Charvel Custom Shop Music Zoo Exclusive Carbonized Recycled Redwood San Dimas HS Electric Guitar
This is a very special run of instruments with a great history; introducing the Music Zoo exclusive Charvel Custom Shop Recycled Redwood San Dimas. This Redwood has a fantastic story to it that starts with a very exciting time in American history. We think the Redwood really lets the nuances of your playing shine through. Notes come out crystal clear no matter how lightly played, and the resonance of this guitar when turned up through an overdriven tube amp gave us one of those Spinal Tap moments; you could go for a walk and come back to the E chord still going.
We decided to build these out with two direct mounted pickups, crown head tuners, a light oil finish and your choice of Floyd Rose or NOS tremolo. The curly maple necks have been carbonized, a revolutionary process to stabilize the moisture content of the wood, significantly lightening it, making it more resonant, and stabilizing it against atmospheric changes forever. These guitars are a medium weight and full of tone, with an incredibly comfortable neck, and a piece of wood that just kind of makes you go “wow” when you get it in your hands. Read on for more info on both the Redwood bodies and carbonized necks.
Recycled Redwood Body:
The pieces of Redwood used in this run of guitars was originally used in the construction of the Brown’s Canyon Trestle, near Occidental, California. The trestle was built in 1876, and at the time it was the longest and tallest trestle west of the Mississippi to carry trains which were logging the Redwood forest following the California Gold Rush. The trestle was taken apart during the 1930’s, and some of the lumber was used for constructing a San Jose, California shopping center. Fast forward to today, when the shopping center is no more, and we have turned these 135-year-old pieces of wood into some of the best sounding Charvels we have ever heard.
Carbonized Maple Neck:
Kiln-drying is an age-old technique used to season wood for use in building instruments, but this new process takes kiln-drying a step further. The wood is essentially cooking in a pressurized kiln in its own moisture and gasses as they escape. Much of the hemi-cellulose is cooked out, similar to what happens as wood ages. Cooked wood resembles 100+ year old wood in this respect. Loss of hemi-cellulose lightens the wood and reduces the damping factor so that it has a crisper, longer ring time, losing more weight than stiffness so that the stiffness to weight ratio is increased. The lignin (glue) undergoes a hardening process, making the wood less flexible. The loss of hemi-cellulose and hardening of lignin collectively increase the stiffness to weight ratio by 15% to 25% depending on species. Most of the cellularly bound water is driven off or combined into larger, more stable molecules. This characteristic makes the wood significantly more stable in use, and locks the moisture content around 10 percent. This means that the wood will not take on moisture nor release moisture during its life, which keeps it from being susceptible to climate and humidity changes as the seasons change or as the guitar travels from city to city. This equals fewer neck adjustments and playing issues over the lifetime of the instrument. The release of this moisture also greatly reduces the weight of the wood, making for lightweight and ultimately more resonant necks.
Includes: Hardshell Case, Tremolo Arm, and Paperwork
