a standard in custom

A Standard in Custom
Riding high after 35 years with an array of original
instruments, an impressive artist roster that
started early with Pete Townshend and Mark
Knopfler, and a line of high-gain amplifiers,
Schecter Guitars has come full circle.
Established as Schecter Guitar Research by
David Schecter in 1976, the company began
repairing guitars and selling parts to fit the
latest offerings from Gibson and Fender,
which were largely failing to strike players’
fancies. An innovator in pickup winding and
coil tapping, Schecter eventually began
selling replacement bodies, necks, and
all the parts a player needed to assemble their own guitar. The concept
shifted the guitar zeitgeist and
helped push customizing to the
forefront – Eddie Van Halen
used a couple of well-known
“parts guitars” – and a
few repair shops even
John Gaudesi
inspects the neck of a
Masterworks guitar.
108 March 2014
became quasi builders,
using parts from Schecter
(or Warmoth, et al) to help
those who didn’t have the
time, tools, or inclination to
assemble a guitar on their own. By ’79, Schecter Guitar Research was building its own
instruments, widely viewed as
better variants of Strats and Teles.
Production was initially limited, but
demand pushed the company to establish more than a dozens retail stores in
North America. That growth caught the
attention of a group of investors from Dallas, and in 1983, production (sans most of
the builders from California) moved south.
Still offering Fender copies, the company
shifted to all-out mass production, and
its reputation suffered somewhat from the
same ills of its big-brother predecessors –
quality control being the primary knock.
Sales lagged, and by ’87, the boys in Big D
decided to bail, selling the brand to Hisatake
Shibuya, owner of ESP Guitars. Grabbing
the reigns, Shibuya did an immediate aboutface, initially taking Schecter back to just
a couple guys building high-end customs
in L.A. One of the brand’s remaining few
retail outlets was another Shibuya interest,
Sunset Custom Guitars, which employed a
guitarist named Michael Ciravolo.
“I had been working at Lab Sound, a
music store on The Strip,” he recalled.
“But, when it changed ownership, I
was suddenly in need of a day job! I
was hired to manage Sunset Custom,
which was the sister to the famous
store on 48th Street in New York City.
We carried racks full of guitars with
brands like Tom Anderson, Schecter,
and Valley Arts. We were also Schecter’s
U.S. headquarters at the time, so I split
my time between the store and doing
sales for Schecter International.”
Ciravolo was in the right place at
the right time as the company began
a return to significance. Its director
resigned not long after his arrival, and
Ciravolo was chosen as his successor.
Though he had no formal business
training, Ciravolo brought knowledge
and ideas, and Shibuya let him run
with it. Coincidentally, Ciravolo’s
wife, Tish, was expecting a baby.
“Until then, my life had been about
chasing the illustrious record deal,”
he said. “But, it struck me that I had
to take advantage of the opportunity, and I am eternally grateful to
Mr. Shibuya for giving a
longhaired guitarist
from New Orleans
the opportunity
to rei nvent a
brand.”
In the years
t hat fol lowed,
S c h e c t e r e xpanded its operations and staff,
a nd int roduced
severa l or ig i na l
models beginning
with the S series,
then – with considerable input from
Ci ravolo – t he
Tempest, Avenger, Hellcat, and
others. In the
late ’90s, the
br a nd e xper ienced
a r e s u rg e n c e
thanks to
its guitars
f inding
favor with
players in
the heav y,
post-pu n k
music of the era,
propelled by its sevenstring models and others suited to the look
– and especially the
sound – of the genre’s
alternate/lower tunings.
More recently, Schecter
began elevating the profile of its
Custom Shop. The renewed focus
started with machinery and the
hiring of John Gaudesi, who for
a decade had been a key player
in research and development of
guitars at Yamaha. “I had known
John for a long time, and he
brought a wealth of knowledge,”
said Ciravolo. “He started in
the early ’80s at Charvel, and
the moment John joined, we no
longer simply dabbled in custom
building – we had the basis to
build a real, true guitar factory.”
(LEFT) This Masterworks CS-1
is a prime example of the work
being done by the Schecter
Custom Shop. (RIGHT) Guitars
like this wenge-bodied Banshee
8 helped resurrect Schecter
in the late 1990s.
March 2014
109 Vintage Guitar
“I had speculated on taking on a venture like this for
many years,” Gaudesi said.
“It’s exciting, being part of
this team, especially under
the leadership of someone
who is not afraid to do things
right the first time.”
In March of 2012, Schecter
moved the Custom Shop to a dedicated 14,000-square-foot building
in Sun Valley.
“It is really inspiring to walk
through that shop now,” Ciravolo
said. “It looks, smells, and feels like
what I imagined the Schecter facility
did in the early Van Nuys days – a
cool combination of high-tech and
low-tech, with all the work being
done by guitar players.”
The Custom Shop is divided into
two sections – one for the USA Production line, which includes several
models that can be dressed with a
handful of custom options, and the
Masterworks division, where a Master Builder creates one-off, customorder guitars from start to finish
using more-traditional techniques
and machinery. “Masterworks can
provide the discerning player with
their dream guitar – bolt-on, setneck, neck-through, six, seven, eight
or more strings, doublenecks, chambers – the options are truly endless,”
said Ciravolo.
The USA Product ion side,
meanwhile,
employs craftsmen skilled in
many aspects of
the process along
w it h s p e c i a l i s t s
who focus on various phases. Gaudesi
uses two computer
numerical control
(CNC) machines
to roug h-shape
bodies, ca r ve
routes, and
rough-in neck
blanks, fingerboa rd s , a nd
inlays. Necks
a re s a nde d ,
and inlays
and frets installed before
the pieces move
to Jose Rosas, who
Schechter’s USA Production CET guitars
offer a healthy dose of vintage appeal.
does final prep on bodies for finisher
Rafael Barrajas, who applies paint
and a thin polyester finish in the
spray booth. Once dry, finishes
are leveled and buffed before the
bodies and necks move to Shigeki
Aoshima, in assembly. “This is
where the real magic happens,”
said Ciravolo.
He also still points proudly to the
company’s hand-wound pickups.
“They were really the birth of Schecter
Guitar Research,” he said. “Many features pioneered by David Schecter in
the mid ’70s are standard on many of
today’s popular pickups. It’s truly exciting to be able to reverse-engineer
and re-create some of the classic
pickups from our past – the
SuperRock, MonsterTone, and
Z-Plus – and design new and
innovative models.”
The staff includes about 40
guitar players that serve as
an essential built-in focus
group. “There really aren’t
any models, pickups, and
custom touches we have not
tried ourselves,” Ciravolo
said.
There was a time where
Schecter was perceived as merely building “expensive Strats” (or
Teles). How does Ciravolo react
when someone tosses that generalization in the direction of his Custom Shop
instruments today? “In the genius of David Schecter, that
wasn’t just perception, it was fact,” he said.
“Schecter Guitar Research spearheaded
the golden era of hot-rodding guitars –
at the time, no self-respecting guitarist
would play a stock, off-the-shelf instrument, and ’70s instruments were not
looked at as collectors’ items,
but as sub-par guitars in need of replacing
everything.
“When I took over as President, I knew
we had to shed the image of ‘kit’ guitars
and ‘expensive Strats’ if we were going to
compete. And we never stopped building
U.S.-made instruments; for awhile it
was essentially a two-person operation building two or three
instruments per month,
but the inception of
our Diamond Series
instruments in
19 9 7 ov e rshadowed
t hose efforts while
simultaneously
changing
the indust r y sta n-
110 March 2014
dard of what an ‘import guitar’
could be. We set the bar high with innovative designs and the addition of
high-quality U.S.-made components like
Seymour Duncan, EMG, and TonePros.”
“I am very honored to be a part of this
new venture for Schecter Guitars,” added
Gaudesi. “It’s a nice combination of the
right team, state-of-the-art technology, and hand craftsmanship that truly
brought high quality and an affordable
custom instrument, made in the USA,
back to the forefront.”
“To set our new path, I purposely distanced us from Schecter’s superstrat era.
Now, with the rebirth of our Custom Shop,
we are giving a nod to our early history
and the guitars that have spawned a lot of
other well-known brands.
“In my 20 years of knowing Mr. Shibuya,
even with the success we have had in putting Schecter in the ranks of the world’s
top electric-guitar companies, I have never
seen him light up like he did when he first
saw our new shop in Sun Valley. He said,
‘This is something I always wanted to see!’
For me, that was enough!”
(CLOCKWISE TOP LEFT) Michael
Ciravolo has guided the Schecter
ship since 1995. Harkening to
the company’s earliest days, a
worker winds pickups. Shigeki
Aoshima in the spray booth.
March 2014
111 Vintage Guitar