| Type | Private Company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Musical instruments |
| Founded | Van Nuys, California, United States (1976) |
| Founder(s) | David Schecter, Herschel Blankenship and Shel Horlick |
| Headquarters | 1840 Valpreda Street Burbank, California 91504 United States |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people | David Schecter Herschel Blankenship Shel Horlick (founders) Hisatake Shibuya (distributor/owner) Michael Ciravolo (president) |
| Products | Electric guitar Bass guitar Steel-string acoustic guitar |
| Owner(s) | Hisatake Shibuya |
| Subsidiaries | Daisy Rock Guitars |
| Website | schecterguitars.com |
Schecter Guitar Research, commonly known as simply as Schecter, is a US guitar manufacturer. The company was founded in 1976 by David Schecter and originally produced only replacement parts for existing guitars from manufacturers such as Fender and Gibson.[1] Today, the company mass-produces its own line of electric guitars, bass guitars, and steel-string acoustic guitars.
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In 1976, David Schecter opened Schecter Guitar Research, a repair shop in Van Nuys, California.[1] The small repair shop manufactured replacement guitar necks and bodies, complete pickup assemblies, bridges, pickguards, tuners, knobs, potentiometers, and miscellaneous other guitar parts. Eventually, Schecter Guitar Research offered every part needed to build a complete guitar. It supplied parts to guitar manufacturers such as Fender and Gibson and to custom repair shops that were building complete guitars out of Schecter parts.[1] By the late 1970s Schecter offered more than 400 guitar parts, but did not offer any finished instruments.[1]
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 considered to be very high quality and very expensive, and were sold only by twenty retailers across the United States.[1]
In September 1979, Alan Rogan, then guitar tech for Pete Townshend of The Who, picked up a custom shop Schecter guitar. It was a Fender Telecaster-style guitar with two humbucking pickups and a Gibson Les Paul-style pickup selector. Townshend immediately fell in love with it, 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. Townshend last used a Schecter on stage at The Who's 1988 appearance at the BPI Awards Show, although Simon Townshend, Pete's brother and part of The Who's touring band since 2002, often plays one of these guitars during Who concerts.
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, including one finished in Candy Apple Red with a 21-fret maple neck/fretboard without dot markers, white pickguard, gold-plated hardware, master volume and tone controls. This instrument was his main guitar for live and studio use until 1987. In 2004 one of his Schecters, a Stratocaster-style guitar with a tobacco sunburst finish, was sold at an auction for over $50,000, the highest amount ever paid for a Schecter guitar.[1]
By 1983, Schecter had reached its custom shop production limit and could no longer meet demand. That year, the company was purchased by a group of Texas investors who wanted to build upon Schecter's reputation for quality.[1] The investors moved the company to Dallas, Texas, where they produced above-par quality guitars using both imported parts and Schecter parts under the Schecter name for less than five years.
At the 1984 winter NAMM show, Schecter introduced twelve new guitars and basses, all based on Fender designs. The most popular of these guitars was a Telecaster-style guitar similar to those that Pete Townshend played. Although Townshend never endorsed this model, it was known unofficially as the "Pete Townshend model." Eventually, the Telecaster-style guitar became known as the Saturn, and the company's Stratocaster-style guitar became known as the Mercury.
During this period, Schecter managed to sign one notable endorsee, Yngwie Malmsteen. Schecter built several custom guitars for Yngwie Malmsteen that featured scalloped necks and reverse headstocks
In 1987, the Texas investors sold the company to Hisatake Shibuya, a Japanese entrepreneur who also owned the Musicians Institute in Hollywood and ESP Guitars (To this day, Schecter Guitar Research and ESP Guitars have remained separate entities).[1] Shibuya moved the company back to California and returned Schecter to its custom shop roots, devoting all its efforts to manufacturing high-end, expensive custom instruments.
Schecter guitars were once again only available from a few retailers, one of them being Sunset Custom Guitars located in Hollywood, which Hisatake Shibuya also owned. Sunset Custom Guitars happened to be the place where Michael Ciravolo, the future president of Schecter Guitar Research, worked.
In 1995, Schecter introduced the highly sought-after S Series guitars and basses, which were Fender-style instruments. In 1996, Hisatake Shibuya asked Michael Ciravolo to become Schecter's president and run the company. Michael Ciravolo, an experienced musician, brought to the company many well-known musicians as endorsees. These included Robert DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots, and Jay Noel Yuenger and Sean Yseult of White Zombie.
Michael Ciravolo never really liked Fender designs, so he sought to distance the company from its past Fender-style models.[1] Toward that end, he added the Avenger, Hellcat, and Tempest models to the Schecter catalog. He also wanted to reach out to a new generation of musicians who were ignored by most major guitar manufacturers. Yet, at this point, the company was only producing expensive, custom shop models. (Schecter's maximum output was forty guitars a month.)[1] So, to realize his vision, Ciravolo began searching for a factory that could mass-produce Schecter guitars while maintaining high quality standards.
In 1997, Michael Ciravolo met with several Asian guitar manufacturers at the Tokyo Music Festival and subsequently decided on a factory located in Incheon, South Korea. (Though not known for sure, this location could be the electric guitar factory of World Musical Instrument co. Ltd.) Schecter's guitars would be built in the South Korea factory, after which they would be shipped to the U.S. to be set up in a Schecter shop. At the 1998 summer NAMM show, Schecter introduced the Diamond Series, which included six affordably priced non-custom guitars.
In 1999, Schecter added the seven string A-7 Avenger guitar to the Diamond Series. It also introduced the C-1, which was debuted by Jerry Horton in Papa Roach's "Last Resort" music video. Today, the company mass-produces affordable, non-custom guitars under the Diamond Series and continues to build expensive, handmade, custom models.
The Diamond Series was first introduced in 1998, and consists of all the non-custom, mass-produced Schecter models.[2] The Diamond Series is further divided into groups of guitars which share common design characteristics. Schecter has stated that it will not customize any Diamond Series guitar, thus any Diamond Series guitar is sold "as is".
Although there are a large variety of models available in the Diamond range, many are 'mixed and matched' parts from different Schecter guitars. For example, all Omen, C, Hellraiser and Damien basses have the same body shape, although some have set necks rather than bolt on necks, different finish colors, and different woods. However, Schecter produces many different guitars from a smaller number of core parts. This mix and match culture has the benefit of allowing guitarists to find a Schecter to fit their exact requirements, but negatively gives less of a 'core product' range as shown by Gibson Guitars who only have a small range of guitars available.
Some of the best known guitars made by Schecter are the 'C Series' in various configurations such as the "Hellraiser" and "Blackjack" models, and the 'S Series' which included the S-1 Elite (double cut) guitars which held some visual similarity to Gibson's Les Paul Double Cut and double cut Melody Maker—and the S-1 (a less fancy version of the S-1 Elite). The 'Elite' versions of Schecter's mass-produced instruments often include an arched top, very impressive abalone binding, a bound fretboard and a bound headstock with a headstock finish matched with that of the guitar body. Despite all the visually impressive dressing these instruments remained quite affordable and the quality standard did not suffer. Pickups on many of the mass-produced Schecter models are almost always 'Duncan Designed' humbuckers (double coil pickups based on Seymour Duncan's pickup specifications), usually with a 'push-pull' coil splitter control that allows the full humbucker pickup sound to be 'split' into the sharper tone characteristic of single coil pickups. Schecter has also made an effort to appeal to more select market segments by occasionally producing a very limited run of its mass-produced guitar models equipped with novelty finishes. The 'Aviation Series,' which appeared around 2006 and ran for about 1 year, took certain mass-produced model bodies (the PT, Tempest, S-1, etc.) and equipped them with WWII US (and British) aircraft color and marking patterns, and even special pickup covers that look like cooling louvers.
Schecter is also a leader in the seven-string guitar market. Schecters Diamond series guitars have enjoyed a growing positive reputation through the use of quality components such as TonePros locking bridge products on non-tremolo models and Original Floyd Rose double locking tremolos on many of the six and seven string models. Many models also feature USA EMG or Seymour Duncan pick-ups and Grover tuners.
The following list of guitars are correct as appears on the Schecter Website (Accessed 18 December 2008) [3]
Export Series=(Look into schecter website)
The following list of acoustics are correct as appears on the Schecter Website (Accessed 18 December 2008) [3]
The following list of basses are correct as appears on the Schecter Website (Accessed 18 December 2008) [3]
The following instruments are no longer in production by Schecter Guitars[4]
Guitars
Acoustics
Basses
As well as the mass produced Diamond Series, Schecter offer a custom guitar service. On their website, Schecter says, "The Custom Shop is reserved only for orders made through a Schecter Authorized Dealer.
Example projects[5] include: