Back in my arms again...

[dadagoboi]

Aren't those two timeless beauties?

Diamonds Are Forever?

[Denis]

Wow, what the hell are those? Tell me about them!

[uwe]

In due time, Denis, due time! 

[Dave W]

Denis, he'll probably try to convince you that Gibson teamed up with Wayne Charvel to produce pointy guitars and basses. Of course nobody in his right mind would believe a fantastic story like that. 

[TBird1958]

Aren't those two timeless beauties?

Where's the matching spandex?

Photos, we need photos 

[Highlander]

I remember those now... 

Is there such a thing as a fretless Thunderbird...?

[uwe]

There was one on Ebay once - allegedly from the factory and a nineties model. IIRC George C. had contacted the seller or knew him and was thus convinced that it was actually a factory fretless. Why not? I have a singlecut LP DeLuxe that is fretless from Nashville and a doublecut prototype in fretless too. In theory, a TBird with its neck thru construction and mahogany would make a stellar fretless. And that long sleek neck would look great too on a TBird body.

The auction of the fretless TBird was ended early without any reason given and I've never seen or heard of it again. George probably bought it in secret and has hidden it away.

[OldManC]

I wish I had so I could sell it for a King's ransom to my German collector friend!

[uwe]

Denis, he'll probably try to convince you that Gibson teamed up with Wayne Charvel to produce pointy guitars and basses. Of course nobody in his right mind would believe a fantastic story like that.  

An urban legend. If you believe that, you might as well also believe that crap about the origins of TV yellow or that NASA ever made it to the moon - of course they didn't. And Wayne Richard Charvel was never with Gibson. At least he would today prefer for this to have been the case ...

But for the gullible and easily deceived among you, the fairy tale - hush, children, Onkel Uwe is dishing it out now! - goes like zis:



"Once upon a time, in the Kingdom of Naff Ville, all was not well in the mid-eighties. The King's guitars did not sell well. Forces of evil had cast a spell over guitar peasants everywhere who were adoring "Super-Strats" in heathenish fervor. A brave young knight named Wayne Richard C. was kicking his feet looking for a purpose in life. He had sold his name "Charvel" to some fiendish wizard and would not be allowed to ever use it again. The King, in feigned compassion, enlisted Wayne Richard's services and numerous talents to create Super-Strats for him and slay the competition dragons. And the young knight did as he was told, creating beautiful guitars such as this one



for the King. And to ensure that his magic work would be recognized, yet at the same time abiding with the stipulations of the spell of the evil wizard who had stolen his name, the young knight added "WRC" (for Wayne Richard Charvel) to his creations. All was well again. For a while. The King murmured under his breath: "This doesn't quite look like the stringed harps which have pleased my gaze before, but let's try it, it better work you know ....".

The King tested the young knight further and gave him a Victory bass commanding: "It is not selling well, the peasants don't like it. Make them like it or I'll have you beheaded in a fortnight!"

So young Wayne Richard took the ugly duckling Victory and transformed it into a beautiful swan by turning its body from worthless maple to precious mahogany, adding Grabber pups (he found discarded on the castle floor) and renting out a hockey stick from an ice hockey team up north as the new headstock.



Alas!, the peasants in their ignorance failed to appreciate it even though they had all been built in the castle's Custom Dungeon  ...

Every year the King would hold a fayre called "Naff Ville Aristocrats Mother of Merriments" or short: NAMM. He instructed the young knight to let his inspiration flow and create bass beauties the Kingdom had never seen before. ("Or cared to!" a muffled jester cried out.) Dutifully, young Wayne Richard toiled and sweated and behold the wonders he created:

Cruelly, one especially worthless peasant called "Brother John" would jeer at this immaculate artisan work as "The Silly Purple Clown Bass":



Actually, "Silly Royal Blue Clown Bass" would have been more appropriate:





But such derision aside, the bass wasn't alone:





Fearsome beasts they were with huge dragons' heads bearing the inscription of their intrepid maker as well as the King's insignia:



But all was not well again. The King, a vain and thankless man, was not pleased with Wayne Richard's efforts, but the young knight fearlessly stood up to him which saw the monarch have him first harshly imprisoned



and then chased and evicted from the pridelands in shame. Wayne Richard vowed to never voice the King's name again, retired to a cave



and to this day only speaks about his former plight in the Kingdom of Naff Ville through his son:

"Hello Uwe, that bass was made by my dad Wayne Charvel in 1986 or 1987 Gibson used it for a Namm show. Thank you Michael Charvel"

All the fayre-instruments were ordered destroyed by the heartless King, but two of them miraculously escaped his royal wrath:

One - the royal blue one - went on tour to Europe, far from the swords of the king's henchmen, with a band of travelling minstrels and clo(w)n(e)s monikered - most appropriately and lending further scientific evidence how all this must be true - Kingdom Come.





They would later rechristen themselves "Les Cepalines" and achieve great fame and fortune on, no, not the highway to hell, but rather the stairway to the heavens."

And how the red one survived, we do not know, children, shrouded in the mists of time this secret rests in the bosom of the unknown saviour, but survived it must have or would Onkel Uwe otherwise have been able to tell you this tall, but truest of tales?

[the mojo hobo]

The stripes must make the blue one look a bit bizarre, but I really like the red one.

[uwe]

It's easy to make fun of these now, but they certainly were a brave and original design at the time. WRC was asked to bring contemporary blood to Nashville and he did.

The basses are well-made and had state-of-the-art hardware at the time: Hipshot tuners, Wilkinson bridge and Turner diamond shape pups (that is actually a slanted P type split coil lurking in there). Unfortunately, string output from those diamond pups tends to be uneven unless you fiddle quite a bit with their angle. And on the red one, B and E have a sound as different to A, D and G that you might as well be playing two different basses. Not different in volume, just in sound.

Uwe

[Dave W]

Either I forgot about the Kingdom Come connection or never knew it. Somehow it fits the bass and the times.

[Highlander]

Herr Hornung is obviously on acid...

(antiacids for indigestion, of course)

[Iome]

No, he just licked his Fungus Explorer 

[Highlander]

Is that legal in Germany...? I heard it kinder-lingers...