A Fender-trained repairman in Azusa.

Charvel began as a repair shop. Wayne Charvel, who English Wikipedia says had worked at Fender for about three years in the early 1970s, opened Charvel’s Guitar Repair in the mid-1970s — Wikipedia gives 1974 — to refinish and repair out-of-warranty Fenders and to make upgraded parts. Charvel’s own history, archived in 2025, describes it as “a small shop in Azusa, Calif., that specialized in hot-rodding traditional electric guitars”; bodies made there were stamped “Charvel Azusa,” according to English Wikipedia’s article on Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein guitar. Jackson’s history instead places the shop in Glendora, a neighbouring town, so we note the difference.

The shop sold parts as well as repairs. English Wikipedia says Wayne Charvel distributed bodies and necks from Boogie Bodies and parts from Schecter and Mighty Mite, and made around a hundred ash bodies himself after Dave Schecter taught him how. Around January 1977, it says, Eddie Van Halen bought an ash body from Wayne Charvel and built the guitar later called the Frankenstein, or “Frankenstrat,” which appeared on the cover of Van Halen’s 1978 debut album. In the summer of 1978 the shop delivered a professionally made yellow-and-black copy, the “Bumblebee,” which was photographed for the cover of Van Halen II.

When cheap copies of his parts arrived, Wikipedia says, Wayne Charvel began assembling complete guitars on the advice of Grover Jackson, one of his employees. With the business in financial difficulty, he sold it to Jackson in November 1978 — “late 1978,” in Charvel’s own words — and Charvel’s history says he “ceased having any real association with the company’s name from that point on.”

The San Dimas years.

Under Grover Jackson, Charvel became a guitar maker. Charvel’s history says the first Charvel-name guitars he built made their debut in summer 1979. English Wikipedia says he first tooled the shop to make bodies for Mighty Mite and DiMarzio and wood parts for B.C. Rich, SD Curlee and Music Man, and used the income to build up the Charvel brand.

The guitars helped define a type. Charvel popularised hot-rodded Stratocaster-style guitars — often a single humbucking pickup and a tremolo, the layout later called the superstrat — with bold graphics and unfinished maple necks, English Wikipedia says. Its list of 1980s players includes Warren DeMartini of Ratt, Jake E. Lee, George Lynch, Chris Holmes, Gary Moore and Allan Holdsworth; Charvel’s own story adds Shawn Lane.

The brand’s best-known name is not a town it worked in. Charvel’s history says the original American-made guitars are called San Dimas models “after the San Dimas, California P.O. box listed on their neck plates”; English Wikipedia dates those plates to about 1982 to 1986, alongside a gold “Charvel – Made in USA” headstock decal. Charvel’s history says production stayed in Glendora until 1986, when it moved to Ontario, California; Wikipedia says American production of Charvels effectively stopped then.

Japanese-made Charvels with model numbers appeared in 1986 under a licensing deal with International Music Corporation, and in 1989 Grover Jackson sold Jackson and Charvel to that company. Their neck plates carried a Fort Worth, Texas, address even though the guitars were built in Japan, Charvel says, and its history admits that in the early 1990s the brand “fell from favor and suffered a drop in quality as the name was used on lower-quality budget instruments.” A Korean-made Charvette line covered the entry level.

Design and documentation.

The seven makers in this guide build electric guitars for rock and metal players, but they are organised in very different ways.

Two belong to Fender. Jackson, founded by Grover Jackson in Glendora, California, in 1980, and Charvel, begun by Wayne Charvel as a repair shop in Azusa in 1974 and sold to Grover Jackson in 1978, have both been owned by Fender since 2002, English Wikipedia says, and it gives Scottsdale, Arizona, as the base of both.

Two are linked through one man. ESP grew from Electric Sound Products, a parts shop that Hisatake Shibuya opened in Tokyo in 1975. In 1987, English Wikipedia says — ESP’s own corporate history gives 1990 — Shibuya bought Schecter, which David Schecter had started as a repair and parts shop in Van Nuys, California, in 1976, and which now gives its custom shop’s home as Sun Valley, Los Angeles; the two have remained separate companies.

Kiesel, in Escondido, California, traces its heritage to the pickup company Lowell Kiesel founded in Southern California in 1946, which became Carvin, and took its present name when it split from Carvin in 2015. Mayones was founded in Gdańsk, Poland, in 1982 by Zenon Dziewulski, Polish Wikipedia says, and is run by the Dziewulski family.

Cort, based in Seoul, is the odd one out: a large share of its output, by its own account, carries other brands’ names, and it makes its guitars in factories it runs in Indonesia and China.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Revived by Fender.

Fender Musical Instruments Corporation bought Charvel and Jackson in the fall of 2002, Charvel’s history says, and revived American-made San Dimas models to recall the originals. The brands are run by Jackson/Charvel Manufacturing, Inc., which the Charvel website says uses the Charvel name and headstock design under licence from Fender; English Wikipedia says Fender has been majority-owned by Hawaii’s Servco Pacific since 2020.

Charvel’s flagship USA Select guitars are “meticulously built by the Charvel team at the Custom Shop in Corona, Calif.,” its 2020 catalogue says, and the company describes a U.S.A. Custom Shop whose master builders include Dave Nichols, who joined from Fender’s Custom Shop in 2005. English Wikipedia says the core Pro-Mod range is made at Fender’s plant in Ensenada, Mexico, and the MJ Series in Japan; we could not confirm those origins on Charvel’s own site, which blocked automated access, so we give them as Wikipedia’s account. A Chinese-built Desolation series followed in 2011, which Wikipedia now lists among past models.

Today’s range rests on a few body shapes — the Stratocaster-style San Dimas Style 1 and So-Cal Style 1, the Telecaster-style Style 2 versions, and the DK, or Dinky — plus artist models for players including Guthrie Govan, Warren DeMartini, Jake E. Lee, Angel Vivaldi and Gojira’s Joe Duplantier. A Custom Shop Eddie Van Halen “Art Series,” in the striped colourways of his Frankenstein guitars, was made in a short run. Wayne Charvel later built guitars under his own name, including a Gibson model in the 1980s and the Wayne brand with his son; those are separate from Charvel.

For a design guide, Charvel shows how a parts-and-repair shop’s look — loud graphics on a familiar shape — became a brand. Compare Jackson, the brand Grover Jackson started inside it, and Fender, whose Stratocaster it reshaped and which owns it today. For this guide we use a hot pink, a teal and black with a wide sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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