One way to improve sustain – which means how long a note will last – was to replace the steel hardware with brass hardware. Surprisingly today many players prefer light-weighted woods, and talk rather about tone than sustain. In the seventies it was common believe that a guitar should ideally be rather heavy in order to have a lot of sustain. exotic woods for necks, from left to right: Pau Fero, Shedua, Cocobola If you upgraded your guitar with such a beautiful exotic wood, you don’t want to hide it behind a solid finish, consequently the typical Schecter guitar was bare wood, or an oil finish, although laquer was offered for additional charge. They had 21 frets, 22 frets were a later trend started by heavy metal guitarists in the 80ies.

As you see, trading with protected tropical woods was not an issue in the 70ies yet.Īll necks were one-piece which means they did not have a separate fingerboard (as Mark Knopfler’s red Tele had, but this was a very late model). Unlike Fender who build their guitars from rather common woods (ash, elder, maple.), Schecter specialized in beautiful exotic woods, like Shedua, Koa, Cocobola, Pau Fero, Mahogany, Rosewood, Purple Heart, or figured maple (necks), or Red Oak, Paduak, Zebrawood, Teak, Koa, Anjico, Imbuya, and many more (bodies). We got it all - a Schecter ad from 1979īecause of their background as supplier of upgrade parts, Schecter soon was mainly known for Especially the Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster were the ideal guitar to be hot-rodded, since all their parts could be replaced much easier than with the laminated constructions that Gibson used, and the quality of Fender guitars was possibly at the lowest in the Fender history.

He soon started to produce his own quality guitar parts which were intended to replace some stock parts on common guitars. Schecter Guitar Research started around 1976 in Van Nuys, California, when David Schecter opened his repair and custom guitar shop. So what was the story behind the Schecter company? Also his former girl-friend played a Schecter which he said was much better than his Fender guitars. He bought several Schecters in 1980 at Rudy’s Music Stop in New York, mainly because he was looking for a guitar that was easier to play and better suited for the high demands on the road than the vintage Fenders he played before.

In the 80ies, Mark Knopfler was probably the most famous user of Schecter guitars.

Schecter serial number