Electric History: Guitar Stories by The Music Zoo. Mike Eldred of El Cabron Guitars, Early Days of Charvel & Running The Fender Custom Shop

I used the Papa Legba rub on my scrambled eggs last night and it was Tommy I'm making this new thing now. It's called kitchen dust and it's so it's a bunch of different spices, love rubs in it, but then there's a bunch of other spices in it and we put and I keep it next to the stove and my daughter she's staying with us for a few more I mean I think a couple more weeks then she moves back to Australia.

But she's like what is that? And I go, "It's called kitchen dust." And it and so I made this other spice that I'm going to probably sell, too. But it's funny because the bottles I hardly sell the bottles anymore, but I sell I was selling 40 pounds every maybe two months to this barbecue restaurant up in PAC, Arizona. Okay. And now they hit me up. They It's now it's 80 pounds.

It's incredible. Yeah. It's And when I bag it up, it looks like dope. It's hilarious. I mean for those that are just learning about this, you know, one of the things that I've always admired about you is that you and I could count them on one hand. People who in my life who I feel are a true Renaissance man, you know, someone who has just you're that guy that they could drop you out of a plane and land anywhere and you'll just figure it out and then some.

And when we first met, you know, so like my first meeting, even though you'd think our paths would have crossed during the Charvel, the early Charvel era, it did not. It was at Fender. And as you were more on my radar and we started meeting and I'd come out to Scottsdale to the offices, it's just like there was so many facets of you I almost sometimes found it hard to believe, but it's all true.

It's all there. And it's one of the things that fascinate about me about you. You're a musician, guitar player, songwriter, blues artist, commercial writer. This what we're talking about now is the Papaleba rub. You could basically take Mike's spices and put them on just about anything and it's magic. You know, like I remember telling my wife, I was like, you could sprinkle it on a dog poop and it would be amazing.

Like I think that and I've talked to mayor about it too where it's you know life is short you know and I tell people you got to try everything and you got to really kind of go after it. So if you have an idea in your head, it's like, well, I wonder if I could do that. You know, that's the kind of stuff where it's just like, yeah, just go ahead and do it and then see what happens.

And you may fall on your face, but man, you know, it's a lot, you know, I don't know. Failure is a lot easier to deal with than regret. And you know, when I c I see certain things and I just want to go after it and if it doesn't work. But if it does work, man, that's fun, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just it's been inspirational to follow you through all this stuff.

There's so you and I have again known each other for years and we've had these two-hour phone conversations and every time we get together there's never a shortage of things to talk about. There are things that I think over the years that you've mentioned to me that I think would be important for people to know about that they don't. And the best place to start is probably the beginning, you know.

So maybe when you started playing the guitar, the certainly the club scene, the meeting of Eddie Van Halen and then the beginning of Charvel Grover and Charvel and all that stuff is important. I think to your legacy and the history of everything. And I think that it's important for us to have and you really to document some of this stuff because as time is going on, you know, like I belong to face different Facebook groups and different forums for Charvel and for Jackson and for all these things and I would say that 65% of the time those guys have it right and then the other percentage it's completely wrong.

The point where you met Grover? Well, I started playing guitar when I was about 14 and my dad had bought guitars for us when we were younger and I remember we had one guitar that we were going to share and we had the guitar for about a week and then it disappeared and then I found it I think couple weeks later and somebody a kid down the street had stolen it and like drawn a stealth hornet.

So, but I met I so but I didn't really actually start picking up the guitar until I was about 14. Okay. And then it was funny because I would sit at my house and I had a really cheap oh god, I don't even remember what brand it was. I don't think there was a name on it, but it was like a 335 copy with a Bigsby on it.

Bixby copy. And it was really cheap guitar, but and I couldn't play, but I had gone out into my dad's garage and I had found I didn't have really have an amplifier, so I but I had found this extension speaker that my dad had for his Packard Bell stereo system that would go you could run out to the backyard or whatever. And I looked at it and I looked on the side of it and there was a little hole and I said it said mic mi mic.

And I thought that's the same size as the hole that's on my guitar. And so I got a cable and I plugged it in and I turned it on and nothing happened. And I was bummed out. And then all of a sudden all this sound started happening because the tubes had warmed up. And man, it was so big and distorted and everything. And it just sounded amazing.

And so I would take that speaker and I'd put it up on my dresser and then I would climb up on top of it and sit on top of it and I would make feedback sound. I couldn't play, right? So, I would just get feedback and I loved that and I did I would do that every day and my brother would come home and be like this and he'd run in and beat me up and you know and but and then one of his friends came over one day and my brothers told him he says my brother has a guitar and my brother's friend played guitar guy name Jim McGomery and he came in he goes let me see your guitar and it wasn't in tune he tuned it up he goes how old are these strings I go this the ones that came on it and he goes no you need new strings you super slinkies on it.

So he gave me strings and then he showed me a couple chords and from then on out it was over and then I just kept figuring that out and playing and taking the record machine and put it on 16 speed that drops it down a full octave. Sure. And I figure stuff out. And then between Jim Montgomery, a guy named Mike Farley, and another guy named Rick Jara, all three of those guys played guitar really well.

And so they would just come over and just I think they needed somebody to play with them. So they would show me stuff. And so I just I learned so much from them. And then Mike Farley was a guy who told me, you know, cuz now I had been playing a guitar for a little bit and he had told me he goes, "We got to go see this guitar player." And I'm like, "Okay." He goes, "Yeah, it's a guy named Van Halen.

You know, it's a great band, you know." And I'm like, "Okay." Okay. So, we drove up to Hollywood to Gizari's and they were doing four sets a night and they were doing covers. They were doing Ohio Players. They were doing Robert Trrower, Zezy Top. What year was that? It must have been, I think, 76 or 77, you know, and Ed was playing a Les Paul at that point and then he had the White Explorer and that was the kind of the thing, you know, and they were great.

And then in between sets, we'd go up like guitar players do and you know what are you playing through? What's that pedal? What's that? You know, and you know what amp are you using? And we would drink beer out in his van in between sets because we weren't none of us were 21. I don't think Ed was 21. I think Ed was maybe 20 maybe. I don't remember.

But and so we'd just, you know, hang out and talk about it. And then anytime they played, we'd go up and see them and talk and hang out and then they just started then they just blew up and they started getting really popular and so they started playing at the bigger places which was like with the whiskey and I saw them open for UFO one night at the Starwood.

With UFO. Happened was that cuz I had been seeing I now I've been going up and seeing Ed and hanging out with Ed and all that stuff, but at this level now I couldn't get to Ed. This is where that was at now. He was already starting to blow up. And they came out to open up for UFO and Roth comes out with a bottle of spinyatta wine, no shirt, you know, looking like Jim Dandy, you know, and just comes out and because they were a local band, everybody knew who they were.

They were already lit. And he came out and he goes, "We're going to do all originals tonight." And then they just went at it. And it was one of the best shows I'd ever seen of those guys. And I mean, you could tell that it they were it was right there. And Ed killed it. And then UFO came out and you at one point Shanker sat on the drum stage and just stopped playing, you know.

Yeah. He they were so rattled by that opening band. Yeah. It was mind-blowing. I mean, it was really a great show. That's what he say, too. Yeah. No, Lynch said the same exact thing. And there's a report somewhere in one of the Van Halen books, too. I forget which one it was. It might be the Null book or they were talking about that gig specifically and how Michael Schenker got really freaked out by Ed's playing and yeah, and just really didn't take it well and that whole performance was really kind of bad and he tanked it because he was just so freaked out.

Yeah. And then it because he's got that does he have the black and white guitar? Is it's just is it just like what a Strat at that point? Like a Fender Strat with a humbucker in it. Yeah, I think at that point he had the Explorer and he had this black he had a 64 Strat and I've seen like you said there's a lot of misinformation on the I saw something the other day and they showed a picture of this Strat and they said, "Oh yeah, it was this was Frankenstein before." No, this was Ed went out.

He got a 64 Strat or 65 Strat because I played that guitar at the Whiskey, you know, when all this was going on, right? And if you see the picture of Ed, he's got a he's playing the black Strat with the mint green pick guard and he's got a black silk suit on. You've seen everybody's seen that picture. He's got a red carnation, red or white carnation.

And his mom made that suit. And because I used to talk to her all the time. I talked to his dad all the time when I'd call because I had now I had the phone. I was talking to Ed on the phone and stuff and but anyways he had this 65 64 Strat and he had taken it and he had cut it out with for and put a humuckering in it.

And I'm sure at that point none of the other pickups worked. It was just straight to the probably the knob out but it still had the mint green pick guard and it was just butchered. And then he went and he at one point he painted a little pinstripe a white pinstripe all around the edge of it and you know and that was his I think his first venture into a guitar painter and then later on so I remember playing that guitar and seeing that guitar at the whiskey and that's when he sat down and he showed me how to keep it in tune you know with that this tune this weird tuning thing how he did and he showed me how it worked.

Transition. It was Grover was buying it at that point and Wayne was on his way out. Okay.

So Bob Bis was the guy who routed all who was routing some of this the bodies or all the bodies and then Carl Sandival who was doing some of the assembly and things like that. And Carl was only working there part-time and that's when I got hired. When I got hired, Carl was there part-time, but he was on his way out. I think Carl was there maybe a week and then he was out.

He was already out and then Bis worked there for a little bit longer and then he left. But that's when it I that the way it started was then because when Ed showed me the guitar and told me where he got it and stuff like that, I said, "Well, I want to get one." He goes, "Well," I said, "What's the number?" and he gave me the phone number for Charvel.

And so I called Charvel and I spoke to Grover. So that's how quick it was. When I called Charvel, I'd spoke to Grover or I think Joanne maybe. I don't know. Right. And then it's as soon as you spoke to him, you went down to buy a body and neck and before you know it, you had employed that. Well, yeah. Because we were, you know, at again at that time if you went to see at Van Halen, you went, "Holy [ __ ] this is the best guitar player in Southern California for sure." and he was doing stuff that was pretty unique.

This is like he was doing some of the tapping stuff, but that wasn't really it. He the way he was using the bar and the way that the songs were written and the soloing, it was just like this is outer space. This is different. Completely different. And so everybody was like, "Okay, well, I want to pursue that. I want to figure that stuff out." And that's Lynch was a big guy like that.

Lynch, you know, when he was playing with the boys, he dressed like Ed Van Halen, you know, and tried to pull the same thing, you know, no slant on him, but a lot of guys were doing that, too. And so you looked at it, he's like, "Well, I want to get a body in the neck, and I want to build a guitar, too. That sounded pretty interesting." So, I called up Grover and I asked him, I said, "Can I, you know, can I get a body in a neck?" And he says, "We don't sell bodies and necks anymore.

We just sell whole guitars." And I, that's when he had stopped doing that. And it was still boogie body necks on bodies that were routed at Charvel. And so then I went up there to buy a guitar and I kind of mapped out what I wanted and I think the total price for my guitar was going to be I think 800 bucks. And so I gave him $100 for a down payment.

And then I would drive up there because from my house to Charvel was probably about 45 minutes. Okay. You were wear at that point. Where were you living? I was living in Artesia and so I would drive from Artesia, California up to Landor or Sand Demis and I would pay him a hundred bucks. And at the time I was working at a place called Fedco, which is kind of the same as a Costco now, right?

Yeah, it's a big like department type store thing. I was working there, but my hours were really weird because I worked I went to work in the afternoon. I actually got up in the morning and I went to work at a place called World of Strings and stuff and then in the afternoon I would work at this other place and Fedco and but you I would work till about 9:00 at night.

So I couldn't rehearse with a band. I couldn't go out and play gigs, you know. So, I'm sitting there. I'm struggling because I'm getting this really cool guitar play made. I want to play more. I want to do more gigs and stuff. And I was really frustrated with it. So, I So, I thought, and then this is where the mindset comes in where it's like, I'm going to get a job.

Okay. And when you said it's going to ruin your hands, what did he have you doing at that point when you first started there? What? Everything. Everything. It was I mean I had to The first thing I did was glue bodies together. So there were bodies. There were body blanks, right? So you had two slabs of ash at the time was what we were using. And then you had a shaper.

And so you had to take one side of the shaper and you had to run that through the shaper. Now if you hit the shaper, it'll cut your fingers off. So that's one of the things. And so you had to do that, shape both sides of it. Then you had to put it together like this. And then you had to glue it, put glue on there, clamp it together.

And Grover showed me how to do it and stuff. And I remember I think it was the first or second day I was working there. I did that. And I glued up I think maybe 20 body blanks. And the next day I came in to work and Groer goes, "How'd you do it?" I go, "I did 20 of them." He goes, "Yeah, let's see." And so he took one and he took the clamps off.

There were three big pi pipe clamps. Took clamps off and he looks at the glue joint and then he just threw it on the ground and it split right on the seam. Whoops. What' you do wrong? I didn't clamp them tight enough and so he I had to re I had to redo it. I had to replant it. He didn't get This is the thing. I had to repl it and then I had to reglue it and then he showed me.

He goes, "You got to crank it down." And I remember coming home from work that day and my forearm hurt from cranking it. But the thing that was great about Grover is that he showed you how you screwed up. He didn't admonish you because I just he just lost money. I had to redo that was do duplicate work. Work over do work over and which is still the thing for me.

It's like a OCD thing for me. And so but he didn't get pissed at me at all. He just showed me how to do it right. And then after that, I never had that problem ever again, you know. And so that was really what was great about it. You know, he took the time to really show you and explain to you why and how that worked like that.

And before you came in, as far as you know, was he doing this? So like in the period where he purchased Charvel to the point where you walked through the door was he was doing finish work and working on guitars and because his history was Kelzone cases wasn't it? Was it was that anvil cases? Anvil cases. Okay. When I went down to buy my guitar the first night I met Grover.

I got there because again I was working till 9:00 at night. And so I said, "I don't I told him I said, "I don't get off until 9:00 and it'll take me I won't get up there till about 10:00." And he's like, "Okay, I'll be here." When I got up there, it was dark. The shop inside, I didn't think anybody was there. I knocked on the door, nobody answered.

So if that record was that record released February of 78 Yeah. So at that moment people like myself and everyone was look every guitar player was looking in the back of the record say Charvel manufacturing. Yeah. And so the phone started to have to start ringing. Right. Yeah. Now the thing that's keep in mind is that before that Grover was doing stuff for ZZ Top for Billy Gibbons.

I would I the first real rock star that I met was Billy Gibbons and I was I think I'd been working there a week or two weeks and Grover said, "Hey, Billy Gibbons is coming by tonight if you want to hang out." And I'm like, "Yeah." you know, and so I and I think I stayed there until, you know, it was dark and it was just me and Grover and then this silver limousine shows up and like three guys get out and Billy Gibbons had this silver cowboy hat.

I remember it being silver. It was like metallic silver straw and he had that hat on and they came in. I think they were driving down to Mexico, he told me. And man and then from that day on Gibbons and I were best buddies and we looked at all kinds of guitars and we talked about wood and all kinds of stuff and because Grover was making some a couple of bases for him for Dusty and at that point.

So, Grover had been making stuff for people before that. And I had told people that it was like, you know, very early on it was, you know, Gibbons and it was he made he did a couple of next I think for Richie Blackmore. They did some Bryan Adams was a really early guy, you know, and there was just a lot of people. Tommy Bolan, there was a lot of people that were beat that were getting work done from Charvel, David Lley, Reich Hooter very early on, right?

You know, but yeah, once Ed hit that once that record hit and people saw that guitar on the back and that and Starbo manufacturing that just lit the phones up and there was no internet really, you know. So people have to find you through the phone book or just really you have to do your homework. Yeah. To figure it out. But people, you know, especially guitar players are pretty crafty when it comes to that, just figuring it out, right?

Yeah. So now the phones are ringing, more people are coming in. And now is besides the novice musician or someone that just, you know, like is interested. Is there also like the people in LA and the club scene and everybody that you're mentioning now? This is all kind of percolating all at once, right? So then you guys are hiring a lot more people. Yeah, we were hiring people that, you know, and it was it's so fascinating.

Todd Krause and I talk about this quite often that Grover would hire the myth misfits, people that were in Sand Deis and around that area, you know, who just wanted a job, you know, and they were mostly young younger kids. And so it was a lot of younger people that would come in and, you know, and Grober would show them how to do stuff and show them how to Yeah.

And that's exactly how the music zoo started, too. It was the same thing. It was all the kids that were that lived it sort in the neighborhood that were walking distance that had an interest in guitar that, you know, like I'll sweep the floors. I'll throw the garbage out. Whatever you want me to do, you know, like I wanted can I work off a guitar? I'm just going to come here.

Don't pay me. Just I just want to work the guitar off. Exactly. And those people became longtime employees, you know. So if do you remember the like chronologically where people started coming in like so Tim Wilson, Shannon, Mike Shannon, when did like Stephen Stern was it all around the same time? Did were they all friends and they kind of like hey I got I know a friend that wants to work here too and no.

Because now you know so me it was me, Grover, Joanne, then Don Fox and then they hired a girl. I remember they hired a girl I don't remember her name and she was great. She was, you know, she would drill out bridge pieces. She would do all the stuff that we were doing and stuff and then and now it's and Grover just couldn't keep up. And so, then he started hiring, you know, he put an ad out for a woodworker and that's when Tim Wilson, who was working at a company called Woodworks at the time, and they were making bed frames and stuff like that, you know, and he came up and he goes, you know, he wasn't a guitar guy.

He played guitar, you know, but kind of just not a real guitar player, you know, but he but he was a woodworker and he was a real good work wood woodworker. And so Grover hired him cuz at this point Grover was like he wanted he didn't want to buy stuff from Lyn Ellsworth anymore. He wanted to buy he wanted to make his own necks. We were already making our own bodies but and buying boogie body necks but he wanted to make his own necks and so he needed somebody to come in and kind of engineer that and do all that stuff and so that's when Tim Wilson came in and then and Tim didn't know how to make a neck so we had and I remember Grover above the office at the original Lone Hill shot I remember on the off up on top of the office there were tons of fender necks that were bandsawed down the middle so that we could see how the truss rod worked, how it was mounted in there, how it worked.

And so, based on a lot of that information, Tim, you know, developed, you know, how to do the truss rod, install the truss rod and make basically a fender net. And that's what that's how he started. And then once Tim was working there and it grew even more then he knew Mike Shannon I think from Woodworks and we hired Mike Shannon to come in and then Mike Shannon was doing basically routing and body routing and things like that and then Todd Krause came in I think really quickly after that and it was all routing you know they were making bodies and necks that's what they did is they worked the pin route Right.

Right. And now at that point, from an artist standpoint, who was coming in now to the shop? Now you're starting to see like the was that wasn't Warren DeMartini yet, right? But was did Randy come in at this point? No. No. Still late 70s. Yeah. This is I remember the one guy that came in. I think his last name is McDermott. He was a guitar player from Rick James.

He came in very early and we did some stuff for him. The guy from Eulogy who plays with Paul McCartney now, forget his name, you know. He would come in and he had he would get stuff made and then Yeah. And then I you know after that then it was you know it was weird because you had people like oh man the guitar player who did the m the TV theme.

Rhodess for that matter. Right. Randy was playing in the club circuit. Yeah, Randy was in a bad You remember him coming in? Huh? Do you remember him coming into the shop? Randy? Yeah. Yeah. I refed Les Paul for Randy. Did you? Okay. Yeah. With the white one or he had a black custom white. And he would come in with his girlfriend and she was super sweet. But see, Randy was playing in a band called Quiet Riot.

Riot. Sure. And he was playing a flying a polka dot flying V that Carl had made and it was a Charvel V body and then Carl I think had modified a neck and then it was a bolt-on neck. He bolted it on and then he kind of bonded all that neck joint up to make it like a sn neck and glued it in. Okay. That's where that guitar came from.

And then but when Randy came in, you know, he had just gotten the gig with Ozzy and this is again this is later on when you look at the that timeline. There was a lot that happened before Randy came in and because we were making Bodies and Necks for Music Man at that time. We were making as well. Deario, Mighty Mite. Deario was really early on. Mighty Mite was early on and all that stuff had transpired before Randy came.

BC Rich was BC Rich as well, right? BC Rich. Yeah, BC Riches were actually lots of BC Rich necks. Yeah. And a lot of Music Man next too. We were doing Music Mans all the way and it was a trip, you know. Yeah. And I mean I guess at this point people know it because you know because of the integral and people have figured some of this stuff out but back then and even today there's a lot of incest in the guitar business you know like where different companies are making bodies and necks and different parts for companies that you'd think you would have never imagined right like so BC wretch is a perfect example you know you never imagine those necks being Charvel necks to demarzio same thing I remember I had a relative that was working for Demario IO in the late 70s and that was like my I guess my first experience with a Charvel body and neck was through Demorio.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, a lot of that stuff there was a lot of that stuff that was transpiring before Randy came in. Randy didn't come in until he got the gig with Ozzy and then he came in and he wanted to get a guitar made and he sat down with Grover and they designed the white one and laid it all out and you know that was Grover.

I saw a thing yesterday. It was like all this, you know, built by Grover and Tim Wilson and Mike Shannon. Tim Wilson and Mike Shannon routed body parts for that guitar, you know, but that and that was all designed by Grover and Randy and then Tim Wilson and Shannon simply because they worked in the wood shop, you know, they routed those guitars out, you know, they didn't build other than routing that stuff, they didn't really build anything out.

And then when you say route specifically just the control cavity and the pickups take you about body the body shape everything. Yeah. You know the body blank was probably glued together by somebody else and then once the body wrap was done it went to the pin router and the guy who ran the pin router was Mike Shannon or Tim Wilson and so they just ran it on the pin router and then once it was done then it went to the sanders.

They didn't sand it. All the sanders sanded once it was sanded then it went into paint. They didn't paint it. The painter painted it. Then after it was painted, then it came into assembly. They didn't buff it. I probably me and a girl named Maria who worked there and at that time and it got buffed and then assembled. I assembled it and set it up. And then there was a guy named the Ox and he was kind of the tech that dealt with that stuff.

And the Ox used to work with Deep Purple. And that's how I knew who the Ox was cuz I'm a Richie Blatenor freak and Deep Purple freak. So, it's like I knew who the ax is and so I would talk to the ax and stuff and we would set things up. He gave me all the specs and we'd set things up like that and then the Ox took it and then Randy took it out on tour and I think Grover and I went up and met with Sharon early on and Randy at the studio when they were recording everything and tightening up all that stuff.

And you know, after the white one was done, Randy came back and he said, "I can't get up high on this thing. We got to redesign this thing." And then that's when we made the black one. And the same thing happened with the black one, you know. What do you mean the same thing happened? He still had changes that he wanted? No. The same thing happened the building process.

Same thing. Do you remember once he got that guitar that was it for him or do you think that there was probably something else percolating? No, that I think that was it for him and I'm sure that he had other ideas to do stuff out but Randy was like so busy. You got to realize man what was happening there. You know, Ozzy was blowing up and it was hugely successful and, you know, and Randy on the scene was just like, "Holy crap, this guitar player is crazy and this look at this guitar and you know, and they're they were touring a lot and all that stuff." And I remember that Grover and I were really close.

And so we and we were both big fans of the tubes. And Grover at this point had divorced Joanne and he had a girlfriend up in Lake Tahoe. And the Tubes were gonna play at some casino up in Lake Tahoe. And so Grover come to me goes, "Let's go see the tubes up in Lake Tahoe. We'll stay at my girlfriend's house and it'll be great." I'm like, "Okay, yeah, that sounds good." Good.

And so, you know, Grover paid for the flight and all that stuff. And we flew to Lake Tahoe. We got off the plane and we walked up and the girl, his girlfriend was there to meet us and she said, "Ry's dead." And we both looked at we went, "What?" She goes, "Randy died." And so Grover and I found out at the same time. God. Yeah. A lot of people don't know.

And it was a shock, man. It was like, "What the heck?" You know, and it was, you know, super spotty. Again, no internet back then, no cell phones back then. So everything was the news and accounts of people who you knew on that tour and things like that. And so it was really a tough thing, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So tragic. I mean, you know, and you know, as far as Charvel was going on and Jackson at that time before Randy was happening, there was Vic and he was really the first guy.

So we had three of those guitars here. We had the there was a white V with like sort of blue clouds on it and then we had a pink guitar with some black graphic on it as well. And as far as the homework that I did, we had got it from Robert in Switzerland. I don't know if you knew about Robert and as far as we as far as Shannon told us those were the first neck through actually one was a set neck I think and maybe the second one was neck through but those were the first V's pre- Randy right well those were the first neck through body and those were the first Jacksons and it felt great actually it was very those both of those guitars were very hard for me to as a guitar player and businessman to hold to not hold on to.

I wanted to hold I knew I had a if I would keep it inevitably like yeah we would use it here for different experiments and different guitars. We already have all the imagery for it and we took measurements of both of them. But I wanted to get it out into the universe and not be that guy to just put it on a shelf somewhere. Yeah. There was one that had stripes on it that went like this and it was purple, black, blue, I think with pinstripe or whatever.

Yeah, I think that's the one that we had block inlay like a Le Paul custom. Yeah, that was the first guitar and the first Jackson guitar, first neck through body. And we were doing weird stuff too back then. We were trying, we were putting hockey stick explorer style headstocks on stuff, but with no tilt back neck and we were putting those on, you know, dinky bodies and all kinds of weird stuff that never really floated.

You and there's no internet. You start asking questions. So, I was at Grayson's and I was like, I'm really interested in this Jackson guitar. And somehow Grover didn't really spell it out or the or whoever was interviewing him at the time and guitar player, didn't really spell it out. And Bernie Grayson, the owner of the store, was just like, "Oh, well, that's Grover Jackson. He owns Charvel and that's why it says Jackson on the headstock and we're going to carry them." and he called Grover and he put me on the I was 14 I think and he put me on the phone with Grover.

Wow. And was one of the I would assume I had serial number 93 of those Randy guitars and u he wouldn't take the Bernie wouldn't take the deposit from me cuz I was a kid and I guess he didn't trust me. So he's like you got to come back here with your dad and I lived in Queens. So getting to Long Island from Queens, it's it when you don't have a driver's license, it's nearly impossible, at least in that area where they were at.

So I had to wait for my dad to become free. It probably took months to get back out there and leave a deposit to Bernie so he could order the guitar. So I was definitely one of the original nutcases that wanted that guitar. And couldn't wait for it to come in. That guitar I sadly sold. I don't know where it is. And they were, it's interesting, like that first batch, the necks were really wide on them.

It was like a classical guitar. And if you weren't used to that, especially after having the Charvel, which was a much thinner neck, and then going to that, it was difficult to play. I remember I had it with a Kaylor because what I was told that it was hard to get Floyd's at that point for you guys. Is that true? Floyd didn't like us and so they weren't going to sell us anything because they were doing Kramer and all that stuff and that was all so starting to that's when it started to get competitive you know and yeah those first necks were one and 3/4 right wide at the nut and then it wasn't until and then a lot of the Charvel stuff was one and 58 and then but when you know Ed's guitars were one and 3/4.

And a lot of that stuff we were doing back there was when we first started making X was one and 3/4. And that's wide, you know, wide and flat. Yeah. You know, and that's what those guys wanted because they were all playing like Ed was. Exactly. And so it was just a weird scene. Once Holdsworth came on the scene, then it was one and 116, right? And then that's when there was a little shift in that.

Okay. Now apparently that first Warren DeMartini guitar had a holes style neck on it, right? The cross swords guitar because he had got it to the Charvel and the nut that he had the Floyd is a much small I played the guitar. It's a much smaller nut than the I for I forget the demand. I should know this as a guitar. It I think Warren's might have been one and 58.

I it might have been. I'd have to see it. I it was wider than that because he did a clinic for us in 2017 and he brought the guitar and of course like all guitar players that are so used to their instrument, you know, he just handed it to me. I was like, "Oh my god." So somewhere I have pictures of holding that and playing the guitar and it was the neck was ridiculously wide and he I remember him saying, "I talked to Grover and that day either Allan Holdsworth was there or I played a Holdsworth guitar.

I just wanted the same thing." so it was kind of funny. It I love Warren. I don't know if you have any Warren. What a sweet guy. Oh, yeah. I know Warren. He's one of my favorite people that like every time we get on the phone, it's another It's almost like you and I like where like an hour and 15 minutes later, I'm like, I got to pee.

I haven't seen Warren in a long time. And I that and I hadn't seen him since Charvel. And I was working at Fender and he came in and it was just like we looked at each other. We had got this big smile on our face. We hugged each other and it was like we just like nothing happened. Like it was a day and it was we just started take picking up right where we left.

He's just he's one of the nicest guys in rock and roll I've ever met. He's such a warm guy. You know, be before we would do these clinics in the old music zoo number two in Rosland. We had two floors and there was an office and the office was kind of off the side of where the store was. You had some privacy. And Warren was up there and he spent the whole day with us getting ready for the clinic and getting doing sound checks and just we had lunch together.

We had dinner together and he had the entire office in stitches and he had them the pal and it wasn't even cuz he was Warren DeMartini. It was just cuz he was so charming and there was one story after another. He was telling us stories of when he was a bus boy as a kid and a waiter and like just one story after another and they were all great.

And he had everybody completely captivated. It was a wonder very memorable day for me. And since that day I you know happy Thanksgiving, merry Christmas. You know, I talk to him a few times a year just to catch up and see how he's doing. So cool. And I mean, you know, him and Robin Crosby, you know, I think Robin more so than Warren, you know, they would come in all the time.

It was constant, you know, every day it was some, you know, the Nelson brothers would roll up in their Mustang convertible and spend the day there and Warren would come in or Robin Crosby would come in and, you know, it was just constant there. The other guy, the guy from Chris from Wasp come in all the time, you know, Benny Vincent all the time. And so every day was like something was going on, you know.

It was never like, "Oh, I'm just going to go to work and bang out some guitars," you know? And it's certainly from my perspective and just even thinking about it now is it's interesting with Grover and you and how this thing grew just when you thought like well here they must have plateaued with you know like Edward and maybe Randy and then when it hit I remember as again as a kid watching there was a show called I believe it was called Rock Palace on at least here in New York it was like a late night Saturday night you know like a Don Kersner's kind of rock concert and they Ozzy was on with Jake who was playing a CharL and then after was Rat and they're you know Robin's playing a Jackson and Warren's playing with Charvel and it was just a whole other level of like look at this is you know the twin guitar thing with these the cool looking guitars and it just so it had to continue to keep you know was there a point again with that question is was there a point with things without talking too out of school, was there a point where it really started to escalate where like things were getting a little nutty in the shop or people were getting, you know, were there big parties?

Were there crazy [ __ ] going on and in the middle of this because it was the 80s, right? So that Yeah, there had to be some fun. Well, I mean, have you ever seen the movie The Cowboys with John Wayne? Probably. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great It's basic. The basic premise of the movie is that John Wayne has to drive a bunch of cattle across the prairie or whatever it is and he can't get anybody to do it.

So, he hired a bunch of kids to do it. And that's really what Charvel was at that point. And so Grover had all of these the land of misfit toys, me being one of them too, you know, and you know because I would go out and play music and you know I'm playing guitars at this point and I'm playing all these clubs and Starwood and all that stuff and you know staying out till 2 o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning and then getting up and being at work at six, you know, come in just like just shelved and you know and it was like that.

And then Grover every I'm at one point every Friday when we were in Glendoro still every Friday it was a trip every Friday at 3:00 we would clean up you'd have like there would be a bell or I or something and it's like clean up or you'd run through and say clean up and so everybody who worked there stopped working and cleaned their area up swept up all the all the sawdust made it super clean.

But and then Grover would go out and buy a case of beer, you know, one case of beer for everybody. Okay. And so every So you walk around, you'd have a beer and you're cleaning up and it was just cool, man. You know, and then, you know, we would have Christmas parties or he would have like at Thanksgiving, he would give everybody turkeys and we'd have Christmas parties and he'd take everybody to dinner and you know, once again, Land of Misfit Toys, we were all, let me look at Mike Shannon, look at Tim Wilson, look at me, look at, you know, this is Todd Crush.

You don't want you put those kind of people in a room and then add alcohol to it. It's like it got there were food fights. It was just chaos, you know. I remember one time I was playing at the Trouador and Grover came down and with some other people and there some of the other guys were from the shop were there and we went to Dantana's next door to eat and it ended up in a food fight and we got kicked out of Dantana.

Can never go back, you know, and it was just chaos, you know. But so he was like he had this around. Everybody was having fun, you know. It was all always everybody having fun. And then when people came in, you know, they would bring donuts and, you know, all kinds of stuff and everybody would just kind of have or they'd buy the whole shop lunch or, you know, it was just always like a big family.

Was curious to see like exactly, you know. So, there was also usually like a four-digit number and then usually a date on the butt of the neck, too. Yeah. Like a the fourdigit number is work order. It's a work order. Okay. And then usually the guys would either I have I'm not here. Usually the guys would either put their initials here and a date here or they'd put it I would do it here.

I did it here because Tadio Gomez did it on fenders. Sure. And that was where I got it from because a Tatio Gomez neck was always a nice boat neck. And so I would, you know, I always liked his necks. And again, when people back up, I just want to make something clear. The blue guitar I was talking about very early on was for a guy named Phil Soomn.

And Phil Soomn was in a band called the Rembrandt. And that was one of the earliest sharels that I remember going out and it was a blue burst. It was really cool guitar. But anyways, a lot of that stuff when I when you know when I looked at stuff that Tattio Gomez was doing and how they were shaped and all that stuff, I thought, you know, we got to put the date on there and all that business.

And so what I would do is back when very early on is that people would come in and they would bring in a 1960 Stratacastaster and they would say, "I want the neck shaped like this. I want my guitar that you guys are building shaped like this or blah." And so what I would do is I had a piece of paper. I still have it. Donnie Wade saved it for me.

And I had a piece of paper and I have I would have it push pin onto the drywall next to my drum sander because at one point that's all I was doing really is not all I was doing but the majority of what I was doing was shaping necks, hand shaping necks, okay, on a drum sander. And so people would come in and they say, "I want this neck shaped like this." And so I would take all the measurements.

I would write down what how it felt and I would keep that. So when they're gone, if somebody said, "Hey, I want a neck like a 1960, I got you." And I would take those measurements and all that. And that's where that's when I did the Gilmour neck and did all that stuff. But yeah, we would take all those measurements off those guitars and I still have that piece of paper.

Donnie Wade, when I left Charvel, Donnie Wade found that piece of paper and kept it. And then he I was in his house one day. He goes, "I got something for you." And he brought it to me. Man, I almost start crying and I still have it. I have it out in my shop. Since you mentioned Gilmour and I know that there's a line to be drawn to your guitar line, El Cabron.

We could touch on that. I still want to go back to, but you're using that neck shape for your new guitars. Yeah, that's it. So he brought in So they were get Pink Floyd was getting ready to do the wall concerts, the original wall concerts, and Phil Taylor, who's the tech for Gilmour, really sweet guy, another really great guy. Phil Taylor came in, he goes, I want we want the neck shaped like this guitar.

And he had a 1955 Esquire Sunburst, beautiful guitar. Dave still has that guitar. I don't think he sold that one. And he said this is his f one of his favorite guitar shapes. And so I sat there again, it was late at night, probably nine o'clock at night with Phil Taylor behind me on this corner and Grover Jackson on this corner and I'm a drum sander holding this 55 Equuire and feeling the neck and then measuring it and then feeling it and shaping.

And I did six necks and I gave them five and I kept one. And so, you know, I really am in love with that neck and it's really comfortable neck. It's a boat shape, but it's dull and it kind of goes down. This is one of my necks. And it comes down to like almost like a fat she C-shape down here. So, that's the neck profile that I used for the first Cabron guitars.

Now, we're adding another a second neck shape because we're going to be doing some S style guitars, and that neck shape is more like a Charvel C-shape. Okay. But we'll get into that later. Yeah. I want to talk about the oil oiling of the necks. Yeah. And how that did that start very early on or was that something that you dreamed up and exactly the combination of what if you want to share it or what the process was to do that because it's such a distinctive part of your guitars and a distinctive part of what those old Charvel's were.

So what would happen again it all came from that sheet that was hanging on that. What would happen is that people would bring in these guitars and say this is my favorite guitar. I want the guitar like I want the neck to be like this. And nine times out of 10, those necks didn't hardly have any finish on the back of them. And when you look at a lot of the Fender relics now, there's not, you know, they always take the finish off the back.

Sure. Excuse me. And so what I did, I was trying to replicate that. I didn't want lacquer on the neck at all on the fingerboard. If it was a rosewood fingerboard, you didn't have to worry about it. But if it was a maple fingerboard, I didn't want any finish on the neck, I wanted it to be, you know, as close to raw wood as possible. But the problem with that is that when you do fret work on a maple neck, you have to tape off the maple or and you know, it's really a delicate process.

And so I wanted something that was close as possible to that feel. But for like a I said a maple neck, it was really tough to do that. On a rosewood neck, it's it was easy. On a 60 strat, no problem. But when you get into a 50 strat, a lot of those necks when you look at them, that finish was worn off and especially where the people play at.

And on the back of the neck for sure. So I was trying to replicate that. And so I kept experimenting with different ways to do it. You can't just leave it raw wood. You have to oil it. You have to put something on there to preserve the word and keep it from cracking or keep it from warping or moisture getting on there. So, what I started experimenting with different ways to do that.

And then what I would find is if you just put oil on the neck, great. You know, 3 weeks later, it's black because of the strings, your sweat, frets. And so, it's like you got to protect it differently. And so, I started coming up with different ways to do it. And the way I do it is that it's a two-step process. You have to and this is what I came up with at Charvel.

So, you have to put the whatever you're going to put on the neck because I'm not going to tell what I do. But you put on you put this thing on this stuff on the neck and you have to let it set overnight. That's a big part of the process. You have to let it set overnight. And then once it sets overnight, then you go back in and you have to on a maple neck.

You have to tape each one of these frets. And I have videos of this on my website and on my YouTube channel. You have to tape each one of those frets and then cut it. And we did this at Charvel constantly. I te I tease Willie Houston about it. He's out in Georgia and he makes the pickups for me and stuff. And I tease him. I said, "Get on a plane and get out here.

I've got five necks to do and I need to have them done by lunch." and he just starts laughing because Willie used to work for me and that's the kind of stuff we would do. But anyways, you have to tape the frets off and then once you tape the frets off then you go through and you buff you high-speed buff the whole neck and what it does and you can see it's it makes it shiny and it really burns what this stuff is into the wood and seals it and really makes it a really nice finish.

So there's no sticking. Your h your hand never sticks to this. It feels like raw wood, but it's not. And then you know, 6 months down the road, take a piece of 600 sandpaper, 1,200 grit sandpaper and just sand it back and it'll you do that maybe one time and that neck will be like that forever. I mean, look at the pre-pros. That's what you see when you and you see a lot of them.

You see more of them than anybody. Excuse me. And then when those because when those guitars come in, they're not black, you know, they're clean still and all that stuff. So, yeah, it's a it's an interesting process. Nobody else is doing it. And to be honest with you, when I was at working at Charvel, I mean I developed it when I worked at Charvel in the late 70s, early 80s and then when I was working at the Fender Custom Shop and we acquired Charvel and Jackson and then we were going to do that legacy series, I went upstairs and I sat down with a guy and I showed him everything.

I showed him how to do the whole thing. Was it Chip at that point or was this No, somebody else. It was some other guy. He doesn't work there anymore. But I showed this guy the whole process and he did I think one or two necks and they came through and they said, "No, we're not going to do that." And then they shiftanded. Okay. Yeah. We wound up, the music wound up with a lot of those guitars at some point, you know, because that was the, you know, that was right around the financial collapse.

Those guitars were released, you know, and then people just stopped buying and then and I think Fender was sitting on a lot and Jeff Carry at the time came to me and he was just like, "Make you a deal you can't refuse." And we went I think I bought like 95 of them. Wow. I forget how many there was in total, but we bought like 95. And then Grou would call me like once a month and just go, "How many did you sell?" You know, just because I guess he needed to he wanted to make sure that the Fender people were paying him.

And I guess they were paying him for sell through as opposed to sell in or I forget how it worked, but he'd call to find out like how things were going, you know? Yeah. And those guitars are obviously a lot more money now, but back then they were they you know it was a weird time. Even the Frankensteines at that point like they those guitars were released in what were they 25 or $30,000 and then there was a minute on eBay where they were eight or $10,000 you know and people were selling them for one under what they had paid for them.

Wow. I didn't Yeah. And now they're 50 to $75,000 again. So, it's changed, but you know, moments in time, you know, like the opportunity is when it's there. That's so interesting with the necks. Are there other things at that for because I want to move to Fender Custom Shop at some point and we'll even talk Yamaha a bit, but are there other little things that you think of when you look back at Charvel and Jackson at that and those moments?

Were there moments that stood out in your head that like maybe people don't know about or you know? There was a couple things, excuse me. There was one thing there was a couple things I want to touch on before we move. One of the things that was always really interesting, especially for me, because he w he wouldn't do it with other people. It was just me. Grover would say to me, "We're going to go up and see Kiss tonight, or we're going to go up and see whoever tonight to talk to him." Not to go see him play.

Because I admire Gene Simmons so much because he's such him and Paul are some of the smartest people I've ever talked to. And when you see interviews with them, there's a there is a an interview on Pushkin. It's a blog and they interview Gene and Paul and at this point Jean is he's kind of it's good but it's not as great as Paul's because Jean doesn't have a lot I don't think Jean puts a lot of time into those kind of interviews anymore.

But Paul does and Paul when you listen to that it's a podcast Pushkin and or a Rook Ruben Rubin thing I think and man Paul Stanley's interview is amazing. So anyways, there was that. And the other thing that really kind of stood out for me, and I just talked to Grover last week about this, like I tal I still talk to Grover, you know, every once in a while and stuff, and we were sitting there talking about Alen Holdsworth and how beautiful that was, that relationship, you know, and what happened was that Grover was in the UK and he knew somebody who knew Holdsworth and Grover was a big fan of Alan Holdsworth's playing.

So he asked this person, he goes, "Can you introduce me to him?" He goes, "Yeah." So he introduced him to him and they sat and talked and then at the end of it he said, "If you ever here's my card. If you ever come to LA and you want to get a guitar made, I'll make you a guitar." And Allan was like, "Oh, that'd be great." You know, and that was it.

And went home. Allan went his way. Blah. Right. And then like I maybe a year later his phone rings and it's Holdorse. He goes, "Hey, Grover. It's Allan." And he goes, "Oh, hey. How's it going?" He goes, "Good. I'm in LA." He goes, "You are?" And he goes, "Yeah." And he goes, "What are you doing?" He goes, "Oh, I came out here to make a record." Oh, okay.

Where are you going to make it at? He goes, "I don't know." He goes, "Where are you staying at?" I'm staying with some friends over in Tustin. Oh, you know, he goes, "We're kind of find trying to figure out a studio and stuff." And he goes, "Oh, okay." He goes, "Well, what are you doing in the morning?" He goes, "Nothing." He goes, "Why don't you come by?" And so he came out to Charvel and Grover and him talked about a guitar.

And then, but the thing Allan had come to LA to make a record with no connections. No. Do you know which record that was? Was that IOU or It was IOU record. Yeah. There was no studio. There was no management. There was no production. There was no I think he had these Harley-Davidson amps, but he had no cabinets. It was, you know, so bush league. And so Grover kind of stepped in and kind of got it together for him and found, you know, people for him to play with and all kinds of stuff.

And then the next and you know, they had no place to rehearse. So Grover said, "You could rehearse at my place." And so we would be sitting there working and all of a sudden then on the other side of the wall which was just basically 2x4s and drywall, no insulation. It was Allen Hollesworth and IO the IOU band with Jeff Berlin and Gary Husband and Paul Williams singing and stuff and just like and every day at like 3:00 it they would rehearse.

That's incredible. That's a great record, too. Right. And it was like I look back at that now. I was talking to Mike Hickey about it. I said it was mindblowing for me. And so, and Allan was just the sweetest guy and so we would hit it off and then we would go out drinking and stuff and all that stuff. And I almost got thrown in jail one night with him in Tustin.

The Tustin police came up on us and you know it was crazy. But he was getting ready to do so he had done this record and they were getting ready to do like a showcase thing for Ted Templeman at the Roxy and so they were putting that show together and Allan looks at me and he goes you have a band right? And I go yeah he goes well why don't you open up for us?

I'm like it ain't that kind of band. I don't care. I want you to open up for us. And so they played there two nights. They did two nights and my band opened up for that. My band was more of like a hard rock, deep purple kind of, you know, band and man, we got booed the whole time. Jeez. Yeah. I mean, and it was great. We played great and all that stuff, but we got booed the whole time.

But then at I think the second show is when Ed came down to sit in with Allan and Ed came up to our dressing room after our show and he walks inside and he looks at us. He goes, "Well, you got to eat a lot of [ __ ] before you know what a steak tastes like." He was the funniest thing. He you and he told us, "You guys are great." But people didn't come there to see us.

No. They wanted to see Allan Holdsworth. And he was Oh god. That whole period he was really in his prime, right? Oh my god. There really isn't a era of Holdsworth that I don't love. But the Bill Bruofford that one-of-a-kind record for me is really like special. Yeah. And then the IOU record is special. I And everybody's every everybody's got different favorite times, you know, like some of the early stuff.

I have a some it's around here somewhere. I have a record with Gordon Beck, the pianist that he did, and it's all acoustic, and the whole record is just diminish. It's insane. And pre all of this stuff. But then when he started getting like past metal fatigue and he kept going, it just it kept getting even more advanced. Yeah. Crazy. It was crazy. Just crazy like the level of musicianship.

But the thing the important connection from Allan Holdsworth to Charvel was and this is the thing a lot of people miss Tommy and I'm glad we're talking about this now. I still have some of the original ads from Charvel that say, you know, our bodies are better, heavier, and all that stuff. That was the thing back then. Heavier bodies was, you know, this was this everybody forgets this.

That was the world of stars, guitars, brass tremolos, you know, bad, you know, badass bridges, heavy brass everything, brass nuts. And so the bodies the first Charvel bodies we were making were ash and which is Edwards, right? Edwards that Frankenstein is ash. Yeah. But that's not why the reason why we were making them out of ash is because that was the probably the cheapest wood we could get it.

And we were getting it from McBth hardwood and would come in big long boards, you know, 17 20 foot long boards. A big huge lift of that. A truck would do it and Grover would get on the horn and say, "Everybody stop. Everybody got to unload that wood." And then we had to soon as it was unloaded, we had to take it to the cut off saw, cut it, cut the big long boards down to smaller boards and then split them and then glue them together to make body blanks.

Anyways, but it was ash and it was a ton of ash. And then after that, and I think the biggest reason was the grain because we had to get it heavier. Everybody was wanted heavy bodies and so we were making bodies out of solid maple and well that thing is that's what I'm going to go to there because you know and like the original Elder Flame guitar that was maple hard rock maple that guitar weighed a ton and that was guitar was made for Jeff Beck because Grover wanted to get the treble into it and all that stuff.

And so anyways, everything was heavy until Allan came along. And then Allan said, "I don't want heavy. I want light for my back." And so we made a spruce guitar. We made a rosewood guitar or not rose, a redwood guitar. We made a popppler guitar made out of popppler. And then we made a basswood guitar. We made four guitars for him. And he played each one of them blah.

And he landed on the basswood one and that's the one that was the red one and so that was it. Once we did that then everybody wanted because it was Holdsworth everybody wanted lighter guitars. Yeah. And there were never we didn't make any heavy guitars after that. So, do you having lived both, you know, like moments with heavy guitars and light guitars and all this brass and everything, there's I personally think there's a thing to the heavy guitars and I personally think there's a thing to the brass.

I was a huge fan of John Sykes and John Sykes from, you know, Thin Lizzy and Tigers of Pantang and White Snake. He put he had metal on the whole Les Paul that he was playing, right? Like there was metal pickup rings and every part of the guitar was metal and maybe some of it was aesthetic, but certainly the brass nut, Edward with a brass nut. And people say, well, once you're fretting the guitar, why would the brass nut matter?

But somehow to me it does. I could I feel the resonance. So, like if you had to choose, are there some aspects of that actually do, pardon the pun, hold weight, you know, like Well, I did a whole video at the Fender Custom Shop about woods different woods make different woods have frequency, right? Everything in the world has a frequency, right? And so if you're a guitar builder, I know that violin guitar builder or violin players, violin builders and classical guitar players, especially flamco guitars, the way they're made, those guitars will blow up.

They're they just fall apart because they're made so delicately. There's not a lot of bracing in them. They're made to be really loud. That's what that is for. And so those are made consciously by with cedar and really light wood. And so there's a thing to it and now I see because I posted something the other day about it. I forget what it was or I was talking about it in some Fender video and guys were coming on there going, "Oh, we all know that this is [ __ ] now.

This is all bunk. This has been debunked." It's like that's I don't it may be debunked for you who works at the mall, but for an idiot like me who's been building guitars, it is it's a real thing where you sit back and you know, the heavier your guitar you got, the higher the frequency. The higher the frequency, that's more it's going to pick up. It's going to ring.

Fingerboard is going to sound differently than a flat lamb rosewood fingerboard simply because that glue joint is so intense and it's so compact and durable that makes that neck really clean and how it vibrates and how it resonates and all that stuff. Yeah, the people who say that they don't know a difference, they don't know that's fine. They don't know a difference. But yeah, there's there body woods, neck woods, they all make a difference.

Yeah, for sure. Electric guitar. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. We hear it here, you know, it's and just like you said, you're building guitars your entire life. So like as these guitars are coming through, there are certain ones that stop you in your tracks for some reason and you stop because things obviously like it's still a job, right? So like you're doing this every day and the guitar and the same thing here.

Guitars come through here and you it's usually it gets the one strum test, you know, you hit an open E or something. It's real quick and certain guitars, whether we're doing a video or you're hanging some something in the store or somebody comes to show me something, it's it'll speak to you or it won't, you know, and guitars are way obviously way more consistent now than they used to be, right?

So, at least from a quality perspective, they're more consistent. It certainly I think part of the reason that Charvel and Jackson had such a rise besides the artists and how amazing the guitars are and you and Grover and the people, right, is the whole thing. Really what it comes down to. It's still the people and how passionate they are about what they're doing, right? That's the whole thing, right?

It was one of the things that I most wanted to I guess express to you and then and just really talk about it. Still comes down to the people, you know, and at times I get discouraged because I feel like some of the guitar industry is losing that, you know, because it's, you know, it's the man and the big banks and the corporations and they're and they but thankfully there's still some voices in there going, "Hey, you got to do this.

Don't forget about this." it was funny like Bryan Adams, that black strat of Bryan Adams, famous guitar, right? Sharp hole. Came through here. It came through here. Yeah. That guitar is heavy. Weighs a ton, you know. And when you listen to a Bryan Adams record, that's that guitar. And it's I'm telling you, man, go pick up a anybody who says, "Well, you lighter guitars sound better." Go pick up a less Paul and put it through a Marshall on 10 and strum an E chord and you tell me.

You know, that's a thing. And it's like Gary Moore when Gary came down, another sweet guy, man. When Gary came down, you know, he was get we made several guitars for Gary, but Gary came down and he grabbed me and he goes, "Let's go pick out some wood." I'm like, "Okay." And he took me in the back and we started digging through wood and he was like, "I want something heavy, man.

Really heavy." He insisted on it. And I pulled out a piece of purple heartwood. And purple heart is dense and hard and heavy. I mean that's and we made a guitar out of purple heart. The body was made out of purple heart and purple. It's purple heart. It's really beautiful. When you first cut it's bright purple. It oxidizes and turns brown like mahogany. But when you first cut it's bright purple and it's beautiful.

Which you guys were using for plugs, right? Was at I used it for plugs a lot. But on Gary's guitar, we ended up covering that guitar in leopard skin and he had he played that through the GeForce record, I think, and all that stuff. That guitar is floating around somewhere. Who knows where? Yeah. You know, but that guitar weighed a ton, you know, and it's Gary Moore.

Who's going to sit there and go, "Well, G, he doesn't know." Yeah. So let's go back to that just quickly for a second. So now in the shop obviously Holdsworth is in the other room playing like and it's Allan Holdsworth in the other room has got to be insane, right? Did Gary play when he was in the shop at all? Were there was there a small amp that he just plug in and riff in like Grover's office or something or Yeah, Grover had a little 210 music man 130 watt 210 music man and I used to test guitars through that guitar.

So Gary sat down and played through that and it was it's ungodly, man. Dude, he was so great. He was so great, you know. But, you know, getting back to the people thing, I want to point this out because I still have the book. Grover at Charvel gave me a book one day. He goes, "You need to read this." And it's called quality. I know it when I see it.

And it's maybe that thick, like a pamphlet. And it's all about the company's called Pun Punctuation Inc. And it was, you know, they made punctuation. They make exclamation marks, commas, periods. That's what they did. And this whole thing goes through and it's like, what is quality? And it goes through the whole thing of I don't I can't tell you what quality is, but I know it when I see it.

But at the end of the book, basically what the rule is and what the lesson is that quality is really the people who are putting it together, who are building it. And so if you have a guy, and I would use this analogy a lot at Fender explaining it to people. And I think Tom Wheeler put it in a the Fender Custom Shop book. And it comes down to this.

There's three guys on the side of the road and they're digging a ditch. And you go to the first guy and you go, "What are you making?" And the guy goes, "$750 an hour." And you go to the next guy and you go, "What are you making?" He goes, "I'm making a ditch." And you go to the third guy and he goes, "What are you making?" Goes, "I'm making a great cathedral to God." There you go.

Difference. Yeah. Because And it's the mindset of the people who are making the guitars. Sure. IPhones, the computers, anything. It's the mindset of those people. And that's why, you know, Rolex is who Rolex is, Don Perion is who Don Perion is, that's why Cadillac is who Cadillac is or whoever, whatever it is, that's why it's that level of quality. So, but Grover gave me that book and I still have it.

That's now that you mentioned it, now I'll go and get it and read it. I want to spend time in Fender Custom Shop. However, yeah, we're going long and I feel I want to cover your guitars and everything that's been happening and I think it's the perfect segue because, you know, it when you told me you were doing this guitar company and you would and you were excited about it, that was enough for me.

I was in, you know, it was just a matter of like, well, how do we figure this out and how do we get people to know about it, you know, and thankfully, you know, thankfully, I think things have kind of springboarded thanks to John Mayor, right? And him using it for that recording and mentioning it and it's sort of spread spreading around like where's for what it's worth El Cabrón guitars is one of the top entry points into the music zoo right now when people are Google searching for people are looking for the guitars and I need more guitars.

But it's it all still comes back to the people, you know, and anytime I've called you for advice or for you know, just we talk about business a lot. It's stuff that I think would maybe bore some folks, you know, just as far as like the business of guitars. It was you were one of the people that told me, you know, like postcoid things got very weird here.

And I think it was I sort of had to go back to the like what why was I doing this? What is this all about? You know, like what was the love of the whole thing? And how do we get back to that spot where I found the right guitars from the right people and we're excited about them and all of that excitement just leads to sort of like where we go.

And I think that I guess it took your whole life to get to the point to build these guitars. You know, it's like writing you spent all your time, you know, like working to write the hit song like, you know, 50 years later. But I think that's where you are. And I and I'm excited about it. I know you're excited about it. Yeah. And I think, you know, I think maybe out of self-preservation, you kind of have been taking this very slowly because you don't know where it's going to go.

So, I don't want to like jump in hook, line, and sinker and then end up in a spot that's uncomfortable. But obviously people have grasped it, you know, and I appreciate just, you know, just from kicking it old school, like what do you have at the moment? It's The Music Zoo, Wild West, there's a dealer in Canada and you have somebody in Japan, right? And it's just and you're bringing it old school, you know, like word of mouth.

And I mean you we got a couple of guitars from you and then and you may have mentioned it to John at some point, but I just figured like I don't know, Mike's kind of like I he's not going to push it in John's face, you know, like and I asked the guys here. I was like, can you DM Mayor and just be like we got this guitar from Mike and you know, he's John Mayer.

He's probably a busy dude, you know, like so like there's a lot of things passing him. So as soon as he saw it, he purchased it immediately. And the thing that I do know about him is usually once he records with a guitar, that's the guitar that he used to perform with it forever, you know, because he kind of sets it in stone. Now, you've since he's got the guitar, he's contacted you, correct?

Yeah. So, this it this is a weird story, you know, John and I are close. We're very good friends. John, you know, John, I would be driving home from gigs at 2:00 in the morning and John would call me on the phone and he's like, "What are you doing?" And I go, "I'm coming I'm leaving the gig from hell." He goes, "What happened?" I go, "It's just it's an acoustic solo gig.

I'm playing in front of nobody. I'm making 150 bucks. You know, people, they don't give a [ __ ] about what I'm playing." I'm trying to make my house payment. I'm trying to make you know whatever it is. I it's just I'm sitting here and I'm going, man, I'm banging my head against the wall and it's just really frust. And then he would go into a whole thing about how he did that and how he would do that all the time and how it was constant, you know, and he would, you know, not so much build you up, but he could commiserate with you about that's just life.

That's the life of a musician. Sometimes you have great gigs, sometimes you have [ __ ] gigs, and you know, that's just what it is. But, you know, so John and I would always talk about what's happening, what am I doing, what do I want to do? And you know, and they're deep conversations. You know, I had this one conversation where I told John, I go, "There's so much I want to get done before I pass." And he said to me, he said, "You're never going to get it all done." And I agreed.

Or he posted something, that's what he was. He posted something on I think my Instagram. He said, "I missed out, but I'm going to get one of the next ones." And so I was like, "Okay, cool." You know, and I told John, I said, "Look, you know, whatever you want, just let me know and I'll make you something." And he's like, "Yeah, I appreciate that." Blah. But never it was never I want this, right?

And so the funny thing is when we were getting ready for the Woodwire and Bolt show, which we do in January, it's the same weekend as N. And it's a great show because it's all small builders like me and it's all boutique guys and it's just a fun time and I'm I'd never done a show on my own. My wife had never done a show and she's my partner.

So we're putting together the booth and how we want it to look and you know me from the Fender Custom Shop booths. I'm like, "What if we had like a motorcycle?" You know, it's like, you know, I'm and she's like going, "No." And you know, and so I'm trying to figure out how to make a messcow bar in the middle of this room and I'm it's I'm stressed because I'm trying to get guitars built and I'm trying to figure out what you know, I don't have enough guitars because everything sells immediately.

I don't have enough guitars to show the show blah. And I'm freaked out. John texts me. He goes, "How's it going?" I'm going, "I'm getting ready for the show." Blah. And he goes, "Hey, do you know who bought that messcow guitar from, you know, that messcow guitar that you made?" And I said, "I don't know who built it. I sold it to Tommy. Tommy has it. I think it sold right away.

I don't know. I'll text you next week after this thing." And that was it. And then I go to the show and you walk up and we talked for a minute and you go, "You know, John bought that guitar." And I'm what? And he's and you go, "Yeah, John bought the guitar." And I said, "Dude, he just texted me and said, "Do you ask me who I who bought it?" And we joked about it and you were like, "Well, maybe he's screwing me." And I thought, "Well, John's just playing a trick then." And then I went back and looked at the text.

And the text says, "Do you know I bought that guitar?" But because I was so flustered and in a hurry, I didn't read it right. And so I texted him back and I said, "You didn't have to buy it. I would have made you whatever, but you did buy it." Which is great. I'm grateful for that. And you bought it from a dealer, which makes me look even better to Tommy.

And so, you know, it was great. And then he hit me back and he goes, "That guitar sounds amazing. It sounds like a cross between Jeff Beck and a Pedal Steel. I just used it on a Laney Wilson track and it sounds unreal." And that was back in January. So, you know, I just thought, "Wow, that'll be cool because like you said, whatever he uses on something he's going to use live." So at some point that's going to show up.

Absolutely. And then when that thing hit, you know, I had planned to go to five a month by our anniversary is Cinco de Mayo May 5th. So I had planned to go to five a month by May of next year and I'm at five a month right now and it's bonkers right now. Yeah, that's great. I can't wait to get the next batch. Yeah, but I don't want to, you know, I was talking, it was funny because the guys at Reverb had reached out to me and they had said, "Well, you need to get a store and you know, and I told you about this and I'm like, I don't know if I want to do that, you know." And cuz that's not really my bag.

And he's like, and he goes, "How's it how did it go the first year?" And I said, "Well, we sold 25 guitars the first year." And he goes, "Well, that's good." And I go, "Yeah, that's great." You know, and he goes, "So, what's your plan for next year?" And I just said, "I'm going to make five guitars." He goes, "What do you mean?" I go, "I'm only making five guitars at a time." And then there was SL there was silence on the phone.

But this is, you know, this is that moment where you taking your entire life and combining it into what you love and who you are in these guitars. And to me, there's no better expression and for it to sort of culminate into this guitar right now, you know, and I don't say that as like we've been friends for 30 years. I don't need to pat your ass, you know, like it's just it's just something that I feel like, you know, like this is the next step.

I sometimes wonder why you didn't call it Eldrid Guitars instead of El Cabron. But so let me answer that. And there's a really great book that I just read because a couple people had asked me that. I just read this book. And I forget the author's name, but he's a guy who he's a real successful club owner in Miami. And so he would open these clubs up and they would blow up.

You get all these DJs to come in and play, all that stuff. And on the club scene, it was like, you know, he was doing partnerships with Eve St. Laurent and all this other stuff. And these clubs would blow up and all that stuff. And then he would open up another one, then he would open up another one, then he open up this one, then he would do this.

And now he's going over to these different countries and doing it. Real successful guy. And they had asked him, you know, the number one question he was getting asked. He goes, "Why don't you call the clubs your name?" And his he and he said he goes, "I'm going to tell you why. And I'm dedicating, just so you know how important it is, I've dedicated a whole chapter to my book on that.

And this is the reason why is that if I come out with Mike Eldrid guitars and they're successful and I end up wanting to sell that brand, I'm stuck. I can never use my name again, you know. But if I come out with a Ela Brun guitars and down the road I want to sell that, I can sell that and still not have an impact. I can open up I can make another brand or several brands.

That's interesting. It's it not want to get anybody nervous in this place, but it was one of the reasons I didn't name it like Tommy Colletti's The Music Zoo. I just wanted something I wanted to be separate from it. But I figured it different for a brand, you know, different for a guitar brand than I think it's important to separate the person from what the brand is.

I think that's really important myself, but anyway, and I'm not going to sell Cabron anytime soon or any of that stuff. I mean, the reality of it is that I wanted to make a guitar brand that I could make what I wanted to make. I could do I can do it from an art perspective and I can do it so that it's a collectible guitar. And you know, now we're seeing stuff I saw a thing the other day.

Now we're seeing stuff on social media where it's like people are saying stuff like, "I can't believe you got one." And the one that came across the other day was the number one question I'm getting is where is how do I get one? And that's what we want. We want people Yeah. Because Yeah. And I think I've shared this with you before, but for the people who are seeing this, the thing that's really important to me as a guitar builder is the secondary market.

Because I'm not only a guitar builder, I'm a guitar player. And so I have a lot of guitars. I have 33 guitars, I think, now. But I want to be able to if a 68 100 watt Marshall comes up and I want to buy it that I can look around and go, well, what can I sell? Because that's the number one thing that I think comes up in guitar players minds.

Well, what can I sell to get that? You know, and so I think that for me the a big important thing when you build an instrument is that on the secondary market that it's worth money. So that if somebody pays $6,000 for one of my guitars, they can turn around and sell that guitar for $8,000 in a couple years. Or and I, you know, I use this analogy a lot, but and then after I'm dead, that guitar would be worth a lot more money, you know, and but it's, you know, I mean that's reality and so that's really a kind of that plays in my head too when I'm coming up with stuff that I want on the secondary market.

I want the guitar to be worth something. So important. Yeah. So important. And we see it here too in the resale market. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Where do you I know some of this, but just for everybody else's sake, where do you besides keeping the build level the same and not like trying to explode it where there's too many guitars or anything? You already mentioned an S style guitar that you and I have talked about a lot, so I'm excited about that.

Do you just see, you know, like th those two things? Really? I know that you had the Mus twang as well, right? I think that the Mus twwang it's funny because after woodwire and bolts, I really kind of came to the real realization because I hadn't been in the business for a long time, you know, after I left Bender Custom Shop, you know, I didn't want to do it anymore, you I just wanted to play music and, you know, consult on a couple things and just, you know, hang out.

And but once I got back into it and once I went to Woodwire and Bolts and kind of talked to dealers and started getting back into that world, I realized quickly that the retail world at least for is pretty conservative. So when you come up with like the Mustwang and I had told mayor this I said that body haunts me that body style haunts me but I can never play that guitar because it's short scale.

So I did a 25 and a half version of that and it's a great sounding guitar, great playing guitar. Man, it was so cool. But I think that it kind of tweaked people when they looked at it went because when they see it immediately they think 20 they hear they either hear the sound or they envision like what should be played on it. Yeah. Yeah. So that was I think that was I don't want to say I think that I jumped the gun too fast on that guitar to be honest with you because I don't think people were understanding what number one who I was what I was doing again and then when you bounce that thing out there it's just like wait a minute now what is this?

Yeah. Guitar. You kind of have to explain that guitar a little deeper than an esquire or a two pickup or a Strat style guitar, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I think it takes the guitar player and the guitar world and the guitar collector time to wrap their head around things. I think and I you know it's because now I have some miles behind me. I see this happening and I get it.

You don't really when something's happening like something right now is happening with this and that El Cabrón guitars and this is a new thing and you're embarked on this. It's still very fresh. 3 to 5 years from now, that's when people are really going to start to get it. And I think that's when it really starts to heat up because there's a delay, you know, and it's and I could I talked to D, we was speaking about Donnie before, Donnie Wade, and I remember him telling me when he had his own guitar shop that there was a moment in time in the shop where he had a 58 Explorer and several bursts and old Strats and all of this stuff.

And they were used guitars back then. That's what they were. And he was and I remember him like sort of like having this moment. We were all drinking and he was having this moment like if I had all those guitars now I would I wouldn't even have to work, you know. But it takes a while for people to sort of get it, you know. I had Dale Wilson and Andy Hicks and some of the master builders here and we had this sort of like roundt conversation.

All, you know, known each other for a while now. And the comment that I made to them is that people, you know, like there's obviously vintage Strats and there's a beauty to a vintage Strat or a vintage Les Paul, right? But people don't necessarily get exactly what's happening and what's been happening for the last 20 or 30 years. It might take another 20 years for people to be spending stupid money on a Cruz guitar or a I mean people already are spending crazy money on a Dale Wilson guitar but and the Yuris and it just t it takes people a while to catch up until they go oh my god I can't believe how amazing that was or remember when Murphy worked at the custom shop at Gibson you know like because there'll be a point where he'll retire and won't do it anymore and then people be killing themselves for Murphy guitars.

So it's just funny the way the guitar player kind of takes it takes a while to catch up and for that matter like you know like some of the initial conversations we had 25 30 years ago were always about even though you were working at Fender Custom Shop at the moment but I was asking you a lot about Charvel because I was just so interested in it and at that point I mean correct me if I'm wrong some of the lineage I had understood that Fender had bought Jackson for8 million bucks and they threw Charvel in for free.

That's what I had heard internally. I don't know. Yeah. And then there was a moment in the early 2000s where they were kind of thinking about sort of canning Charvel entirely because it wasn't working. And I went to Jeff Carrie and I was like, I have a vision for these, you know, like if you'd let me run with this, you know, like I feel like my customers are my age and they grew up with Warren DeMartini and Jakey Lee and obviously Edward and Randy and there's going to be a moment in time where everything isn't encapsulated around a burst or an old Strat.

It's just going to happen like cuz my generation as much now that I'm a guitar dealer and I get bursts. I've played bursts that have changed my life and I've played bursts that I'm just like, you know, and say but the same thing with a custom shop guitar. I've played custom shop guitars that are life-changing, right? It's each guitar has got its own thing. But I saw that back then for Charvel and Jackson and they were and they were really they were considering just like ah we don't know what to do with this with the Charvel thing.

It's not working. Yeah. Well, they you know the purchase was for IMC Music and when they bought IMC Music, all those brands were under that IMC umbrella. So, I don't know if it was singled out like that. I kind of don't think it was but, you know, who knows? It could be. It could be just a story started or whatever. But I don't I remember Yeah, I remember Jeff Carrie telling me that and then maybe so then if Jeff if it came from Jeff it might be true.

And then there was a and you were there it was 2008 or 2009 and we did some kind of event in the original music zoo in Queens and I just watched recently within the last couple of months watched a video of that event and you speaking and everybody there. Mike Cotson was there and there was there must have been 60 or 70 Charvel custom shop guitars on the wall.

I there's I'm killing myself to get guitars here from Charvel and Jackson right now. There's never a moment where I have that much inventory, but I think that they had enough of the factory kind of cordoned off for us for making these guitars because there wasn't anybody else buying them. And that's obviously changed now. Like, so now there's other dealers that like take my build slots, you know.

The thing I mean, the thing about you, Tommy, first of all, I'm so I'm super grateful that I started this guitar company and you were the first guy, you know, I'm so grateful for that and you know that. You know how much I love you and all that stuff and everybody works there. Me, too. But you are the one like, and I've said this to you before, you're the one guy from the Charvel legacy.

You're the one guy that really gets it. He really understands it and really, you know, if there's a fan out there or if there's a guy, a collector, you know, I'm sure that the music zoo is the number one spot on his rolodex, you know, of, you know, where to find something cool or sell something cool or know something cool about something, you know, that's really a thing.

So, I think that's I and we've talked about before, I think that it's such a positive thing to be because that the Charvel leg legacy, the Jackson legacy, that's not going away. You know, after you and me are both gone, that is still going to be a huge thing. And so, I just think it's such a great thing, admirable that you sit back and, you know, you're a curator of that brand in many ways, you know, and you understand it so many different ways.

And it's tough when you have, you know, a company like Fender who that's one of their brands, you know, it's tough for them to focus put enough focus for somebody like you or me. We feel that they should put a lot more focus on it. But Sure. So, but that's just you and me. And you look at it from vendor's perspective, there's a lot for them to focus on.

So they just may not have the time to do it and all that stuff. Do you have any I mean it's a moment in time, but do you have any feelings on what's been going on currently with Fender and the S style guitars and the cease and desist orders and all of this stuff? Do you have a feeling either way without you know it without saying something that would make you uncomfortable?

But well, at my age, hanging out with people like Billy Gibbons and Gene Simmons and everybody else that I've dealt with in my life, there's not a whole lot that makes me uncomfortable. So, I really don't care, you know. My the only thing that I could really kind of say and when I first heard that this was come up again because they did this in 2009. I remember and I was working there at that time.

So I watched it from that other side. Yeah. Watched how what it did and I saw what the result was. But when I first started seeing this come up again, the only thing that really came to mind for me was I think that this is going to be a PR nightmare. And when I look at what's being said on the internet and what's being said by the consumer and you know, all that other stuff, I mean, I think that Fender's in a tough spot.

That's what I think. Yeah, I agree. But yeah, I you know some of these decisions again come from boardrooms and a legal department and you know this is one of it's so from a business standpoint I' I've always felt you know the guitar industry is completely different than everything else right it's one of it's sort of like this thing to itself and it encompasses the artists and players and we're all very passionate about it you know Like I see the people come in the store here with like Gibson shirts and f they're very passionate about everything and they're passionate about every decision that gets made or every misstep certainly that gets made.

I remember there was a moment where KKR had taken over Gibson and they decided to run a bulldozer over these Firebird X guitars, you know, and the everybody was up in arms like so there's you always see these missteps once in a I go, "God, the guitar industry is so hard as it is. Like, why are you guys making it tougher?" and there the these again, they're made these decisions are made in a boardroom as opposed to just like just consulting with a few people that really are in the know.

And that just bouncing around a little bit. What I remember, you know, like certainly periods of time for Fender Custom Shop. There was a there was several years where I would visit the Scottsdale offices and you had your own office and obviously Greg Jeff Carry and Andy Rossi. It was the first time one of the first times I was there in that Scottdale office. I met Schultz and was amazed that Schultz pulled me into his office and I sit down with him and he's just like you're you know like a fiery young man and you know like you it I walked out of there floating on a cloud.

And it again it came down to the people and the people in that building were just making all the right decisions and because they were passionate about it and that's the thing that I that I'm most concerned with is that the passion there's still very passionate people there right there's you were at N of 25 and so there's a I could name them there's a few guys that you love we both love like we've been all friends for years.

Joe Renoso, Rob Maywalt, Kurt Walton. Like you walked in the room and Kurt looked at you like you were you might as well have been like Taylor Swift or somebody, you know, like you're just like enamored and we all are. And I remember you saying like, I'm a little uncomfortable being in this room, you know? It's just like being in this room like you made this room, you know, the reason this room is here with like 2,000 custom shop guitars in it is because all the work that you put in 30 years ago.

The re the reason why I was uncomfortable and I was uncomfortable at that NAMM show because I hadn't been to a NAMM show in a long time, but I was getting stopped in the aisles and people talking to me and you know and wanting to say hi or meet me or whatever it was. And but when I went up to Fender, when I went up to Fender that day and you were there, when I went in when I went up to that Fender booth and I went up to the thing to go inside, there were people crying and that made me uncomfortable because I don't I'm kind of a humble guy and I don't like that kind of attention, you know, a lot.

And so it kind of freaks me out some of that stuff. I do I understand where it comes from. But it does make me uncomfortable and being in that room that's what made me uncomfortable is but I think the people that were the emotional impact from people and response that is what made me uncomfortable and you know later on and this is really kind of what because at that point I hadn't I had been talking to Grover about making a guitar with him and doing and getting back into doing something.

But it really never it wasn't really high on the priority list. But at that NAMM show, I went into the bathroom and I was standing in line to wash my hands as you know at NAMM it's packed. I'm standing in line to wash my hands and there's a guy next to me and he looks at me and he goes, "You're Mike Elder, aren't you?" And I go, "Yeah." And he goes, "I have two of your guitars." He goes, "And they're great.

They're amazing." And I'm like, "Well, thanks. I appreciate that." The guy in front of him turns around and says,"I have three of your guitars." And I go, you know, "Well, I shake your hand, but I gota watch my hands." You know, and that moment right there is what really kind of hit the switch and made me say, "Well, I think I need to I'm going to make some guitars.

I don't want to make a lot. I want to make some and just do it. Get back. I want to make a couple guitars and see how it goes." Those two guys, I told that story on the internet. Those two guys reached out to me and one guy's name's Dave, the other guy's name's Gabe. And I sent them t-shirts. I thanked them because they really were the primer to get El Cabrón going and doing all that stuff.

But the other thing that I wanted to say getting back to the Fender thing is I think that like you said there's some decisions that are made in the board level that maybe or the upper end that maybe not be the best interest for the guitar for the company or the guitar community. I don't know. But that's their decision. That's not my decisions. And at the end of the day, and this is what I tell everybody this, at the end of the day, as much as Charvel is, Fender is part of my family and it was it's part of my heritage and it's part of, who I am, and that won't go away until the day I die.

And so, I only want the best for Fender. And, you know, I just want I want to see Fender succeed. I want and I think that it's such a great brand. Bill Carson was a really good friend of mine and I still talk to Susan Carson, his widow and you know George Fullerton again as you know he was a good friend of mine you know Abby is still a great friend of mine and you know the people from Fender you know and Schultz you know he was a good guy to me and we had great conversations and so I just want the best for Fender.

Yeah. And as I do and I guess because we're so passionate with the guitars and passionate with the brand that when we see these missteps happen in front of us just it's so upsetting. I mean the day that basically mayor was pushed out. Could you call it pushed out like or just like they just weren't working with him, you know? I don't think it was pushed out.

I mean, and you know, it's funny because I never talked about this at all since I left. And then John did that guitar world interview and he kind of just spilled it all out. And that was I was shocked because John and I would talk about things and other people who knew would talk about things, but that was really that was I was shocked to see him put that in print like that.

And I think, you know, it did nothing help. It did nothing but help me for sure cuz but like I think two days after that article hit then the Lady Wilson track hit and then the next thing you know, I'm leaning into things a little harder and but anyways, you know, I mean, I was at the dinner in New York with the some of the Fender people with John because John and I had talked about what he wanted to do and we went to and had this dinner in New York with some the Fender upper echelon and kind of explained things and everybody was kind of like, "Yeah." And then, you know, a month or two later, everybody was like, "Yeah, maybe not." They started putting water in the milk.

You know, it's like, "That's not." And I think that really turned John off because John's not that kind of guy. I think that John, you know, I don't think that I know that John is a John has huge integrity and John has very clear vision and he's a very focused person. And so I think that kind of derailed things a little bit and then shortly after that is when they let me go.

And when they let me go, that was it. And that really John was pissed and that was it. Yeah, we all were. We all were. Yeah. And it's again it's these missteps, you know, like and you know, I don't know what me what it means from a life perspective, you know. I feel like the challenges in your life would make what make you who you are, you know?

Sure. And if nothing ever came up that was bad or terrible, you just go to the beach every day, I suppose. But, you know, like it's the challenges in your life that make you who you are. So, for whatever reason that had to happen, but certainly John leaving or making that decision after like just moments after you were gone was sort of just like a big f you to them and felt good for me who's a complete outsider.

I just kind of watched the whole thing unfold from the sidelines, you know. Well, it was flattering for me, too. And like I said, look, you know, I it's funny. I think on this birthday one year, I posted a picture of John and I sitting next to a campfire playing acoustic guitars. And I said, "You people, most of you people see a pop star. You know, what I see is one of the deepest friends that I've ever had." And it's not because of what happened with Fender or anything else.

You know, the day my dad died, you know, John Mayer sent a bouquet of flowers to the funeral. And with a handwritten note, and I didn't, who does that, you know, and that's the kind of guy he is. I went camping. This is where this picture came from. I went camping. I go camping every year with a group of about four families. And we went camping and I was talking to John about it because we were talk we talk all the time and he's like what oh I'm going camping I'm going to be down in you know Santa Barbara and all this stuff and he goes oh where and I told him and stuff and he goes I want to go I just bought a camper I go really he goes yeah he bought this camper get this he bought this camp side note he bought this camper because he was going to go start playing he goes I'm going to start playing guitar with the Grateful Dead guys.

I go really he goes yeah I goes I love the Grateful Dead. Oh cool you know. And so he bought this camper and he drove it out to San Francisco, wherever they rehearsed at, and he parked it next to the rehearsal place and he lived there. And every day he just went and he immersed himself into it, you know. But anyways, he goes, "I got a camper.

I want to go camping with you guys." I'm like, "Okay." So he shows up and you know it's John Mayer walking through the campground you know and you know it's like at night we wrote bunch of kids all sit around the campfire because they all my daughter's friends all play guitar and so they all and they all write music and so they're all sitting around this campfire and they're passing guitars around and they're singing original songs and John's just sitting there next to me watching this blown away that all these kids are writing these songs like this and he's just watching this and you know we're back and forth and stuff and then you know everybody's kind of done and stuff.

John picks up the guitar and he goes I'm gonna can I play some songs for you guys? They're new songs and everybody just sits there and John like went through and played like four or five songs off continuum that weren't out yet. Yeah. And what the hell? There's so many things about we could talk about him for a while, but it's one of the things that's always fascinating with me with him and his guitar playing and is really I guess because he's such an intelligent guy, his songwriting is really deep and I know he's a huge Stevie Ray fan and for good reason.

Stevie Ray who was Stevie Ray, right? But in and he'll never admit to this and but I think he surpassed Stevie a long time ago, you know, like I mean obviously Stevie had a window of time, but you know listen to some of those solos on some of these records that are just you know just gravity the guitar solo in RA gravity is just you know it's back to that I think I had read an interview somewhere So where I think it was Jeff Beck was talking about Brian May and the thing that he learned about Brian May and we all do is that you could sing every one of those guitar solos like from Rapsidity to Killer Queen to whatever it is.

They're just so good and they're just so musical and John took all of that Stevie Ray sauce and combined it with his smarts along with his songwriting ability and it's just really other level, you know. He's quietly a customer here with we're thankful for that. He's you know just I'm a fan. Yeah, he Yeah. I mean, the thing that I learned about John and his playing is that John is he's such a great guitar player.

Not, you know, I mean, people like when I first the first time I met John, you know, my wife was into it was the f that first record and, you know, and so I he was going to come down to the custom shop and it's like I wasn't I didn't I heard the songs. They were great songs, but I wasn't like I wasn't driving around playing Your Body is a Wonderland, you know?

I'm just not that guy. And but my wife is was and but he's such an amazing musician and a guitar player. And then once I saw how he played guitar, once we became friends and I saw how he played guitar and then played guitar with him, it was just like, dude, this is like and then he did the trio record and it was like, holy crap, you know?

I think that's to me that's one of the biggest flexes in Guitarom is that John Mayer trio record. That was like, oh yeah, by the way, boom. You know, just he just smashed everybody. It was just like and then when I saw them at Crossroads that video that you see at Crossroads and it's in Chicago and it's Steve Jordan, Pino Paladino and John and I was there and I watched them walk on stage and I stood on the side of stage and watched that performance.

It blew my mind and I had already seen John and we were already friends and I had already seen them play a million times. Those guys got up there and beat ass. They just killed it. At one point I was watching Jordan. He's just he would come up out of his drum set, out of his seat, hitting those drums. They were killing it so hard. And it was just such a statement to me.

I love that when people are so passionate, they go up there and they just they don't go through the motions and follow the track. They just go up and bust ass. And man, that blew my mind. But anyways, what I was going to say, the one thing that I really noticed early on about John, I said John will sit down and he'll pick up a 335 and sound exactly like BB King.

Exactly. And then I was at John's apartment one time in New York and John picked up a I think it was an eight string guitar and he sat down and you know he's playing all kinds of stuff that was like what the hell's that now you know and you know he's just he's such a great player all the way around. And the Hendrickx thing. I remember seeing him play one night at the Viper Room and he did a Hendrickx medley and I walked out of there and I said, "Alls I picture is a bunch of girls the next day going out to Tower Records and buying Bold as Love." He just completely, you know, presented that in a manner that was it was Jimmyi Hendris.

It sounded killer. Yeah. So yeah, what a talent. And thankfully he's out there doing it and he's one of the people that are, you know, keeping it alive right now. I feel, you know, because the guitar is in a weird kind of a weird moment, I think. Yeah. Yeah. There are people like John that are doing it and but the Guitar Hero has morphed over time, you know, and then there's this whole other I mean we could you and I could talk about this forever, but there's the whole Instagram thing too with these kids that are sitting on their beds in their bedrooms just like playing, you know, just light speed and just like another level, but you know, there's no band.

Yeah. Just a guitar player, you know, like there's no movement, you know, and you know, certainly as great as Edward is and was and as great as Van Halen was, I think the reason that people were going besides them being a great band is that like it was still the club scene back then was still about like meeting people, right? You're going to see like if there was girls there, you were going to meet the girls, right?

Like that's what brought it in. Yeah. And then once you lose that part of the whole thing, it ch it morphs, you know. So, I feel like we're in this weird stage right now where it's morphing into the next thing hopefully, you know. Yeah. But for you know, as usual, you know, we're two hours and 15 minutes in. Yeah. You know, we could talk forever and I' I'd do another one of these if you want because I feel like there's more ground that we have to cover.

But I wanted to, you know, wanted to catch up and have people hear some of these stories and just, you know, like talk about the El Cabrón guitars and how excited I am and just thankfully you're in my life and that we're actually documenting this as opposed to our late night calls. Yeah. I talked to Karen today, my wife, and I told her, I said, I go, you know, I'm going to do this interview.

And she wanted to sit in and listen, you know, and she couldn't because she ended up doing some other things. But I told her, I said, you know, it's not just an interview. It's historic because Tommy gets a lot of what you know that there's so much going that has gone on with Charvel and Jackson and the Fender Custom Shop and now El Cabron. I said, it's historic and it's a it's kind of a I go, this is all this is going to be around long after I'm gone.

And I said it's a positive thing, a real huge positive thing. And I'm grateful, you know, I'm grateful for you again and all that stuff. And what I'm doing with Alabbrun is, you know, I want to do something that's cool and not like everybody else. It's funny the Japanese are coming in and they're going, "Hey, we'd like to order some stuff." I'm like, "You don't order anything.

There's no ordering. There's no custom order stuff." And people are put off by that. And not at Popa, but they it's hard for them to grasp the concept where it's five at a time. They're all different and you know, they're all collectible. One guy asked me, he goes, "Are they serialized?" I said, "They have a date on the butt, you know, that's it." And that's what it is.

Those were that date. There were four other guitars made on that date and that's it, you know, and so I want to keep it like that. It's one of the things that I don't want to I don't want to I didn't want to approach it where it's just like here we go another guitar company blah. I don't want to do that. I want to do stuff that's different and unique.

The keychains that on it, the certificates that are on it, the everything that's different about it so that people sit there and go, "Wow, this is like a the level you thought about it." Yeah. Every part of it. Every part of it. And I think that you know getting back I just want to touch on mayor one more time. One of the things that I noticed with John because John really understands the concept.

John even asked me he goes are you he goes you should start right after the Laney Wilson thing. You should take pre-orders. And I'm like no not going to do it. He goes why? And I go because I and I explained the concept to him. I said it's five at a time and it's first come first serve. And he goes it's a drop. I go it's a drop.

And he goes, "It's like Supreme." I go, "It's just like Supreme." And I said, "And that's what I want it to be. I want it to be a special thing." But I would watch John when he did the acoustic tour, which was amazing. John would get up there, just him, and he'd have acoustic guitar and he'd play piano and guitar, electric guitar, and both at the same time, and looping and all kinds of great stuff.

But at one point in the show, he sits up there with acoustic guitar and there's people in the audience and they have signs up and they're holding signs up and you know they want to hear this song, they want to hear that song. But John would sit there and go, "Oh, okay. I'm going to do that one. Let's do that one right now." And then he would play that song.

And then after that song, he go, "I Okay, I can do that one. I think I played that one last night. I'll tell you what, I'm going to do that one. That one and we're going to do a method. That's not planned out. That's awesome. That's like him on thinking on his feet how it goes. And for me, I think that's the excitement, you know, and I use this analogy a lot with people.

The honeymooners, Jackie Gleason, the honeymooners, right? You've seen it many times. It's a New York thing. You got to watch it. Jackie Gleason would be in Miami Beach and he would be writing the script and all that stuff like that and then he would get everybody and put them on a train and then take them up from Miami to New York to tape it and it would and they would go at night and they would and all night they're partying, drinking, just going crazy the whole night and but he would never show anybody the script until the day of the taping.

And the reason why he didn't do that is because he wanted it to be fresh. He wanted everybody to be seeing it for the first time at the thing. And there's to me there is an excitement and there's an edge to that stuff. And that's why when I make guitars, I don't tell people, well, here you go. This is what's coming. We'll sell this at the end of the month.

That's not going to happen. You find out about three days before that they're going to go on sale on this date, on this time, and it's first come first serve. You don't know what the guitar is going to look like. Yeah, that's wonderful. Yeah, I think it's like that band that goes into the studio live and just does it. Yeah. And I think that's missing and like you said, I think that's missing in corp in the corporate world.

I think that's missing in music. I think that's missing in a lot of different industries, you know, and you know, it's I'd be a hypocrite to say, you know, that there was a moment in time where Fender was the first one that decided like we're going to sell direct, you know, like and then soon after because everybody just sort of follows everybody else. It was it wasn't too long that everybody sort of followed and decided that they were going to start selling direct to some capacity.

And I'd be a hypocrite to say like, well, you can't sell guitars online because I'm s I'm obviously doing it, right? But the thing that they s sort of drew the line in the sand is I'm here talking to the people every day, right? I'm a soldier and I've always seen the music zoo this way. Like here's Fender and Gibson and all these companies and they hired us and thousands of dealers around the world to go out and spread the message and I've spent my entire life going Fender Gibson Charvel and not because I have to it's because I love the guitar so there's the passion in there right and then I'm talking to the customers you've how many times have you been here where we did some kind of Fender Custom Shop Clinic or Charvel thing or whatever and the people are there and the people are coming with ideas and you know it would be really cool if we did this and all of those ideas are so important and you're communicating with everybody and now and the thing I guess my advertisement is the thing that's happened is they drew this line in the sand and they said we don't need this input from you we're just going to do this ourselves and it's just like well that's the moment where you're disconnected from everybody you know like it's like loving a child from far away like you know like out.

It's there's a nurturing that's gone from this whole thing. And to me, it's like one of the biggest missteps. I don't know if it ever turns around or it'll morph into something else or whatever. But it's it is what it is, right? Well, the thing, and you and I have talked about this before, for my company, you can buy direct if you want, but you better be fast, you know, and because Tommy Kleti understands what's going on.

And I can tell you right now, Tommy's going to be the first one on the phone, and so is Luzon Music, and so is Wild West, and so is, you know, the guy in Japan. So, you better be fast if you're going to do it. And for me, it, you know, it'd be easy to sit there and say, "Well, I'll just sell direct." You know, I don't personally, I mean, I don't see people, and you and I have talked about this before, I don't see people wanting to buy direct so much.

I see people wanting to have some type of experience. I see people who, you know, Tommy Kleti is my guy and I know that like dealing with like Rob Kaplan, you know, it's people like that. He doesn't want to go direct. He doesn't want to deal with that stuff. He just wants he has a guy, you know, if he wants to buy a Dangelico, then he'll go to, you know, wherever and get that.

Or if he wants to buy Charvel. I mean, look at John Mayer. John Mayer didn't have I mean, I hate to keep using John's name, but John's a great example. John could have called me up, you know, but he's he buys his guitars from you know. I'm sure other rock stars buy their guitars from you know. They do. They do. And you know, but they can go to direct if they wanted to.

But I don't know. I agree with you. I think that a company for a company to sit there and go, "Well, we have dealers and then we also do direct." I mean, like, what are you doing? You're kind of pissing in the pool in my opinion. Yeah. Or whatever that's worth. There's and I, you know, because it's such a small industry and we all kind of know and we all kind of know each other and everybody's passionate about it and you know, there's 15 or 20 US dealers that really all know each other and they're probably doing the majority of the guitar sales and the in the influential guitar sales.