Schecter Guitar Research
 | |
| Company type | private company |
|---|---|
| Industry | musical instruments |
| Founded | Van Nuys, California (1976) |
| Founder | David Schecter |
| Headquarters | 1840 Valpreda Street Burbank, California 91504 United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | David Schecter (founder) Hisatake Shibuya (entrepreneur/owner) Michael Ciravolo (president) |
| Products | Electric guitar Bass guitar Steel-string acoustic guitar |
| Owner | Hisatake Shibuya |
| Subsidiaries | Daisy Rock Guitars |
| Website | www.schecterguitars.com |
Schecter Guitar Research, or commonly known as Schecter, is an American, guitar manufacturing company. The company was founded in 1976 by David Schecter and originally only produced replacement parts for existing guitars from manufacturers such as Fender and Gibson. Now, the company mass-produces its own line of electric guitars, bass guitars, and steel-string acoustic guitars.
History
Custom shop days, 1976 – 1983
In 1976, David Schecter opened Schecter Guitar Research, a repair shop in Van Nuys, California. The modest repair shop manufactured replacement guitar necks and bodies, complete pickup assemblies, bridges, pickguards, tuners, knobs, potentiometers, and other miscellaneous guitar parts. Eventually, Schecter Guitar Research offered every part needed to build a complete guitar. It supplied parts to big guitar manufacturers such as Fender and Gibson and to custom repair shops which were making complete guitars out of Schecter parts. By the late 1970s, Schecter offered more than 400 guitar parts, but did not offer any finished instruments.
In 1979, Schecter offered for the first time its own fully-assembled electric guitars. These guitars were custom shop models based on Fender designs. They were of very high quality, very expensive, and were sold only by twenty retailers across the United States.
In September of 1979, Alan Rogan, the guitar tech at the time, for Pete Townshend of The Who picked up one of the custom shop Schecter guitars. It was a Fender Telecaster-style guitar with two humbucking pickups and a Gibson Les Paul-style pickup selector. Pete Townshend immediately fell in love with the guitar and it became his main stage guitar. He later had several similar instruments built from Schecter parts and assembled by Schecter and U.K. based guitar maker Roger Giffin. Pete Townshend continued to use those Schecter guitars until just after The Who's 1985 appearance at Live Aid.
In 1980, Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits used Schecter Stratocaster-style guitars to record the band's third album, Making Movies. Mark Knopfler owned many Schecter guitars and in 2004 one of his Schecter's, a tobacco sunburst finish, Stratocaster-style guitar was sold at an auction for over $50,000, the highest amount ever paid for a Schecter guitar.
Texan ownership and mass production, 1983 – 1987
By 1983, Schecter had reached its limit of custom shop production of its guitars; it could no longer keep up with demand. So in 1983 Schecter was purchased by a group of Texan investors who seeked to profit from the reputation of the Schecter name. The investors moved the Schecter company to Dallas, Texas, but most of the original Schecter employees didn't make the move from California to Texas. This would result in poor design ideas and products during the ownership of the company by the Texan investors. The Texan owners would mass-produce guitars under the Schecter name for less than five years.
In 1984 under the ownership of the Texan owners, Schecter introduced at the winter NAMM show, a new line of twelve guitars and basses, all based on Fender designs. The most popular of these guitars being a Telecaster-style guitar similar to those that Pete Townshend played, known unofficially as the "Pete Townshend model". However, Pete Townshend didn't endorse these models. During this period Schecter did sign though, one notable endorsee, Yngwie Malmsteen. Schecter made several custom guitars for Yngwie Malmsteen, which featured scalloped necks and reverse headstocks.
Eventually, the "Pete Townshend model" became known as the Saturn, and the company's Stratocaster-style guitar became known as the Scorcher. Despite the new guitar designs, lower prices, and greater quantites of Schecter guitars available, not many people were interested in the poor-quality guitars the Texan owners were putting out.
Hisatake Shibuya and reform, 1987 – Present
In 1987, the Texan investors sold the company to Hisatake Shibuya, a Japanese entrepreneur who also owned the Musicians Institute in Hollywood and ESP Guitars (Schecter Guitar Research and ESP Guitars have remained to this day separate entities). Under the ownership of Hisatake Shibuya, the Schecter company was moved back to California and slowly began to gain back its reputation. Hisatake Shibuya returned the company to its custom shop roots and devoted all its efforts to manufacturing high-end, expensive custom instruments.
Schecter guitars were now once again only available from a few retailers, one of them being Sunset Custom Guitars in Hollywood, which Hisatake Shibuya also owned, and where Michael Ciravolo, the future president of Schecter Guitar Research, worked.
In 1995, Schecter introduced the S Series guitars and basses, which were again Fender-style guitars with an average price of $1,295. In 1996, Hisatake Shibuya asked Michael Ciravolo to become Schecter's president and run the company. Michael Ciravolo was an experienced musician himself and brought to the company many well-known musicians with him as endorses, such as Robert DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots, Jay Noel Yuenger and Sean Yseult of White Zombie.
Michael Ciravolo wanted to distance the company from its past Fender inspired designs. To do so, he added the Avenger, Hellcat, and Tempest models to the Schecter catalog. Also, he wanted to reach out to the new generation of bands which were ignored by most major guitar manufacturers. However, at this point the company was only producing expensive, custom shop models, the shops maximum output was forty guitars a month. So he decided he would search for a factory that could mass-produce Schecter guitars but maintain a high standard of quality.
In 1997, Michael Ciravolo met with several Asian guitar manufacturers at the Tokyo Music Festival and finally decided on a factory located in Inchon, South Korea. The guitars would be built in the South Korea factory, then they would be shipped to the U.S. to be setup in a Schecter shop. In 1998, Schecter introduced six affordably priced non-custom guitars at summer NAMM under the name, Diamond Series.
In 1999, Schecter introduced the seven string A-7 Avenger guitar under the Diamond Series. It also introduced the C-1, a model which was debuted by Jerry Horton in Papa Roach's "Last Resort" video. Now, the company mass-produces affordable, non-custom guitars under the Diamond Series name and still builds expensive, handmade, custom shop models.
Diamond Series
The Diamond Series was first introduced in 1998, and consists of all the mass-production Schecter models that are not custom made. The Diamond Series is further divided into groups of guitars which share design characteristics. Schecter has stated that it will not customize any Diamond Series guitar upon request.
The Diamond Series electric guitars consist of the:
- C Series
- S Series
- Tempest Series
- 00 Series
- PT Series
- Hellcat Series
- Ultra Series
- Hellraiser Series
- Blackjack Series
- Omen Series
- Damien Series
- Aviation Series
Notable musicians
Over the years Schecter has attracted a large number of notable musicians to use its guitars and has had a lot of them endorse Schecter. Currently, Schecter guitars are favored by metal, hard rock, and alternative rock musicians.
Some notable musicians who have or use Schecter guitars or basses include:
- Pete Townshend
- Yngwie Malmsteen
- Sean Yseult
- Jerry Horton
- Jeff Loomis
- Synyster Gates
- Zacky Vengeance
- Eddie Vedder
Trivia
- Schecter Guitar Research was the first guitar manufacturer to offer black chrome hardware.
- Sometime around 1976, David Schecter designed a pickup that had the same dimensions as Fender pickups that could allow humbucking and single-coil tones, a similar design pickup is still in use today by the company. For example, some Schecter guitars are fitted with two humbuckers, but instead of having the normal three-way pickup selector, a five-way pickup selector is installed instead, which allows you to select humbucker or single-coil tones.
Sources
- Gill, Chris. "Schecter: A Guitar History." Guitar World, September 2006. Vol. 27/No. 9. Pgs. 76 - 80.
- Important note: The majority of this Wikipedia article was written using Chris Gill's article, "Schecter: A Guitar History" as a reference. The article was used as a reference and the content featured here was not copied from Chris Gill's article.