Charvel CSM 1

I wanted to review this guitar because I really like it and I haven't seen another one out there. The CSM-1 is a 22 fret stat body style ax with Jackson labeled HSH pickups. I bought mine used in a pawnshop in El Paso for $145.00 with a hard shell case. I wanted a humbucker equiped guitar with fatter frets than the Squire Strat I was playing. This guitar also has a strat style wang bar that works about as well as expected. I has non locking grover style tuners and a five way selector switch. Controls are one volume and one tone knob.

When I first tried it in the store the bridge humbucker would only intermittantly kick in but the neck humbucker sold me the minute it kicked it in with a little bit of distortion. I found the fat sound I had been missing from my strat. I tried it with an old DOD thrash metal that was on sale also and I had to have both the guitar and the pedal. Clean this guitar also sounds very good. The medium jumbo frets make playing chords easy and very full sounding. The action on this guitar was set high enough to make everything sound good and like I said I really was grooving on the fat humbucker sound. Excellent harmonic tonality when cranked hard, this guitar drives all my effect pedals well without sounding mudddy. Must be the Jackson Pickups. By the way I finally opened up the control cavity and resoldered the pick up switch and tweaked the contacts and voila no more problems.
I've used this guitar with a peavy bandit 1-12, a crate TD-70 and a Marshall Valvestate 100 combo-my current amp and it sounded great with all of them. I play for fun and like mostly blues, metal and AC/DC type hard rock. I never use the middle single coil but it sounds almost the same as the humbucker in output and tone but without that harmonic quality. This this is my metal ax mostly, I prefer my strat for leads because I can get a more searing sound from its single coils.

Since this guitar was used when I bought it I can't make too many comments but it plays great now. The neck is very comfortable and the frets are finished very well. The action is just right for me. My guitar has a few dings in its reddish-purple finish but it still looks purty. Very solid bolt on neck.

I replaced the strap buttons, they were too small. I've never gigged with this ax but it looks like it would hold up very well with normal maintenance.

Never tried to contact them.

I'd give this guitar an 8 for value and tone. I've been playing 26 years and I play everything I can get my hands on. This guitar plays like a good well set up 4-5 hundred dollar guitar. I get the sounds I want and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a good value but I haven't seen another one. If I were to lose this guitar I would be sad but I could probably drown my sorrow in an Ibanez RG style ax. I wish it had a floyd rose because since I set up my strat better I prefer its wang bar. This guitar sounds very distinct from my Stat and my Nighthawk special. I would definitely replace it but I could probably find the same sound in an Ibanez or Jackson.