Charvel USA Guthrie Govan Signature HSH Caramelized Ash Guitar, Roasted Maple

PLAYER'S PERSPECTIVE

Holy Guthrie. This guitar should be nominated for knighthood. Smoothies, city blocks and new species of mammals should be named after it. There should a free app that calculates your proximity to the nearest one. Pictures of it should come standard as a background choice for all laptops.

This stunning Guthrie Govan Signature San Dimas in a beautiful natural finish over the caramelized (torrefied/roasted) swamp ash body courted and wooed us before we even conjured a single note out of it. The first thing you'll notice is the neck. It's just the right shape: not a baseball bat, not paper thin. When you play with your hand flat and your thumb directly in back, it'll really let you open up and get into a full stride. But when you reach your thumb around the top for a big bend, there's still plenty of neck to dig into.

Tonally, this guitar sports a all-encompassing set of pickups and tonal options on tap that provide supreme flexibility. The pickups are some of the best-sounding we've heard. They're clear, responsive, and always very honest in reflecting your playing without getting in the way. Single-coil jangle and chime, full-on saturated humbucker leads, warm neck pickup jazz tones - it's all in there. 

In short, the Guthrie Govan signature is one of the best electric guitars we've played. The build quality is outstanding.  It's perfect for the Guthrie disciple or simply any player looking for a super high-end, no-nonsense workhorse shredder.

Details

As a preeminent modern virtuoso, U.K. guitar master Guthrie Govan dazzles all who hear his playing. Charvel spent two years of meticulous developmental work with Govan to originally introduce his signature model, and it's the ultimate ultra-pro guitar that's only gotten better with time. Loaded with special features and high-performance appointments, it's truly the ideal expression of Govan's artistry rendered in distinctive Charvel form.

The Guthrie Govan USA Signature HSH Caramelized Ash is a 25.5” scale guitar that offers a carmelized ash San Dimas body with a thin satin lacquer finish and a specially contoured heel (sans neck plate) for easy access to the upper reaches of the fingerboard. The bolt-on flame maple neck has a "caramelized" heat and drying treatment that makes it sound and feel much older, with graphite reinforcement, hand-rubbed urethane on the back and a convenient truss rod adjustment wheel at the body end. Most unusually for a San Dimas model, the 12"-16" compound radius flame maple fingerboard spans two octaves, with the same caramelized treatment as the neck, 24 extra jumbo stainless steel frets and special maple dot inlays with ebony borders, as well as Luminlay® side-dots that emit light for the darkest of stages.

Other premium features include three specially wound Charvel custom MF pickups arranged in a versatile HSH configuration with five-way switching for the expansive tonal openness and dynamic sensitivity that Govan demands, a 2-way mini toggle switch to engage single coil simulation in bridge and neck humbucker position, two Luminlay numbered dome control knobs for volume and tone, U.S.-made recessed Charvel locking tremolo bridge with Tremol-No™ unit and oversized brass block, bone nut and chrome hardware.

Features

• Caramelized Ash Body
• Bolt-On Caramelized Flame Maple Neck w/ Graphite Reinforcement
• 12"-16" Compound Radius Caramelized Flame Maple Fingerboard
• Charvel Custom MF Humbucking (Bridge and Neck) and Chervel Custom MF Single-Coil (Middle) Pickups
• U.S.-Made Charvel Locking Recessed Tremolo
• 5-Way Blade, 2-Way Toggle, Volume, Tone Controls