Charvel Fusion DeLuxe

I bought mine in 1991, and it is still 100% original. 24-frets, single-coil spaced passive humbucker in the neck position, and a JC90B in the bridge position. 3-way blade selector, and a single volume control. Japanese made, but high quality.

Works beautifully no matter what style (jazz, rock, metal, etc). Shortly after purchasing it, I paired it with a Digitech RP2000 multi-effects processor, and the pairing has served me perfectly since. Fat and warm, crisp and bright, all right when it needs to be!

I have only messed a bit with the Floyd Rose to keep it floating with the strings I use, but other than that, all factory since I bought it. After 18 years, it is in need of a tune-up, no pun intended, but still plays beautifully.

Ok, I've been playing it for 18 years. So realiable? Durable? I'd say a resounding, "YES!"

Never needed it.

I've been playing guitar in general since I was 8, and electric on and off over the past 21 years. After playing it, along with others, I never thought of buying others, and have played many others since then. I've never regretted purchasing this guitar. If there's anything missing on this guitar, maybe it's the tone knob. That would have made it even more versatile. I've played LPs, Ibanez, PRS. This one is still my favorite. Maybe because it fits, like a well used glove. If it is ever lost or stolen... Anyone out there know where I can get one used?

I believe mine was a '90 or '91 Japanese made Fusion Deluxe. 24 frets, and yes, it's a 22 fret scale, and with my big, chunky fingers, it makes playing those highest 5 frets a real challenge to play. Mine is a solid body with some ungodly number of coats of paint to get the "Rainbow Crackle" finish. It's all original, with the 3-way blade selector, and the stock bridge humbucker and the stock single-coil sized humbucker in the neck position. So, all passive. Body is basswood, and the neck is Rock Maple. Strat-style body, with the space where the neck bolts to the body scalloped. Floyd-Rose trem with locking nut. Since I bought mine new almost 20 years ago, it came with the custom hard shell case.

I play many styles of music, from jazz to gospel to hard cor metal, and it has NEVER failed to deliver as far as sound goes. I've used it with some beautiful boutique tube amps, my old crappy Peavy Backstage 30 after running through my equally old Digitech RP2000 multi-effects processor. If you want a tone, it delivers. I've never been so impressed with a guitar. Not that I've played all that many, but with what I had been using until I purchased this guitar, it was a Cadilac to me!

I have never touched the set-up, because it played so well from the factory. I really need to get it "tuned up". (i.e. new fretwire, get the set up redone, etc.).

I've been playing this guitar for about 20 years, now, as I have said. I've taken a small hunk of the headstock off with a misplaced swing of the guitar into a steel beam. (Ouch!) and the finish has taken a few digs, but it still looks beautiful!

Never had to use support.

Since Charvel started making guitars in America again, That will be my next guitar purchase!

I realley dont feel like writing alot of stuffs so ill just answer this qestions right off.

It was made 1989 in Japan. It got 24 frets in a 22fret necklength, wich makes the frets prettysmall from 12th and up... volume control, and my 3-way switch is removed, so is the single coil and the stock humbucker is changed to an EMG-60 and thats STUFF! its also active wich makes it really sharp and lovely distin... it was orange from the beginning until the "under sun" usement got heavey it turned yellow at front, the backside is still orange, just got 2 say "lol".. a typical jackson body with a cutaway at the 23th and 24th fret for easier soloplayin. got a charvel licensed floyd-rose bridge made in germany by schaller and stringlock and it works very nice.. the neck is extra thin and easy to play with, rosewood pickboard and jumbofrets, little hard to play with 012 strings whith jumbo but it works with the time! i give it a 10 because i dont feel that something is bad with the guitar, everyting is teriffic!

I only play melodic death metal (children of bodom) so this sound suits me very good, and im using a shit kustom 40W amp that got dick gain but with this guitar it turned to a heaven (i still hate the amp).. and the sound is very good and pretty bright but not overbright, i say bright because the powerful dist in the EMG is awesome! the guitar can make all kind of effects and i like all the things with it!

i cant complain on anything, the only thing is that the frets is so got damn small man !

this guitar really can handle live playing and the hardware will last defenitly, and i have used it without backup many times at liveplaying when i played so hard that the sound of the bridge when i used the arm sounded out to the public, the guitar made it. hihi...

i didnt buy it new so i cant write anything..

ive been playing for 7 years soon and i got at Yamaha RGZ-820R Blues Saraceno Signature, only 4 ex in the hole world, a nice guitar.. i dont regrett anything, i wouldnt rebuy it if it got stolen or lost becuase im trying to sell my guitars because im buying a ESP RV-350 AL, but the charvel is still the best guitar i know now.. i love everything, the head is so nice and the body is very nice and it is low weight, i can carry it with the bridge arm, i hate the small frets, but i can still play on it just that it need little more conentration from the brain to hit the right fret.. my favorit feature is the cutaway, it works very good.. i wish it got a 25.5 scale neck.. i would like to share that this is the best guitar in my room.

Yes, I got it for $70! I must be living right...1989 Japanese-made Charvel Fusion Deluxe. Basically the same as the review below, save the finish on mine. It's a medium metallic blue (I have no idea the official name of the color). Same features as below, but I'll recap them here briefly: chrome hardware, Jackson sealed tuners, Schaller-made Jackson Floyd-licensed trem, famed JC90C covered humbucker in bridge. Some quick ways to identify this model cosmetically...the humbucker isn't angled, but the dual-rail single-coil sized "neck" position pup IS angled. Two pickups, single volume knob (no tone knob), 3-way blade switch, maple neck w/rosewood board (unbound), dot markers, 22-fret neck, large Jackson-style CHARVEL logo. Neck plate is the Ft. Worth, Texas plate, which means this is Japanese-made (anyone in the know knows that Japanese quality of construction rivals USA made in many respects, and absolutely kills Korean/Indonesian/Etc. production).
I found mine bone-stock used, but upon inspection the neck pickup was bad...it seems that at some point someone heavy-handedly tried to adjust its height and wasn't careful with the screwdriver. I replaced it with a Fender Vintage Noiseless Strat pickup (bridge position...the polepieces lined up PERFECTLY on the Charvel), and I replaced the stock 3-way switch with a 5-way I had (the stock switch went bad). All I can really say about this guitar is WOW...what an amazingly fun axe! The playability is second to none, the action/frets/neck are superb. The tone of the stock humbucker really surprised me...it drives an amp very nicely, but it still sounds good clean. In combination with the Noiseless in the neck, this is one extremely verastile tone monster, capable of rock crunch/metal scream to Strat "quack" to that great bluesy neck tone. I can't help but echo the sentiments of my fellow reviewer below...enough can not be said about the quality of this guitar. No tone knob, but you won't miss it...keeping in mind I'm a switch/knob freak and love to have tons of doo-dads at my disposal. Those things simply aren't really needed where this guitar is concerned. I gave it a 9 simply for the fact is has just the one knob...again, not a bad thing!

I pretty much covered this above. I can't give a COMPLETE assessment of a stock one simply due to the fact that the original neck pup in this one was d.o.a. The stock bridge humbucker, however, is full, loud, and yet articulate. Even with a Boss Metal Zone cranked to full gain, it still has a nice, sharp pick attack and full, un-muddied bottom end. Clean, it has that typical humbucker thickness, but with a pleasing top end (bright, but not overly-bright)...a quick tweak of the amp settings, and it gets a thick twang, like a hot Telecaster pickup. Neato!

I can't say about the factory settings as I got mine used, but it had been sitting (and NOT in a case) for a few years...all I had to do was give the truss rod a 1/4 turn and it was straight as an arrow...low, comfy action all the way from the nut to the end of the fretboard. A word about the nut...I really like this locking nut...it does take the place of a standard nut, like all Floyd's do, but it doesn't mount THROUGH the neck. Bonus points! All routing/body contours are flawless, as is the original paint job. Bridge aligns perfectly, the strings are properly and evenly spaced on each side of the fretboard (no "slip-off"). Thin neck profile, very flat radius...it has a very low action with no buzz-out or "choking", no matter how hard I bend the strings. The attention to detail on this guitar is remarkable...many US manufacturers could learn something from these Japan-made Charvels...

I've gigged with it a couple of times now...my original intention was to have it handy as a nice backup, but I ended up playing it nearly the entire night, lol...one mod I would consider, however, is maybe a Hipshot Trem Setter to help the aging Floyd Rose. It does a pretty good job holding its tune, but it IS an aging Floyd. I don't think the whole trem needs replacing yet, but to match my old Kahler's dive-bombing, it could use a little "help". No biggie. The finish is thick, but this guitar is very resonant and light. MAN, is it light. You see now why I played it virtually all night, lol...

No clue. I don't think I'll need them, though.

I essentially stumbled across this guitar by accident, and now it's opened my eyes to a whole new world of "collecting", lol...NOWHERE are you going to find a better quality guitar for this kind of money. The quality-to-cost ratio is ridiculously great, exactly the OPPOSITE of the big "G" these days...
;)
I'm definitely going to be prowling eBay for these...

It's a 1989-1990 Charvel made by Jackson -and looks definetly more Jackson than Charvel-. I was told that these hybrid axes were made for a short period of time commemorating some sort of transition with the two brand names within the same company and were made from 1989 to 1991 only. Probably made in Japan, it has a serial number in the neck back plate that doesn't match any of the american-made Jackson/Charvel's serial numbers listed on their website -but they say that the list does not include the entire production-. The back plate displays the traditional Charvel logo and refers to the Forth Worth, TX facility. Anyway, for the price can't be american for sure.

Feature loaded Strat-style double-cutaway guitar with a two-octave (24 frets) rock-maple neck, nice and comfortable 24 3/4" scale lenght -that's shorter than your typical Jackson neck- that allows for lighter string tension, very thin and unbeleivable fast. Great fret job with quality jumbo frets anchored into a maple fingerboard. Smaller Basswood solid-body than the average Jackson, very lightweight and responsive to string vibration with a countoured cutaway and scalloped & slanted neck heel for better access to the higher frets. A single Volume, 3-way blade and a Hum-Slanted Single passive configuration that uses a terrific J90C high output humbucker at the bridge (black plastic cover w/Jackson logo in white) and a so-called 'Blade humbucking pickup' that's remarkably versatile and resembles a Seymour Duncan Cool Rails. The guitar is finished with a unusual and bold-looking Rainbow Crackle paint job combined with the maple fingerboard and black headstock. It looks like black that's tearing apart by some sort of 3-colored molten lava underneath (blue, red & yellow longitudinal stripes blending at the edges). BTW I still have the Charvel catalog of the year and there were 3 crackle finished available: 'Fire Crackle', 'Desert Crackle' & 'Rainbow Crackle' (but only the latter was an option for the Fusion Deluxe). Chrome hardware, the tremolo is an outstanding German-made Schaller Floyd Rose Licensed -as good as it gets- and it's recessed into the body for maximum pull-ups.

Overall it's like my Jackson Dinky but a just a tad smaller in scale and weight (the Dinky has 25.5" scale) it even has the classic Jackson headstock which have stock Jackson tuners installed and the Charvel logo in white Jackson-style (not the typical guitar-shaped 'Charvel'). It came with a hardshell case with this hybrid Charvel logo on it. One remarkable feature was the metal holder at the back of the headstock that holds two different allen wrenches needed to change strings, set intonation and othet adjustments -GREAT IDEA, AND ALWAYS AT HAND!!!-. Also included: truss adjustment tool & optional string lowering-bar for the headstock.

I play different styles, but this axe was extensively used in live performances in the last 12 years for hard rock and 80's glam-metal (from Guns n' Roses to Def Leppard) plugged into a Marshall JCM900 or a smaller combo with either a Digithech RP-1 or an ART SGX2000 processors. I even used it for a mise-en-scene of The Who's TOMMY alternating with an Ovation electric-acoustic that I also own. This guitar is perfect for high gain stuff and screaming solos in combination with real tube-tone, it plays like a dream but it's grat also for clean sounds -especially in the middle position with the upper coil & the dual blade neck pickup- with a bright and crispy tone, and even for bluesy stuff with the neck pickup -you can do Gary Moore's "Still Got The Blues" with the mid-solo pickup change from neck to bridge-. It has no tone control, but you don't miss it. This baby never sounded bad and the J90C humbucker has killer sound -powerful and versatile like a Seymour Duncan JB but with its own voice and personality-. The guitar was plugged trough dozens of amps -ranging from pro to crap- in all kind of situations over the past decade, both live and in the studio, and has always raised eyebrows by its sound and looks.

The guitar came with a standard low action & fast response type of set-up with 009-042 strings years ago, honestly I can't remember exactly how it was set. But since then it was set-up by a professional luthier who made slight adjustments in intonation, pickup height and recently I put 009-046 to fatten the bottom that required some tremolo leveling, no big deal.

The guitar is solid as a rock. No flaws in mine. One friend of mine that's luthier and guitar-store owner was surprised by the overall quality and especially by the fret job. But no guitar is perfect, and this one came with a rather loose volume control that's too close to the picking hand when playing and if you're not careful it's easy to provoke a slight volume drop. That explains -at least with this axe- this sort of tic of mine, checking all the time that the volume pot is turned all the way up.

More than 10 years of playing by now and the Fusion Deluxe stills holds up well. It's a tried and true instrument. The case did not last equally and yielded to the rigors of gigging and performing. Obviously the guitar shows some wear signs in those points in contact with your hands or pick: faded paint in upper fine tuners, J90C pickup cover, pick scratches past the 1rst string, rubbing in the fingerboard's outer edge, and a still acceptable fret wear. The finish still shines like a fairly new instrument and it has 13 years by now!

The tremolo has some stability problems in returning to the exact same pitch from a pull-up and a dive, a slight variation checked with an electronic tuner, that wasn't there when new. But hey, this is a 13 year old guitar with the original Floyd Rose Licensed tremolo! You can live with that and stay in tune if you tune relative to the lowered-bar-return threshold and compensate the release of the bar when pulling up. I have other guitars so I don't want to replace any original hardware in this one. The strap button disappeared long ago and were replaced by the ever-reliable DiMarzio Clip-Lock system. Played without a backup most of the time.

Not long ago I had a problem with the humbucker: a cable began to fail and sometimes one coil went off with the typical 'single coil hum' and loss of power. My fault, because it happened when I was trying to put back a loose spring while manipulating the humbucker assembly. So I was ready with a replacement -Seymour Duncan JB-, but I was lucky enough to fix the problem when changing strings thanks to some rerouting of the pickup cable. I've read here in Harmony-Central that the J90C pickups are no longer made and it would have been a pity to discard such a wonderful pup.

Never dealt with them. Warranty expired long ago and the music stores here in Mexico are useless in terms of guitar repair jobs. Nowadays Jackson/Charvel is part of the Fender group and the Charvel brand has somehow been resurrected and therefore their repair service (but not here). Furthermore, the actual Charvels are very different compared to mine -this baby is more Jackson than Charvel by today standards-.

I've been playing for more than 20 years. This guitar was my main performing and recording axe more than half that time and it never, ever let me down. I love Jacksons, and this is truly a Jackson in a Charvel disguise. I own a Japanese Jackson Dinky (with the crimson-swirl finish) that looks spectacular but can't match the finesse of the Fusion Deluxe in action. I have and old Yamaha Strat-clone and an American Standard Telecaster -both hot rodded with Seymour Duncans-, a PRS Santana SE -fitted with a MIDI pickup- that I like very much and a number of acoustic-electric guitars. I'm planning to get an American-made neck-thru Jackson in my next visit to the United States (no, they don't sell them around here) and I'm waiting for a non-tremolo Japanese DKMGT or SLSMG to show off at the stores. But I love my Charvel, it has a sentimental value for me because it has been with me in many important gigs. I don't plan to sell it, and if it were stolen I would hunt the MOFO until the last day of my life because this is a unique and irreplaceable instrument, discontinued more than a decade ago.

One of my favorite features it's without a doubt the 'Rainbow Crackle' finish combined with the maple fingerboard, and then I think of the unique J90C humbucker and the amazingly fast neck. I didn't choose this guitar really, I was looking around in the store and there was this unique Charvel that seemed to have "BUY ME" written on it.

In the Charvel poster-catalog of the year it was purchased there's a Fusion Deluxe in the cover in the hands of Alex Masi (a speed picker on the rise those days, but never heard of him again) and is the only guitar showcased in the poster. That makes you feel proud of your little axe. Definetly is my pride and joy.