• Van Nuys High School
• Schecter Van Nuys Serial Numbers List

They were one of the many California guitar builders of the 70s. By the early 80s, they had started making limited numbers of complete guitars to be sold at high prices at exclusive dealers. Pete Townsend was an early customer. I believe this example to be a late Van Nuys build. No serial number.

1980's SCHECTER STRATOCASTER SUPER STRAT FLAME & BOUND1983 SCHECTERSTRATOCASTER SUPER STRAT FLAME & BOUND Super RareVERY highly-flamed maple top in a bursting cherry sunburstfinish! The maple neck is adorned with multiple birdseye maple figuring on thefront and back! The pickups are all original Schecter and feature asingle-single-humbucker configuration.

The humbucker is tapped with a push-pullat the tone knob. The guitar is 100% Schecter original and it is in near mintcondition!

These are getting EXTREMELY RARE and with good reason! They were nota mass-produced line and the will rival any electric solidbody from a player/performanceperspective!Dave Schecter started the company in the early 1970s; hewound up with some financial backing from a company called 'International SalesAssociates' or 'ISA'.In 1977 Shecter was doing well and wound up hiring a young Tom Anderson; Tom dida lot of work with pickup development.

At that time Schecter was pretty much aparts company that built small numbers of completed guitars each year; theirdealers tended to be shops who had individuals on-staff who could assembleguitars from their parts (places like Valley Arts Music in California and Rudy'sMusic in NYC - Rudy's builder at the time was another guy cut from the same moldas Schecter and Anderson named John Suhr).ISA pushed Schecter away from being primarily a parts business that made somecompleted guitars to being a guitar company that produced some parts. Part ofthat was setting up a separate entity to produce Schecter guitars in Japan forthe Japanese market, and Dave and Tom wound up spending time over there gettingthis entity set up. Dave got fed up and left early in this process, so theowners decided to move the company from California to Dallas, Texas.

Tom didn'twant to make the move to Dallas so he left and started his own company whichwould only make parts from 1985 until sometime in 1988 when he made the decisionto no longer sell bodies and necks.At any rate Schecter stopped supplying parts to those dealers who were doing agood business assembling guitars, so they found other sources (Valley Artsdesinged and built their own models, Rudy and John launched the Pensa-Suhr line,etc.) as they focused on just building guitars and selling hardware like pickups,bridges, loaded pickguards, etc. But no more bodies and necks. The company, nowwithout Schecter and Anderson, went bankrupt in 1986 (probably part of this wasa cease and desist from Fender to stop using their headstock shapes - Schecterhad worked out a license to use the shapes when Schecter was focusing on parts;once they moved to doing finished guitars that ended any deals they might havehad).This red Schecter Strat was Mark's main guitar from 1980-85.First it had three original Schecter pick ups, which were later replaced bySeymour Duncan Vintage (SSL1?) and then by Seymour Duncan Alnico Pros.SerialNo. It has Dunlop frets 6110, today possibly 6105.This sunburst Strat was played on Tunnel of Love on the thirdalbum. Unfortunately it was stolen.You can easily recognize it because of itsdot markers.This was the replacement for the stolen sunburst Strat.It iswithout dot markers, the jack is on the side of the body, which is uncommon forStrat-style guitars.Serial No. Is S8001.THE SHECTER HISTORY. The Schecter Guitar Research repair shop was opened in 1976 by DavidSchecter in Van Nuys, California.

This is where it all began for the futureguitar manufacturing company. The repair shop manufactured replacement guitarparts and eventually supplied everything you would need to build a guitar butdid not build any of their own guitars at that time. Their main customers werecustom repair shops and the two big guitar-manufacturing companies, Gibson andFender.Finally in 1979, Schecter started making their own guitars tosell to the public. The designs were based on Fender guitar designs and werevery expensive to purchase because of the high quality parts and the smallamount they made available. Also around this time, Pete Townshendfrom The Whogot a Schecter guitar from his guitar tech and immediately liked it. In facthe liked the sound so much that it ended up being his main touring guitar.Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits was the next high profile artist todiscover the Schecter guitar. He ended up with many Schecter guitars over theyears and one even sold at an auction for $50,000 in 2004.In 1983, Schecter ran out of resources and could no longer meet thedemand for their guitar.

Schecter ended up selling the company to a group ofTexas investors who were well aware of the great reputation of the Schectername and the top quality of their guitars. Knowing this, the new ownersexpected to make a profit by expanding the operation and moving the company toDallas, Texas. This unfortunately turned out to be a bad move because most ofthe original employees wouldn't move to Texas and this eventually led to poordesign and quality decisions by the new staff. The guitars that were beingproduced at this time were being mass-produced and getting a bad reputationfor their poor quality.Even though they were going through this rough time, Schecter did manageto get an amazing guitarist by the name of Yngwie Malmsteen to endorse theirguitars.

Van Nuys High School

They also released several new models including the Telecaster styleguitar that Pete Townshend was using called the Saturn. Their other popularmodel was the Scorcher, which was based on the Stratocaster design. Even withthese new designs and making their guitars more affordable, sales were verypoor due to the lack of quality.In 1987, the company was unloaded to a Japanese entrepreneur by the nameof Hisatake Shibuya. Hisatake was no stranger to music and guitars; he alsoowned ESP Guitars and the Musicians Institute in Hollywood. He moved Schecterback to California and soon brought the reputation of the company back to theway it used to be. The company went back to their old ways of producing highquality, high priced custom guitars. The guitars were also made in fewernumbers and made available to a smaller amount of dealers.In 1996, Hisatake hired Michael Ciravolo as president of Schecter.Michael was an experienced musician and had been an employee at a guitar shopowned by Hisatake.

Ciravolo ended up bringing in some high profile musiciansto endorse Schecter guitars including Robert DeLeo (Stone Temple Pilots) andSean Yseult (White Zombie).Michael Ciravolo also disliked the Fender style designs, so he developednew designs in the Avenger, Hellcat and Tempest models. He also wanted toproduce a more affordable guitar and opened up a factory in Inchon, SouthKorea to build them. This time though, Michael made sure that they were highquality guitars as well as being mass-produced.

The parts were made in theSouth Korean factory and then shipped to their U.S. Shop for the guitars to beassembled.

Schecter Van Nuys Serial Numbers List

This led to the creation of the famous Diamond Series SchecterGuitars.The Schecter Guitar Company is still going strong today and is loved bymostly the Heavy Metal, Hard Rock and Alternative styles of music. Some of themost famous guitarists past and present that have used Schecter guitars arePete Townshend (The Who), Prince, Yngwie Malmsteen, Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam),Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits), Shaun Morgan (Seether), Robert DeLeo (StoneTemple Pilots), Jerry Horton (Papa Roach), Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance(Avenged Sevenfold), Paul Raven (Killing Joke and Ministry) and Sean Yseult (WhiteZombie).the who pete townshendNews (15 November 2011): Christie’s auctioned a Giffin/Schecter black guitar, aspart of its Pop Culture: Rock and Pop Memorabilia sale, on 15 November 2011.