1990 Charvel Predator

Details

This was another Guitar Center grab, listed at a really surprising price I couldn’t resist the risk, even without an included case. It arrived in great shape and now has a proper hardshell home, and the only imperfections I could locate are the sticker on the cavity cover and a tiny chip on the front of the lower horn.

Interestingly, this neck does feel a bit different to the Spectrum I have, despite appearing identical. This one does have an R4 nut compared to the Spectrum’s R2, so that may be it. This guitar lacks any active electronics, but it does have a neat trick - a JE-005 “Super” 5-way switch. This selector allows coil splitting and other really unique behaviors on the switch as opposed to the straightforward pickup on/off of a normal selector’s terminals. Sadly, the wiring in this one was a little bit tampered with so I spent a little time trying to get it set up correctly - I’m still not completely happy with it but essentially it goes like this:

  1. Bridge pickup, series mode

  2. Bridge pickup, single coil

  3. Both pickups, single coil mode each, together in series (like a Telecaster)

  4. Neck pickup, single coil

  5. Neck pickup, series mode

Since both stock pickups are humbuckers, it’s really great to have the versatility of split modes without having a separate switch required. This means I can get my single coil tones by simple sliding the selector switch as if selecting a different pickup, rather than having to fiddle with controls - say for example, going from a neck single tone to a bridge humbucker sound in the same song. The pickups are a J200R (rails) in the neck and a J90C in the bridge, which is quite thick and aggressive in this guitar. The J200R is one of my favorites already as I had a pair in the Fusion Custom, and despite the similar name sounds vastly different from the J200 single coil stack models common on other Charvel/Jacksons of this era.

I no longer own this instrument