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Cali Body Size?


diablo175

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3 hours ago, Steve Haynie said:

Do you mean Chaparral body size?

No, I mean Cali body size. Is it full or 7/8?

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Don't know if this sheds any relevant light, but I recently exchanged e-mails with Jol and he very, very nicely gave me all the information he had on my VR Centaurafornian custom job, from personal recollection to all the log book data. My VR's body is officially listed as "Stevens Dinky Strat" with added scalloped cutaways noted on the work order. 

Charvel created the "dinky" strat and if my Charvel history recollection is up to snuff, the dinky was first created by taking 1/4" off the entire around edge of a stock strat body. Basically the greatly beveled edge of an old strat body removed, then replaced with a more subtle, sharper bevel (think Ibanez RG). A Soloist is that same alteration formula, just neck-thru construction. I don't know if that transcribes to a 7/8 scale body, but that's physically how the first conversions of stock strat bodies into dinkies went down. 

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The catalog description at one point mentioned it being a 7/8 downsized body.

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3 hours ago, cmatthes said:

The catalog description at one point mentioned it being a 7/8 downsized body.

Bingo! That's what I was looking for!!!

Shane wanted to know when I asked him about making a Cali copy, suggesting that it was likely 7/8.

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I cannot imagine that there is a "size ratio" on guitars. A Steinberger, has virtually no body at all, yet full scale neck length. With reference to the Charvel Dinky range, it is merely the "look" that assumes the dinky tag not an actual reference to it's size. This, of course, is very different in the wold of acoustics where size does matter because of the way sounds radiates out from the player to the listener.

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Actually, the body size IS relevant here.  The body is scaled down - a standard, full-sized body is reduced to 7/8 to get the smaller "Dinky" or Cali-sized body.  

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16 minutes ago, Fast Eddie said:

With reference to the Charvel Dinky range, it is merely the "look" that assumes the dinky tag not an actual reference to it's size.

This is a quotation from a "Jackson History" document hosted on the fender.com domain.

"This period also saw the debut of the bolt-on-neck Dinky (so named for its smaller body size), soon followed by perhaps the most popular Jackson design ever, 1983's neck-through-body Soloist™ model."

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I don't think we are at odds with each other, a 7/8 Cali only makes sense as a size, if there is an 8/8 Cali. For instance Dan Spitz (Anthrax) was a small guy, and he asked Jackson to make smaller their range that he plays because of his stature, this would absolutely be a 7/8 or even 6/8 because there is a larger proper sized model to compare the smaller one to. We don't need to continue this thread, it's not super important and as it happens, I'm right. Happy New Year.

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I guess a Cali body is 7/8ths of a Fender strat body.  The reference for a Cali is to another guitar but the Cali in my eyes is it's own shape and correspondingly size.

Interestingly, and I have owned 2 Cali Customs and 3 FM bolt-ons as a reference, the glued-in Custom's have slight shorter body dimensions to their bolt-on counterparts.  About 1.5cm shorter if I recall.

That then opens another possibility altogether.

 

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3 minutes ago, DBraz said:

I guess a Cali body is 7/8ths of a Fender strat body.  The reference for a Cali is to another guitar but the Cali in my eyes is it's own shape and correspondingly size.

Interestingly, and I have owned 2 Cali Customs and 3 FM bolt-ons as a reference, the glued-in Custom's have slight shorter body dimensions to their bolt-on counterparts.  About 1.5cm shorter if I recall.

That then opens another possibility altogether.

 

Wow! Interesting bit of info, David! I would not have thought to measure the differences between the set neck custom and the bolt on LE's. Now, I'm debating whether to use my C3 or one of the LEs as a template for my next proposed build.

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5 hours ago, diablo175 said:

Wow! Interesting bit of info, David! I would not have thought to measure the differences between the set neck custom and the bolt on LE's. Now, I'm debating whether to use my C3 or one of the LEs as a template for my next proposed build.

The Customs have a slightly squarer look to them.  Interesting eh?

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1 minute ago, DBraz said:

The Customs have a slightly squarer look to them.  Interesting eh?

I'll have to do a side by side and maybe even a Photoshop overlay comparison.

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2 minutes ago, diablo175 said:

I'll have to do a side by side and maybe even a Photoshop overlay comparison.

The blue sparkle custom we had were exactly the same dimensions.  All three of my FM Cali’s were the same but ever so slightly longer below the trem recess.

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Hard to tell but here's my Custom next to an LE. Perhaps a more fitting comparison would be with the FM Elite I had.

Side by side Cali.png

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