he's going to say and, you know, but I watched it."

I ended up building all the Jim Tyler James Tyler Line 6 Variax guitars. Right. So, even though they say Jim Tyler on them, they were all coming from me. It's like 650 of those things. Jeez. And then of course there's Sugi in Japan. Right. They approached me around 2010 and I've been doing stuff for them ever since. I think I've probably done around 350 of those.

That's a lot. Yeah. Nowadays I'm doing some stuff for Ibáñez. Yeah. But, you know, at the time when I started, you know, getting back kind of like getting back into making guitars again around 2010, 2011, I called I was talking to Frank Chu and I said, "Hey, you know, I think I'm going to get a shop. I'm going to get a building."

And all the new stuff. "Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Why? And he said, "Because, you know, it's not just the rent. When you pay the rent, you know, then you've got all this other stuff. There's the insurance, there's the utilities, there's this, there's that, plus all the money you're going to have to spend to do the electrical and da."

Said, "Is it really worth it?" I'm like, "Well, maybe Give me second thought." And I'm fine here. You know, I've got a very large 800 square foot three-car garage that I converted into a woodshop. Yeah. I took one of the three bedrooms in the house, it's the one we're sitting in now, turned it into an assembly room where I could put stuff together.

And so, basically, the overhead's pretty low and it's low stress. So, Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like you and him have kind of come to the same place with his stuff. Yeah. It's I mean, it's you know, without talking to out of school, I've kind of come to the same place here. We I've been in three different buildings. And you see the 34 years that I've been doing this or whatever the math is.

And they The original spot The original spot we kind of got pushed out. It was a We I made the decision to leave cuz we had a small fire in the basement. Oh, the electrical panel went on fire. It was a 125-year-old building. The electric had never been done. I was renting, I didn't own the building. and it didn't look like my landlord was going to, you know, do some like gut job and just like, "Hey, let's change the electric before this place burns to the ground."

when that building was built in like 1900. Yeah. And what it what the really the big like holy we got to make a move. I was with my wife who I think at the time was still my girlfriend or fiance and I had it was a Sunday and I had gotten a call from a friend/employee who was like they have Northern Boulevard which was the street that we were on closed off entirely and something is on fire there and the two of us get up and we drive and it turned

out it was a building just a few doors down from us and it burnt to the ground and I think it was a similar It was a similar problem and that was really like the what am I doing? You know, like Right. We got to we got to get out of here but anyway, sorry like the as you keep doing this and just taking more and more stuff on as you also take more stress on in your life, you know.

So. Yeah. But Well, I'm pretty much doing that. So. Yeah. Yeah, well that's that's a good advertisement for me. Just you know, but just keep doing what just keep doing what you love. Which you are and again, I would say I would sell the guitars here in a in a minute if you if you decide to make a few. Cuz you were doing them years ago the TP Wilson guitars, right?

Like I've done a few here and there. Usually when somebody just bugs me and won't leave me alone, you know. Make me a guitar so Okay, okay. Yeah. I'm the perfect guy for that. Come on. Yeah, I've done I've done maybe a dozen or so here and there. my kind of like thing, what I like doing is like with the Sugis, right?

So it's not a custom. There's a certain style, a certain model, the design is this, there's a certain set of standard colors, all that kind of stuff. They just send me an order, this is 12 guitars, this is what we want. I make them. I don't worry about it. Right. It's easy, yeah. Yeah. So. That's kind of always I don't you can't charge as much for a guitar like that but it makes up for it in volume and ease and less headache.

You know, just the fact that Grover had faith in me. He said, "Oh, I know what I'll do. I'll send Tim Wilson to go do this or go do that." I was like, "Oh, really? Okay." You know. Those are favorite moments. I kind of like the period from about '83 to '85. You know, when things were booming and really going well. Yeah.

I can't point to any particular thing that was said or done or you know, any particular event. But just the vibe was really good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Yeah, there's certainly I mean, you know, certain moments in my life that I think back and I was just like, that was fantastic. And it's usually not like one day thing. It's Yeah, just like you said.

'83 to '85. I've had life. It's with the music too, where I just recollect and I go, man, that was I didn't even realize how much fun I was having until I look back. Like, oh, that was that was awesome. we had when we made that move from the original store into our bigger store in Roslyn. The store store was really cool.

It was very boutique-y. It was in a boutique-y neighborhood called Roslyn. Roslyn was in the late '70s and very early '80s was sort of a mecca of local music. There was a there was a club there called My Father's Place, which a lot of bands went in and out of. Just Everybody from Johnny Cash to Springsteen to Kiss to the Dixie Dregs, you know, like Holdsworth.

Everybody played there at some point. It was just a cool venue. It was right down the street from where we were. And it was just vibey. It was on the water. My office and the store had water views of Roslyn Harbor. And people would show up at the store and just look and go, "This place is outrageous. Like, how did you find this?"

And my wife found it of all people. Like, we were driving we were driving around looking for spots and she was just like, "Go down this road." And I was like, "This looks like a private road. Just like, just go down whatever and we found this building and it was wonderful. And the time from pretty much the entire span that we were at that building was just a lot of fun.

edit splice things or something. But okay. Yeah. And I think for the most part, you know, like with something like this is 3 hours it's it's usually not somebody sitting on the couch and watching it. It's usually somebody at the gym or in the car and they're listening, you know? they don't need to watch the both of us yap back and forth as long as they're listening to all the all the intriguing stuff about that period of time.

It's so important to me to want to document it. And I'm I'm just glad and honored that you spent the time sitting here and took 3 hours of your life to talk about this stuff. you know, I'm happy to share and I'm glad someone's taking an interest. I think it's important. in this it's kind of historical period, you know? other stuff and that's why we maybe will edit and just continue on because there's you know, I watch last and final thing.

I'm watching people online that have either have Instagram accounts or some kind of social media accounts and they're docu- trying to document history from the information that's on Google already. So they will do an AI search and get a bunch of information some not in not correct Mhm. and then they'll create this information for people and for somebody like me who watches and goes well, that's wrong.

And wait, what did you just say that? No, that's wrong, too. Oh, wait, he just pronounced Charvel Charvil. He doesn't even He doesn't even know the pronunciation of the name, but he's got 80,000 people watch this. So that means 80,000 people have just gotten the incorrect information. Well, one of the problems with that is once you put Yeah, once you put something out there like that if it's not true or if it's just incorrect, or something, the way these things work is it just reinforces it.

So, the next time you do a Google search, the misinformation is even stronger. Yeah. So, Yeah. No, I'm happy I'm happy to share, you know. Yeah, and that's and that's and that's the reason to take it from the people that lived it, and you lived it. Right. And you know, if we One of the other things I would cover, too, is just specs and things.

I see a lot of used guitars on the market that people are claiming are Charvels, when they're actually not. And some of the little nuances in the guitars that are very recognizable, that people are suddenly confusing for something different, but we'll go there. We'll We'll go over that. Yeah, I want to I can help you with what I can. Yeah. Okay. So, this Thanks.

Thanks for taking this much time. We'll We'll talk again.