Guitar of the week #99 - Charvel Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 2

When you want a Super Fender Telecaster, you actually want a Charvel.

There are some guitar players out there that want a Fender Telecaster that has a contour cut in the rear like a Stratocaster, comes equipped with a pair of "hot" humbuckers and has a Floyd-Rose tremolo system.

That guitar is the Charvel Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 2. (And in case you're wondering what the Style 1 is, that's a Super Strat).

Charvel is able to get away with a Strat-style headstock and Telecaster styling because they are a Fender brand. In effect, Charvel pretty much has free reign to copy the Fender Strat and Tele as much as they want to since it's all under the same Fender umbrella, so to speak.

What you get with the Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 2 is a Telecaster/Stratocaster inspired guitar with a pair of premium Seymour Duncan pickups (a JB TB-4 and a '59), push-pull coil-split electronics with no-load tone circuit, Floyd-Rose FRT-O2000 trem system, and a neck that's a 25.5" with 12-to-16" compound radius.

What makes this guitar worth getting? It's basically a Fender Elite Telecaster with a Floyd that costs a whopping $1,200 less than the Fender.

Is the guitar worth getting?

If you were to modify a Fender Telecaster yourself with everything that comes in the Charvel Pro-Mod, you'd end up spending over a grand for something you can buy already completed for less cash. Remember, part of what makes the Charvel real nice is that neck with the compound radius on it.

The closest Fender-branded equivalent is the special edition custom Fender Telecaster FMT HH. That axe is $100 less than the Charvel, but there's no Floyd on that guitar, so that's the tradeoff. It also doesn't have the compound radius, but it does have a super-flat 15.75" with jumbo fret wire, which is fairly close in spec to the Charvel.

In the end, it all depends how bad you want a Tele with a Floyd on it. Charvel basically makes the best Floyd-equipped Tele there is without going into 4-figure price territory. And since Charvel is a Fender brand, it is the most "Fender-ish" Super Tele you can get right now.

Published 2017 Mar 8