Schecter Van Nuys history - Part SIX

This sits in Tom Anderson's shop. It was built by Dave Schecter, in his Van Nuys shop, BEFORE it became SGR (1975). The dust remediation was added by Tom. It was pretty interesting standing in front of it again, after 38 years. I used to have to take boxes of pickups into the wood shop and sand the tops on this thing. Other than that, I don't remember seeing it in use, I didn't know what else it was used for. Turns out it did a lot of things, but the overall design was so it could be a neck radius sander. I don't know what it does now, but it's obviously still used. That v-notch thing on the left looks like it could be part of a radius jig?

Since I started posting about early Schecter history, I've spoken to many old employees and learned that I had remember several key items incorrectly. The corrections are some further detail you might find interesting.

#1 - Tom Anderson started at Schecter's before I started. When I started Tom was hunkered down in Dave's shop working on necks, I seldom saw him and didn't remember him. Necks were the hardest thing SGR produced and only Tom and one other ever learned how to produce them.Prior to Tom and Dave starting on prolonged neck R&D (hidden in Dave's shop), Tom did production work in the wood shop.

Once necks were perfected, Tom moved back to the wood shop to produce them. Necks were the last major item needed to produce complete guitars, took a long time to perfect, and had generated a huge backlog. What I remembered as Tom being overwhelmed 'when he first started', was Tom being overwhelmed by the size of the first 'production run' for necks.

#2 - Pat Wilkins worked at Acoustic Control Corporation, and Shel Horlick was, at one point a year or two earlier, the VP of sales for Acoustic. One day Shel was hanging out there, talked Pat up, and eventually told him he had a job at SGR. Shel didn't give Pat anything other then the address of the Van Nuys complex. What I initially described as Pat's arrival assumed Pat found Schecter on his own.

It's less heroic now, I always thought Pat somehow figured out that guitars were being made there, and just walked up and asked for a Job. In reality I just witnessed Pat walking around asking people "I'm supposed to work here, where do I go?"

#3 Larry Ludowitz - I initially wrote Larry wasn't a guitar player. Not only was Larry a guitar player, Larry had built his own guitar prior to joining SGR. Larry's father owned a lumber company in the San Fernando Valley. Larry worked there summers from a very young age. When Larry's dad had to close the lumber company (the same year Larry graduated high school), Larry looked to a childhood neighborhood friend, Tom Anderson, for job opportunities.

Another neighborhood friend of Larry and Tom was Pete Wagonhurst. Pete Wagonhurst, Tom Anderson and Alan Weiss formed a band. In a strange coincidence, within the first six month's of Pat Wilkins arrival in California, he saw a free concert in Balboa Park and saw Tom, Pete and Al perform. Within a year he was working with all of them at SGR.