Charvel has a multi-generational base of loyal fans, and playing the Charvel Pro-Mod Plus San Dimas, it’s easy to see why their guitars have been so popular with rock guitarists since the ‘80s and on through the present.
| Category | Value | Rating |
| Features | 20% |  |
| Usability | 25% | |
| Sound | 25% |  |
| Documentation & Support | 10% |  |
| Price | 20% | |
| OVERALL RATING = 3.6 Stars, which earns it a WIHO Award! 3.6 stars or better: Outstanding, WIHO Award 3 stars or better: Worth considering 2 stars or better: Suited to specific needs 1 star or less: Not recommended |
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It’s not just that Charvel guitars offer a straightforward feature set, premium components, great feel, and great tone, but they have always been priced for the gigging musician. For less than $1,400, you get a guitar that is definitely worth more than the sum of its parts. Featuring a carmelized maple neck, a Floyd Rose 1500-series bridge, and classic Seymour Duncan pickups, this guitar seems to be yet another classic rock guitar. But the Pro-Mod Plus series steps things up with some very cool details under the hood that elevates it to something even better.
The Charvel Pro-Mod Plus San Dimas is a great choice for any Super-Strat lover who needs the versatility of a Strat but with the performance features and tone of a shred-minded instrument.
Features
We received the Charvel Pro-Mod Plus San Dimas Style 1 HH FR CM in a beautiful Chlorine Burst finish.
This is a perfectly appointed Super-strat style guitar. To start, it features a 25.5” scale length, 22-fret, D-shaped, caramelized maple neck (with graphite reinforcement for stability) with a 12”-16” compound-radius fretboard (also caramelized), and a hand-rubbed Urethane finish. Luminlay side dot markers provide good visibility on dark stages, and a dual-action truss rod is easily accessible at the neck joint.
The body is alder with a quilted maple veneer top, and the humbucking pickups are a classic rock set: the Seymour Duncan JB TB-4 (bridge) and ’59 SH-1N (neck), configured with a standard five-way blade switch. A volume and tone control round out the features, and they are more than meets the eyes: the volume pot is a low-friction Bourns pot, and the tone control is a No-Load tone control.
A No-Load tone control works like a regular tone control in the range of 1-9, but when set to full/10, it switches into a true-bypass mode, removing the tone control and associated capacitor entirely from the tone circuit. This enables the guitar to output a brighter sound than the characteristically warmer tone of a humbucker (compared to, say, a single-coil pickup). You may also experience a slightly hotter overall signal output.
For hardware, the Pro-Mod Plus has a Floyd Rose 1500 Series double-locking tremolo, which is a modified version of the commercially available 1000 Series, but only available to builders. It features a push-in tremolo arm and stainless steel screws, but otherwise retains the 1000 Series’ bridge plate, saddles, insert blocks, studs, inserts, and locking nut. The guitar also includes Charvel non-locking tuners and standard strap pegs.
Usability
The Charvel Pro-Mod Plus San Dimas was a joy to play. The four-bolt neck heel is shaved down to a fraction of what you’d find on a typical Strat-style guitar, and with the extra deep cut behind the lower horn of the guitar, upper fret reach is an absolute delight on this guitar. The body was particularly light, further contributing to the comfort of playing this guitar.
The Pro-Mod Plus features a compound radius fretboard, and although you can feel the difference on the neck as you climb the fretboard, the fretboard generally feels consistently flat from start to finish. Make no mistakes about it: this neck wants you to shred. But it wants you to be comfortable while doing so. The nickel, jumbo frets with nicely rolled edges coupled with the maple fretboard impart a slightly vintage feel.
The controls worked as expected, and you can feel a magnetic “snap” to the No-Load tone control when it’s at 10, so you won’t accidentally nudge it while playing.
Tuning stability from the Floyd Rose 1500-series tremolo was great, but our one gripe with this guitar is that the tremolo arm does not snap in, nor does it feature an easily adjustable collar like on a Floyd Rose Original. Instead, there is a tiny set screw on the collar that we had to manually tighten with an Allen key to our desired level of hold-in-place resistance or free-swinging behavior, and it did require periodic adjustment.
Sound
We kind of knew what to expect sonically from this guitar given the popularity of the San Dimas range of guitars, our love of Super-strat style guitars, and our love of classic hard rock music. The Charvel Pro-Mod Plus did not let us down.
We played the guitar through an ENGL Powerball II, a high-gain, multi-channel amp that has tones from glassy, studio clean to vintage hard rock to modern metal, as well as through a variety of Neural DSP virtual amps in the studio.
The Seymour Duncan JB/’59 combination is a tried-and-true, classic hard rock pickup set, delivering just enough gain (we once called them medium-hot and stand by that) to make your rock and metal playing sound great, while still enabling your cleans to stay clean, even when using the bridge pickup on its own. Satisfyingly, the JB humbucker sounds clean without that horrible ice pick kind of edge that you sometimes get from a bridge humbucker through a very clean amp.
The ’59 neck pickup is great for singing blues lead lines or when you’re going for that modern liquid lead tone.
What really surprised us, however, was just how damn stratty this guitar could sound! Position 2 (bridge outer coil + neck inner coil) and Position 4 (bridge inner coil + neck outer coil) delivered wonderful Strat-like tones with all the accompanying spank you expect.
The no-load tone control worked well, and sure enough, there was a very minor, but observable, drop in volume when you turned the knob down from 10, which engages the tone control and associated capacitor. Most rock shredders will probably never discover the joy of the alternate tones you can coax from this guitar by playing with the tone control (and volume, for that matter). But for more adventurous guitar souls, this guitar really covers the bases well from spanky clean to classic blues and rock, to pushing your high-gain amp into shred land.
Documentation and Product Support
Charvel guitars include a basic, shared documentation sheet that covers basic controls and maintenance/adjustment.
The guitars feature a two-year limited warranty.
Price
The Charvel Pro-Mod Plus San Dimas Style 1 sells for $1,369.99 street. This is a solid value for a Mexican-made Charvel that has so many great details in both the construction and hardware appointments. We’d add some strap locks and locking tuners (for lazy restringing convenience) but that’s it. The guitar is a joy to play, sounds great, feels great, and is just a perfect example of what makes Charvel Super-Strats such popular options with rock and metal players.
Contact Information
Charvel
www.charvel.com
