So I finally got around to doing a review. Lol! better late than never!
I purchased this guitar just under a year ago. Over the months the instrument has been used in both live and recording situation. In fact I like the Model 2 2H so much it has become my main guitar. Lets start with the facts: The body is made out of Alder; the neck is comprised of a one-piece quatersawn piece of maple with a maple fingerboard. The neck has a compound radius with a 25-½ inch length and 22 frets with mini Grover tuners. It has an original Floyd Rose top-mounted locking tremolo as well. The electronics consist of a Seymour Duncan JB (in the bridge position) and a Seymour Duncan ’59 in the neck position. The controls consist of a three-way toggle and a master volume. The guitar came with a nice Charvel gig bag. List price was 1,099.00, but many dealers were selling the Model 2 2H for 699.00.
About the time I purchased this instrument I was beginning the plans on assembling my next custom guitar. I had gotten away from using tremolos for many years, and I wanted to start using them again. I do like the original edge, but I wanted to have an original Floyd, two Seymour Duncan humbuckers, no tone control, and a three-way switch and a maple neck and fingerboard with a reverse headstock all on a telecaster style body.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered Charvel already made almost the exact guitar I was thinking of, and at a price that could not be beat. I wasted no time locating a local dealer and went to check out the guitar. I had never played a Charvel before. I was aware of the brand, but that was the extent of my knowledge really. In fact, I did not even know about the more recent history of the brand being purchased by a few different corporations before Fender bought them a few years ago.
To try out the model 2 2H, I played the guitar through a Bogner Ubershcall and was immediately impressed with the instrument. The construction was first rate for a production guitar. The frets were dressed well, the action was great, the neck was like butter, and the electronics and tremolo performed flawlessly. All of this straight out of the box for under 700.00! I wish I could say that many of the big players could make the same statement, but sadly many manufactures, Ibanez and Gibson to name a few seem to have a huge drop off in quality control in the last decade.
Now that I have had this instrument almost a year it continues to grow on me. In fact I am thinking of purchasing a second one for live performance. The neck makes both fast runs and chordal work very easy to accomplish, I really enjoy the compound radius, it makes more difficult fingerings much easier on my smaller hands. The stock pick-ups are great, this instrument can create convincing sounds over a wide sonic spectrum, from jazz to hard rock. I perform both original music and play in a cover band and I have found this guitar is a great tool when performing works from the light jazz to screaming hard rock.
This instrument, in my opinion, is a great guitar at a fantastic price. It easily holds its own in the RG/Jem market. True it does not have quite the sonic possibilities without a single coil pick-up option, but even with the three way control provided the guitar still has some fabulous sonic possibilities. The only issues that I have with the guitar is as follows: The volume knob was very stiff out of the box, and I find its location to be too close to the bridge. I would like it a little further down from its present location. Secondly, the toggle switch is too far back. I would rather have it on the lower horn, ala the Washburn Bettencourt model. The trem are comes loose very easily, even when it is tighten down pretty securely. Finally, although this guitar covers a wide spectrum of genre’s well, it cannot do justice to modern aggressive metal. The JB combined with the Alder body just does not have the sustain for the extreme dive bombs and artificial harmonics. The Floyd over all is great you can abuse the tremolo all day long and it will stay in tune.
So overall, for the price and features the Charvel Model 2 2H is a great instrument worthy of consideration.
The following four clips were made quickly purely for tone examples. Clip one is the clean channel with the reverb on. Clip two is channel two with out the boost on. Clip three is channel two with the boost on for a lead. Clip four is channel three with some faster lower register riff. All four clips were made with the Rivera KR7 through a 2x12 VHT fat bottom cabinet. (These are the same samples as posted for the KR7) The mic was a Shure SM57 into an Allen and Heath console outputted into a DP 2408 for my DAW.
http://home.comcast.net/~freemrtn/re...arvel_2_2H.jpg
here is a link to a
http://home.comcast.net/~freemrtn/review/clean_KR7.mp3 clean example
here is a link to
http://home.comcast.net/~freemrtn/re..._channel_2.mp3 channel two w/o boost
here is a link to
http://home.comcast.net/~freemrtn/re...el_2_boost.mp3 channel two with boost
here is a link to
http://home.comcast.net/~freemrtn/re..._channel_3.mp3 channel 3
