Randy Rhoads did as much to inspire a generation of metal guitar players as he did to elevate the craft of high-octane guitar, with a magical infusion of melodic sensibilities and classically inspired emotive motifs. In October, 2021, Randy was honored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with a long-overdue Musical Excellence award. And it’s time that we also properly recognize Karl Sandoval, the builder of Randy’s most famous guitar: The Dot V. 

Karl Sandoval has only recently started to receive the credit he’s due for his incredible skill as a guitar builder, passion for refining the instrument and contributions to the craft. His early association with Randy Rhoads has been largely overlooked by the guitar community, because of one innocent request from Randy himself: Randy didn’t want any company names or logos on the custom Polka-Dot guitar that would become his most famously photographed instrument. It’s a story that in many ways begins with Randy, but includes a cast of other G.O.A.T. names, and continues today in Karl’s modest ‘Shop on the Hill.’

Randy didn’t want any company names or logos on the custom Polka-Dot guitar that would become his most famously photographed instrument.

As a bit of background, Randy first emerged with Quiet Riot in the late 1970s, from the same hotbed of Southern Californian talent that produced Eddie Van Halen, George Lynch and so many other cleverly innovative guitarists. But it wasn’t just the young players who were breaking new ground in this special place and time. Working among, and often playing alongside, these six-string phenoms were the luthiers and artisans who changed the look, sound, feel and function of the guitar. Guitar builders such as Wayne Charvel, Grover Jackson and Karl Sandoval, were creating hot-rodded guitars that facilitated the technical abilities of these soon-to-be stars. In the early ‘70s, Larry DiMarzio – then a young guitar tech in New York City – had wound the world’s first aftermarket, high gain, exposed coil pickup : The Super Distortion (double cream). This copper-spun fireball was the last piece of the puzzle, providing the output, overdrive and tonal enhancements that transformed virtuosity into electrified ferocity. This was the pickup, along with the DiMarzio PAF, that brought life to Randy’s Sandoval Dot V. 

Larry DiMarzio: When did you first start building guitars, Karl?

Karl Sandoval: The earliest was sometime in the midway part of working with Wayne Charvel. I was a player, and I was working on them. But I was only repairing them at that time, and I wanted to graduate into building something on my own. I felt like I had all of the tools and the fabrication skills. The first one was virtually a handmade guitar, and I have that guitar to this day. I loved the Danelectro guitars, mainly because of the neck, and there was a certain model that I really liked. I made a solid body version of it out of very hard ash, with a single humbucking pickup, a vintage Fender-style tremolo, and a slider pot – not a rotating pot, a slider pot. I then glued-on a Danelectro neck. So, that would have been the first one, which was probably in ’77 or ‘78. 

LD: Was this done while you were working at Wayne’s Shop?

KS: You're testing my memory – ha-ha. This was done in the first Wayne Charvel industrial building. It was 1000 square feet. It was done there. And I think that the only heavy piece of machinery we had was an overarm pin router – I’m fairly certain that I used it.

LD: How many people were working for Wayne when you first started there?

KS: When I approached him, there was Wayne and two other guys – I'll just call them Steve and Steve. They worked there first and then I came onboard.

LD: Do you recall how old you were at the time?

KS: Mid 20s, like 25, 26, around there. I was young then – I had long hair and it was dark – ha-ha. 

LD: I remember dark hair – ha-ha. You were playing guitar in a band at the time, and you were playing a lot of local California clubs. Was this during the same time that you were working for Wayne?

KS: Yes.

LD: What were the clubs like at that point?

KS: This is what was cool about that era: Everybody supported live music. I mean, live music was it! And to go see a band was just one of the greatest things. The band that I was in was called “Smokehouse.” We played at places like The Pasadena Civic Auditorium, which was super big. If you got a gig there, you were making it, man. It was good, because typically you would be like second, third, fourth bill to Van Halen. They were tops, man, and drew a huge crowd of like five to six thousand people, sometimes more. 

The whole scene was – excuse my expression here, but that's the way it was – sex, drugs and rock and roll. It was very loud and very hyped up.

Then there were a lot of the local clubs, which were very small, and I don't think that anybody would recognize them. They were like bar-type dance clubs that supported Top 40-type bands. But we were also fortunate enough to play at Gazzarri’s (Hollywood A-Go Go on the Sunset Strip). We did one gig at Gazzarri’s. The whole scene was – excuse my expression here, but that's the way it was – sex, drugs and rock and roll. It was very loud and very hyped up. There were other clubs that I had attended, one especially in Downey. That's where I saw Van Halen for the first time and they were, oh my God, in their prime. Eddie was playing his homemade white Explorer, but it wasn’t an Explorer...it was…

LD: The Ibanez.

KS: Right, the Ibanez Destroyer. George Lynch had one too. And, man, those guitars were phenomenal. What I mean is that they played very well and you could get a comfortable action. The feel was just tremendous.

So, there was that club in Downey, that was pretty good. There was also the Starwood. Oh, and there was a place called Walter Mitty’s in Pomona. There was just a whole plethora of different clubs that were small and local. We even played the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds at one time, which is where I remember seeing a band called “The Dogs.” They were a three-piece band that played a sort of punk, speed-rock. They were massively good for just three guys – it was a wall of sound. 

But everybody did the backyard party scene or they would just throw a gig in a double garage and open up the door and everybody would flood the streets. That was the time, man, for live music. I remember going to the Forum. I saw quite a few bands when working with Wayne. We saw ZZ Top and a band called “Player.” We saw Elvin Bishop; “Fooled Around and Fell in Love,” do you remember that song? We saw Tommy Bolin with Deep Purple. We saw ZZ Top more than once. And, one of the bigger places, bigger venues, where Wayne had me go, was the Swing Auditorium. That was in San Bernardino. It was like an old wooden complex venue that's since been torn down. I think there's a new building up there now. 

We would do the craziest things. Sometimes it wasn't a club – sometimes it would be in a big park and the bands would play on a flatbed. These are bands like Smile and Reddy Kilowatt. On rare occasions we got lucky enough to play for Tortomasi-Haley Productions, which would promote Van Halen, and through them we played the Pasadena Civic Center three or four times – I’ve got some cool stories and memories about those gigs.

LD: Who really caught your attention on the local club scene? 

KS: Since I was a guitar player, I was in-tune to what was already professional. So, you had Billy Gibbons, Ritchie Blackmore, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. But in my area, there was this guy, Terry Kilgore, that really turned my head. He ended up playing with David Lee Roth for a while, but back then he was in a band called Reddy Kilowatt. And a lot of times, like when we played the Civic, Terry would go up there, and even at sound check, would absolutely blow our minds. He would have the ultimate Marshall and liked the older gold top Les Pauls with the soap bar pickups in them.

There were other guitar players too, Tracy G that played with Dio was good. There were a lot of locals that were pretty hot, not only in that heavy rock style but also in a Santana style. They had that Latin vibe and there's a guy named Bob Robles that was a monster. To this day I still see people on video on social media breaking the mold. They're phenomenal. 

Eddie just had something special, soulful. He was fast enough. He wasn't a speed demon. He was classic, piercing. He was full of tricks and just dominated that stage every time he went on.

I think the most influential out of all of them was when I heard Eddie. I was just like, how in the heck can anybody play that good? I remember seeing them at the Whiskey or maybe Gazzarri’s. This is when Eddie had that big bomb on stage that was cut open – he'd put his Echoplex in there and that was just part of his scene. He was playing as great as he is and then I heard some guy say “wow, that guy sounds like Ritchie Blackmore.” I just said “You're way off, man. This guy is in a class of his own.” Ritchie's in a class of his own too and I don't really want to compare them, but I felt that Eddie just had something special, soulful. He was fast enough. He wasn't a speed demon. He was classic, piercing. He was full of tricks and just dominated that stage every time he went on. 

LD: Was Eddie friends with Wayne at that point? Or did you meet Eddie and bring him to Wayne’s shop? 

KS: No, I didn't bring Eddie to Wayne’s shop. He actually heard about us through the grapevine of musicians. We were probably the only custom guitar shop around. I think that some music stores back then did repairs, pickup changes, nuts and so forth. But Wayne did complete builds, refinishing, customizing of all nature – for guitar and bass. 

So, Eddie got wind of us. And I'll tell you, Larry, I still distinctly remember him walking through the door – seeing him for the first time. And I tell you, man, sometimes you just look at a person and say “oh, there's no way that could be a guitar player, there's no way.” It's not necessarily about looks. Obviously, some of these bands came from money, when they were first starting out, and some didn’t. I'm not really sure about Ed’s background, but when he came in…he just looked like a lot of teenagers at the time. Back then, they just wore, I guess, what was clean or available. I can still picture him with his long hair: it's dark and he’s young. He was wearing what looked like a really oversized shirt, like one of his dad’s shirts or something, a pair of Levi’s that were torn, and he was barefoot. He comes in and I'm looking at him, thinking, ‘Is this the guy that everybody keeps talking about? Eddie Van Halen? Eddie Van Halen?!’ There he was, right in front of me, and I was a little nervous. I don't know why exactly, because he was just another dude from the community. 

‘Is this the guy that everybody keeps talking about? Eddie Van Halen? Eddie Van Halen?!’

Anyway, he came in and we talked about what he was looking for…something to do with a guitar body. I am not sure if he wanted us to do finishing or anything cosmetic. I think it was more to do with him wanting a body and for us to do the routing for him. He was obviously a do-it-yourselfer and wanted mostly to do it himself. But that was the first time that he came in and pretty much when we became affiliated with Eddie Van Halen.

LD: You pretty well established that Wayne’s Shop was the only shop that was really capable of doing all of the big and little things involved in custom work…you could do the finishing, cut bodies, etc. Was Wayne building necks at the time or was he a big fan of the Danelectro necks as well?

KS: Well, when I first started working for him, Wayne was not building necks – at least not to my knowledge. I never saw templates, machinery or anything that had to do with building necks. He had a source through, I think, Fender. We had quite a few Fender necks there because he used to do – what you could call – refurbishing. He repainted them and did whatever they requested. He didn't really get into the Danelectro necks until I started bringing it up. 

Now I’m going to just go ahead and claim this, and I know that some people may dispute it: I brought about the era of utilizing Danelectro guitar necks. I just knew that they set up well and I knew I could do something good with them. Eddie got wind of it. George Lynch got wind of it. Of course, Randy Rhoads got wind of it and then a lot of other local musicians. But I'm going away from the question you asked me.

I was just clarifying that Wayne’s shop was uniquely a kind of do-it-all place. But I didn’t think that necks for these projects were being made at Wayne’s shop. 

As far as I know, for a lot of the exotic-wood guitars that we were building, we were getting bodies and necks from Wayne’s buddy, Lynn Ellsworth, up in Washington state. I remember boxes coming in from UPS – we’d open them up and there would be ash bodies along with some really bizarre and exotic woods, like zebra wood, padauk, purple heart, and your beautiful maple quilts and flames. We’d get them in bodies and necks, both for guitar and bass. This is all in the little shop in Covina. It wasn't until after we moved to our first building in San Dimas that Grover Jackson came into the picture – although I don’t know too much about the exact timeline, or Grover’s career.

LD: You’re filling in a lot of blanks and resolving a few mysteries – like how Eddie found the shop – and clarifying that you were the go-to guys in Southern California for bodies and finishing work. I also didn’t know that Wayne was getting stuff from Boogie bodies. I thought that he was building everything himself … that’s interesting. 

We were all looking to make our guitars better with better components, especially considering Gibson and Fender’s well-established production issues.  

I found and contacted Wayne because I liked his brass Les Paul jack plates. I really thought those were great and I even started selling them. I must have replaced fifty of the plastic ones while I was working on 48^th street – his brass ones made so much more sense. I ultimately met him at a NAMM show, a year or two later. 

I also started ordering some bodies from him around ’78, just Strats and Teles initially, but we added Explorer and V-shaped bodies by ‘79. Then Wayne was suddenly out of the picture and Grover Jackson was the owner in charge. 

Joanne became my sales contact at Charvel, and soon became Mrs. Jackson. She told me that they had necks in addition to bodies, which totally fit my plan: I was already buying brass bridges from Stars Guitars in San Francisco and had designed the DiMarzio 250 and 500K pots. So, with the addition of bodies and necks, DiMarzio would be able to offer our dealers a full line of high-quality replacements parts that could be used to build a guitar or improve any Gibson or Fender. 

When Grover’s first shipment arrived, the bodies were good, but the necks didn’t meet my expectations. Luckily, I was friends with Stu Spector, who was making basses in Brooklyn and using the DiMarzio Model P as his main pickup. He and his partner, Allen, agreed to build my necks and we spent months together (several days a week) fine-tuning every detail: I changed the traditional Fender fingerboard radius from 7.25” to 9.5” and opted for the larger frets that I preferred. They had Strat-style headstock shapes and were all maple in the beginning, with my favorite vintage Fender-style ’57 V-shape profile and rolled fingerboard edges. 

I also made a few changes to Grover’s Strat-style bodies, so that they were felt more like what Fender produced in 1960 – those cuts were wonderful and felt better when playing in a standing position. I requested that they be made from only one or two pieces of wood, and that they only be finished with a sealer. This way you could do anything you wanted: paint them, keep them natural, etc. 

KS: You mentioned Joanne, but she didn't come into the picture, I think, until after they moved to the bigger Charvel facility. I don't remember her being at this first building. I think she came later. You know, they (Grover and Joanne) obviously created a love affair, and things went on from there. So you were probably dealing with them when they moved out of the smaller first building.

LD: Was there a shop somewhere near Riverside, CA? I visited them in 1980 to make some more body revisions. 

Bumblebee, the yellow and black-striped Strat that Eddie got was done at the first shop

KS: Now, you’ll have to talk to other people that worked for Grover, because things started to change and I’m not sure about some of the business moves after a certain point. I only know, as a matter of fact, that Bumblebee, the yellow and black-striped Strat that Eddie got was done at the first shop, the 1000-square-foot shop.

LD: That body came from Washington?

KS: Well, now, I’m not sure, because we had the overarm PIN router and I’m sure there had to have been a bandsaw. Wayne also had a spray booth and an assembly area. So, we could have produced the body. We were starting to make some bodies around that time because I remember Grover came into the picture towards my end in '79. I left in '79 and I don't even remember really working for them once they got into the larger facility. If I did, it wasn't for very long, because I don't remember that much about the place. I remember it's where I actually talked to Wayne and Grover about getting an increase in pay. They said “No,” so I said, “Goodbye. I'm gone.” 

1979 is when it all started for me, somewhat by luck of the draw. This would really be, as I call it, the Danelectro era with George Lynch, Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads. That's when it really all started for me. So, back to the bodies that you were buying. Probably most of them were Boogie bodies, but some could have been made by us in the small shop. Once they moved to the bigger facility, those would have been Grover Jackson bodies. I remember buying necks from Grover after I left. I was buying maple Strat necks and seconds for like 50 bucks – I stayed friends with those guys. I don’t think that Grover would have sold me necks if we hadn’t been on good terms.

LD: Now, the yellow guitar. That is the guitar you built?

KS: Yeah, the Megazone… I really dug the look of the original headstock. But I knew it wasn't going to be something that Eddie favored. He didn't, and I had to change it. But yeah, that looks like the guitar.

LD: And there's a pic of your guitar with the Bumblebee Strat and the yellow and black one that he had done.

KS: Now if you look at that photo, you're going see some guitars laying on the ground, or maybe up, toward his left side. Some of those guitars had Danelectro necks.

LD: Were the Danelectros six-on-a-side?

KS: Yes. You could get them three left and three right. But typically they were six inline, straight. The best thing about them is that they were flat, or flatter than most other necks – not as flat as classical, but still flat enough to get a very low action that wouldn't fret out. That's why I liked them – and they felt good.

LD: I remember those necks; they were very flat. My problem with the guitars was that the pickups were so noisy. But speaking of pickups, when did you find out about DiMarzio?

KS: When I worked with Wayne. You guys had obviously met, probably by phone or the NAMM show. I don't know. I vaguely knew that there was something cooking. I didn't know specifically. You and I have talked about this, where I thought he was going to be the distributor here on the West Coast, and it was turned down. But I don't know for sure or have proof or anything like that. You probably know more about that than me.

LD: My sales manager had started using independent sales reps and he felt that having people visiting the stores was better for DiMarzio than using a West Coast distributer. 

We supplied Wayne with tons of pickups for his guitars and I’m sure he was selling them from the shop as well.  When I started, neither Gibson nor Fender had any interest in selling pickups; DiMarzio was the first to supply direct replacement pickups. Wayne might have been getting a few from Fender, as part of his deal with them, but I wouldn’t put a Fender pickup in anything I was working on. 

KS: The single coils for sure. I don't remember using much of the Fender humbuckers. 

LD: Oh yeah, the Fender humbuckers weren’t good … big, ugly, and strange sounding. I was surprised to learn that the same guy that designed the original 50’s Gibson pickup had designed those too. 

...any guitar that had a humbucker that sucked. You put in a DiMarzio! It was a hot-rodded replacement pickup that did its job. Man, it was awesome.

KS: I remember everybody that had one would take that out and put in a DiMarzio. The ones that I remember the most would be your Super Distortion and PAF. You put it in the Telecaster. You put it in the Strat. You put it in any guitar that had a humbucker that sucked. You put in a DiMarzio! It was a hot-rodded replacement pickup that did its job. Man, it was awesome. That was the one that I recommended to Randy Rhoads. So, we went with the PAF for the neck and then the Super Distortion in the back.

LD: Super in the bridge was always a good starting place.

KS: Those are the sounds. When you listen to Randy's recordings with that Dot V and whatever other gear he was using, those were the pickups.

LD: Did you have a chance to see him live?

...the Crazy Train video came out on MTV, showing that Flying V going up the screen and across the screen and down the railroad tracks. That was kind of a highlight of my life.

KS: Sadly enough, no, I never saw him play. I never saw him before he came to me. I never saw him after. I was always seeing photographs, because there really wasn’t much video taken at that time – not that I knew about or remember seeing. One of the first times I saw video was when the Crazy Train video came out on MTV, showing that Flying V going up the screen and across the screen and down the railroad tracks. That was kind of a highlight of my life. I mean, I don't have many, but it just turned out to be very iconic. See, you got to remember, back then, I'm a Hispanic, young kid from West Covina, got married early, had a family, didn’t really know what career I’d try. Then, I got into guitar building, and Wayne Charvel was a big part of getting me going. Then, in 1979, things just started happening. I would say I'm pretty lucky.

LD: I’d say blessed. It was much the same for me … I was an Italian American kid from Astoria Queens. I played in a cover band and was happy when I sounded like the record. I was working on guitars and then my pickups took off – the next thing I knew, I couldn’t build them fast enough. 

KS: I think we were all trying to duplicate…and people still do that in some cases, I don't really like duplication because there's only one of that guitar player. Leave it alone. Everybody wants to know that they can conquer a style of a certain guitar player. I did it, or I tried to, but I never really succeeded. How can you duplicate Eddie Van Halen? Come on. And I see it all the time now. It's plastered all over social media. Everybody wants to do Eruption. No. Stop it!

LD: You’re right.

I’ve got a recent photo of the original Dot V you built for Randy; I have a question about the bridge. It’s a Fender-style bridge but the saddles look like something that came out of Stars Guitars in San Francisco. I’m not sure. You’d know better than me. 

KS: That's not the original bridge that came on the guitar, you know. They look like the square, block type.

LD: That's not the original bridge?

(You can see the original chrome bridge in this video at about 2:27)

KS: No, no, not at all.

LD: The original was a Fender bridge?

KS: Yes, if you look, either on my website or just in social media, pictures are posted of Randy holding the guitar when he first got it…it was all chrome hardware.

That was something done later. I don’t know the reasons why, but I'm sure that somebody wrote about it. The original knobs were speed knobs, that were white. They weren’t black. Sometimes when guys order this guitar, they’ll ask me if I can put a black bridge on it. I say, ‘Sure, I'll do whatever you want. You're paying the money.’ But I tell them, ‘Rest assured, that's not how the original was when Randy bought it.’ There are a few things that have been changed and people have commented with different stories. The story that Randy told me was that his strap came off…

LD: Right. And then there was an accident?

KS: It fell, hit the headstock and broke. Some people out there say that from then on it had tuning problems. That's not true. If you ever read that…I know you have more sense than to think that could be true. 

LD: I believe this is a pic of the original guitar.

KS: Yes. There it is. See that chrome, it looks hot. And the tremolo arm is bent too.

Eric Kirkland: Tell me about Randy’s V design?

KS: I got the call from Randy in June/July of 1979. He had seen George Lynch playing a tiger-striped V guitar that I built for him, the Supro V, and had gone backstage to ask George where he got it. George told him to call me and we set up a time for Randy to come out and work on the design. You have to remember that everything was custom back then; these were one-offs, built to order. Randy showed up with Kevin Dubrow, since this is right before Ozzy, when he was still with Quiet Riot. Kevin was really excited and kept telling Randy that he should do this, and do that, and make it look this way. At one point I just turned to Randy and said, ‘look man, this is YOUR guitar. You tell me how you want it and I will do my best to make it happen.’ 

Randy had already sketched a few rough ideas of what he wanted, beginning with the V shape that I’d done for George. He wanted it to be like a combination of Gibson and Fender, playing similar to his 1972 Gibson Les Paul Custom but with a Fender-style tremolo. I told him that the mahogany body would need to be 1 ¾ inches thick to accommodate the tremolo’s sustain block, but he was okay with it. He also wanted the three-way toggle to be on the upper wing of the V, which required some difficult cable routing down to the electronics cavity on the lower wing. And he wanted it to have ¾-inch white dots on the black finish with bowtie-inlaid fret markers, to match his signature stage outfit. There are 275 dots on that original guitar and how I applied them back then is kind of a trade secret – let’s just say there was no template and it required a lot of finish work and buffing to make it perfect. I still build a lot of those Dot V guitars for people, but they have to understand that each one is unique and it’s not going to be exactly like Randy’s down to the millimeter – these are custom guitars. One thing that I can guarantee is that the sound will be consistent with the original, because we use the same double-cream DiMarzio pickups now that we did on Randy’s original: A Super Distortion in the bridge and a PAF in the neck. I asked Larry recently if the pickups were still made the same way, and he said, ‘”Yup, same pickup, made the same way as we always have.” And I have to say that they really do sound the same. I also wire these pickups a little different than most people do, making it possible for both of the tone and volume knobs to be active when in the middle position, so that the levels and sound can really be blended. 

EK: Whose idea was the headstock shape?

KS: The harpoon headstock was also Randy’s idea – he wanted something that was different and a little radical – Randy was very easy to talk to and a joy to work with. I used Danelectro necks at the time, so I knew that what he was asking for would be challenging. I had to add wood and pin it in with dowels to make the shape. But the end result was seamless. I don’t know why he didn’t want a logo or name on the headstock, but I realize now that it kind of left me in obscurity for a while – nobody knew who built that guitar for a long time. I think that Randy just wanted it to be HIS guitar and maybe at that time there was something to be said for being a little mysterious, keeping a few things secret and maintaining a competitive edge. I guess a lot of players did that. 

I don’t know why he didn’t want a logo or name on the headstock, but I realize now that it kind of left me in obscurity for a while

Some months after the guitar was finished, Randy called me and said that the guitar had fallen off the strap and shattered the back of the neck. The neck itself was fine because those old Danelectros had two steel-beam stabilizing bars in them and I used an extra length of body wood when I originally affixed the neck. The headstock was seriously damaged, however, and I repaired it for him immediately. The neck had a very flat 17-inch radius and a beefy profile, similar to a 50s Les Paul, which is exactly how Randy liked them. The action was fairly high and we used a bone nut. On the subject, people sometimes bring me a guitar for repair and say, ‘ALL that it needs is a new nut.’ I explain to them that there are no small jobs when we’re talking about building, maintaining and repairing guitars. If you want it to make music, it has to be done correctly, and each instrument is a little different.’ – I could teach a whole class just on the proper cutting and installation of a guitar nut.

When I finished the guitar in September of ’79, Randy came in and made his final payment. I think that the total cost back then was $740.00. He wasn’t rich and famous yet, so it was a lot of money to him, but worth it for a completely custom guitar. He was totally stoked! Randy absolutely loved that guitar and it’s forever been associated with him. I just wish that it would have been the guitar on that plane, and not Randy. I could have built him another guitar, but there will never be another Randy Rhoads – he was just great at everything and such a beautiful person. 

I met so many people back in those days, from Michael Anthony to Lita Ford and George Lynch. There were so many. Whether it was at Charvel’s or in my own shop, there were just people coming in all the time who later became so famous. I just really had no idea at the time that they were going to be so big. 

LD: Looking at the picture, the pickups are still the ones that you put in the guitar?

Whether it was at Charvel’s or in my own shop, there were just people coming in all the time who later became so famous. I just really had no idea at the time that they were going to be so big.

KS: Oh yeah, I don't think he ever changed those. But talking about tuning issues, crazy what people think or expect from a guitar. If someone reads that an artist said their $9,000.00 Les Paul goes out of tune, then that can destroy the Gibson name and the Les Paul reputation. People will say that they’re no good and won’t buy them. People have read such nonsense about my guitar and then commented online, saying not to buy my guitar because they have too many tuning issues. I never heard Randy say that about my guitar. Truth is that all guitars, by their very nature, have what someone could call tuning problems. Every Strat, Rickenbacker, Hagstrom, Gibson, Fender…you name it, electric or acoustic. Hit a note on a Martin and you’re going to have tuning issues. It’s resolved through proper setup for that player. But I never heard from Randy that he had any issues before or after we fixed it and set it up correctly. 

LD: I get it. I did an experiment several years ago and built four J-45 style acoustic guitars from scratch with a lot of help from my friend Kevin Kopp. I picked every piece of wood, carved the braces, shaped the necks by hand and found these wonderful Waverly tuners that were made here in Montana. I loved that project because it demonstrated that if the wood is dried properly and the guitar is setup right, it stays in tune most of time, even if it’s been sitting in the case.  

KS: It's just the name of the game, if you want to be a guitarist or a bassist. It's got flexible strings on there. Especially if you're dive bombing and using an unlocked bridge and no locking nut or locking tuners, it’s going to go out of tune. Even the Floyds have issues.  

LD: I gave up on trying to keep them in tune when they’re floating. 

Guitars with tremolos are going to go out of tune, more often than not. Stratocaster tremolo bridges add to the sound, but to keep them in tune I would jam a wooden block behind the bridge from the back so that you couldn’t move the arm at all. 

So, when you built this guitar for Randy, were you working at Wayne’s Shop? 

KS: The Dot V? No, no, absolutely not.

LD: You were out of Wayne’s shop?

KS: I was no longer affiliated with Charvel, Wayne, whatever. I was on my own. It was called Karl Sandoval Guitar Repair…big, long name. It was 1979. I quit Charvel in '79, and when I started to promote my business, that's when I got a hold of everybody. Since people knew me and who I had worked for, they started coming to me and I built my own name. That’s where you get Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads, George Lynch, Tommy Girvin, Tracy G of Dio, Rusty Anderson from Paul McCartney, and Lita Ford coming to my shop.  I even had people showing up in limos – and I never knew they would show up in limos. Sometimes I would find out afterwards that people thought someone had died. Neighbors would come up to me and ask, ‘who died, we thought there was a funeral because we saw a bunch of limos in front of your place.’ I told them, ‘No, that was Aerosmith, just coming by for some guitar work.’ People knew me in the neighborhood, and they knew what I did, so eventually I think they got used to it. I don't know how all those stars got hold of my information, but they did. It was word of mouth back then. I don’t want to get sidetracked here, but I’ve got a million of these stories that come to mind when we start talking about that time. 

LD: Where was the Karl Sandoval shop located at that point?

KS: I was in Rosemead, on a street called Columbia. I lived in a fourplex and I shared a double garage with one of the neighbors, which meant I had to leave my shop open a lot of the time. Anytime that guy parked his car and opened up the door, or if he had to wash his car, my whole shop was totally exposed.

But yeah, all of the guitars that you know about: the Randy Rhoads, the Megazone, etc. were all built there. 

LD: Your guitar was a Danelectro neck with a solid body?

KS: Yeah, my first guitar was a Danelectro neck glued into an ash body painted with nitrocellulose lacquer – Jet black.

LD: And one humbucker?

KS: One DiMarzio humbucker, the PAF.

LD: It's a good demo guitar. Speaking of single humbucker guitars, you were really on the scene for (not only the hybrid guitar) the do-it-yourself guitar, the beginnings of what I'm going to refer to as a Super Strat. The Super Strat being a Strat body with a humbucker in the bridge position – it could still have other pickups in it, but the most important thing was having that humbucker in the bridge.

KS: Absolutely. Oh yeah. That's when you knew that you had a hot-rodded guitar. Stock Strats were cool, but the single coils just would not produce the output that a humbucker would. And before there were any replacement humbuckers, the only real option was to wire in the Gibson humbucker, the big square one, not the little mini humbucker. The big square one gave it the more drive, the tonality, the piercing note that would cut through the band on a solo. Some guys used to put them in at an angle. Some guys used to put them in just straight. Then you came out with the Super Distortion, PAF, and all of the other versions, like the Dual Sound. Then, it went further using the four-conductor wiring for the series/parallel sounds. I did a lot of wiring to give players that series/parallel option, along with phase switching. 

LD: The series/parallel wiring was an idea that I picked up from Bill Lawrence. It made the guitar more versatile. You could have that big Super Distortion sound, or a brighter, thinner sound that worked better for rhythm parts.

Coming back to your guitars, the Megazone was purchased at your shop, by Eddie? 

KS: Yes, it was at that fourplex. I can still picture him turning the corner on the sidewalk in his black leather jacket and Levis. He had a T-shirt on underneath– it was the big mouth from The Rolling Stones with the big lips. Here he is lighting up a smoke in front of my place and I was in awe. I'm like, ‘Dude, what the hell are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in Hollywood somewhere, at some club?’

LD: You mentioned to me that Eddie got in touch with you a couple of times just to talk guitars.

KS: Yeah, he had a curiosity about what I was doing, since he knew that I worked for Charvel. Then I showed him the Megazone and, for whatever reason, he had to have it. He bought it and I know that I didn't sell it to him for that much. But I did have to rebuild the headstock. The original headstock had two tuners on top and four on the bottom. 

LD: So, it was actually a reverse of the Ernie Ball.

KS: I guess so, but it went on this somewhat V-style design. There are some pictures floating around of that and I even think that I have a picture of it. There were only two guitars that I built like that. I built another and I don't remember if it was a V-type or a Megazone body – it was sort of a tangerine orange, tobacco brown sunburst, and it had that same type of a headstock that was on the original Megazone. 

‘Man, when you get on the road, you get tired of it. Everybody wants something from you and it just never stops. This is cool, just to sit here and talk guitars.’

I remember Eddie showing up at my house one afternoon. It was right after they’d come off the first Van Halen tour. He may have been picking up the Megazone. Anyway, he stayed all day and night, just hanging out, having a few beers, smoking a few cigarettes and playing guitar. I couldn’t imagine why he wanted to hang out with me on a Friday night in my little fourplex apartment. So, at one point in the evening I asked him, ‘Ed, you’re a star now with sex, drugs and rock’n’roll right outside the door, waiting for you. Why in the world do you want to hang here?’ He said, ‘Man, when you get on the road, you get tired of it. Everybody wants something from you and it just never stops. This is cool, just to sit here and talk guitars.’ And that’s exactly what we did. Eddie played everything in my apartment that night, from a Guild acoustic, to a Gibson and a BC Rich, whatever I had laying around. I remember thinking that I’d never heard any of those guitars sound so good. It was amazing to witness what he could do. They all sounded like Eddie – it’s the player that shines through; it was in his hands, his heart and his mind. Randy was the same way: everything he touched sounded like Randy. 

LD: Eddie was a force of nature – he was just powerful. 

KS: I would agree.

LD: I think you hit the nail on the head. I've worked with a number of players that always sounded like themselves. The guitar is part of it, but it's not the source. It's their sound. They have that sound in their head and they're going to get there. I feel that our job as builders and designers is to get them there faster; get them to that sound easier; or fine-tune something so it works better for them. 

There are those artists that really have it in their head. Eddie is going to sound like Eddie Van Halen. I think all the great players have that going. Leslie West was that way. The first time he walked into my office, he picked up a Telecaster … a Telecaster, and within three minutes, it sounded like Leslie playing a Les Paul Junior.

KS: There you go. Man, that is so true. So many young musicians just don't get it. They're just not knowledgeable enough to understand that. I think most musicians have an awareness of what they sound like, but they count too heavily on all of the complimentary items: speakers, cabinets, pedals, wiring, etc.

I was going to tell you that I used to get single-coil sounds from your humbucker pickups, using the split coil and series/parallel with the four conductors. That was very popular too for the guys who wanted variety. 

LD: The advantage is that you get a lot of sounds from one guitar.

KS: Yeah, it was. You use that with a double-humbucking guitar and all of a sudden you’ve got all of this variety. But it's the guys that are professional enough to know how to use this, all these innovations, and create the variety and versatility that we all know and love. Thinking about Eddie, he had these little quirks about how he would set up his guitars, and sometimes I thought that a lot of it was just flash – but it was more him trying to trick people out there so they wouldn't copy him.

LD: Tell me a little more about some of the things that you think were tricks, because I also feel that Eddie didn't really want people to know exactly what he was doing.

Thinking about Eddie, he had these little quirks about how he would set up his guitars, and sometimes I thought that a lot of it was just flash – but it was more him trying to trick people out there so they wouldn't copy him.

KS: Yeah, well, things like turning your back to the crowd while you're doing a certain lick. And the springs in the back, on the sustain block. He didn’t use a center spring, just the two at an angle going to the claw. He would cut his nut slots – and I remember this distinctly – really big, like a bass string was going to go in there. He wouldn’t have any friction from the sidewalls that way, just on the bottom. And the nut was lubricated, with graphite or oil, along with the top of the saddle. Everybody knows about stretching strings, but he would use minimal wraps around the tuning posts so that there was less string to stretch and thereby less likely that it would go way out of tune when he did those bends and dives. You start putting six or seven wraps, like some of these guys would, and suddenly there’s a lot of string to stretch out. I don't remember if he tuned to 440 or if he was a 1/2 step down.

I imagine it was different based on the guitar he was playing, because of the scale length. Tuning down on a shorter-scale Les Paul, which Eddie did play, would make the strings too slinky for him. And if you have low action and a strong grip, then the guitar would go out of tune. I'm not so sure he would go for those big, jumbo frets either. The really jumbo frets make it almost feel scooped out between the frets. Especially for rhythm playing, when you go into the studio, a lower fret profile is better, to avoid being horrendously out of tune when you grab chords and have that pressure pushing down on the strings. 

LD: It's interesting that you say that because I recently listened to Jas Obrecht’s taped interview with Eddie, where he talked a lot about setup. He mentions using bigger frets, but wanting the sides tapered so that there was a real center line, and that he wanted them rounded over because flat crowns contributed to notes being out of tune – inconsistent intonation. That made me kind of curious, because I know you were working with him at an earlier stage. I never set up a guitar with Eddie. I spent more time photographing him than talking about the guitar.

(Check out all three if you’re a Van Halen fan.)

KS: I don't recall him requesting big frets.

LD: The Music Man he designed with Sterling Ball and Dudley Gimpel, if I’m recalling it correctly, has medium/large-size frets. 

KS: He also didn't use string retainers because they would create friction.

LD: That makes a lot of sense. Every time you use the tremolo arm you’ve introduced more points of contact and more points for the string to catch and not come back in tune. I'm definitely getting the picture.

KS: And then also, he liked the strings inline from the nut to the tuner, nothing curved or angled. It was all about minimal pressure on the nut. People don't realize this (about Eddie), and I don't think that he even spoke about it, but that tremolo arm was his tuning agent. If you tune up to standard 440, do a monster lick pulling on the strings, you’re going to be out of tune when you go back to a chord. It's definitely going to be out. If you listen to some of his solos, you'll hear a tremolo arm action at the end of certain licks or phrases – that was to balance the tension and I believe became part of his style. I've taught people this and it all stems from talking with Eddie back then. A lot of players have string trees; the nut slots are really tight; there's no lubricant and they don't properly stretch out their strings. Then they wonder why the guitar goes out of tune, like we talked about before with guitars inherently having tuning problems. You just have to educate them.

LD: What did you think the first time that you heard a Super Distortion?

KS: For those of us that lacked distortion, it gave us that additional distortion. Some guys like to go over the line and really get saturated, not only from their amps, speakers, or volume – those pickups have that output. If you played a stock pickup – and we used to do this a lot – then you played a Super Distortion, it was like, whoa, listen to that man. Even at lower volumes, it was a good thing. I think if a guy had a choice playing their rock music from a standard pickup or a Super Distortion, and they listened to them both, they would pick the Super, because distortion is what it was all about. That's what sells.

LD: I was designing for a rock sound; the Gibson pickup was designed like a microphone, it was there to make the guitar louder. I had a sound in my head that I wanted to hear and the Super Distortion was the pickup that delivered it. It would work equally well in a bar, a recording studio, or an arena. 

KS: And other companies would copy that and try to make something that was just big and powerful, high output and distorted. I haven’t heard all of the pickups that you’ve come out with and compared them, but I'm old school. When you first were starting out and those pickups that were available, yeah, that was a route to go, man. It was so difficult to get an original Gibson Patent Applied For, so your pickups came out at the right time. 

From the ground up, the DiMarzio PAF was different. I was going after an imaginary PAF in an imaginary 1959 cherry sunburst Les Paul, plugged into a perfect Fender tweed or Marshall cranked to eleven. I don’t think that was what Ted McCarty or Seth Lover had in mind.

LD: I was always going for bigger and badder. Paul Hamer (Hamer guitars) asked me to do screw-and-stud style pickups for his guitars, a "Patent Applied For"-look. But I made improvements: I wasn’t interested in cloning vintage-style Gibson-sounding pickups. From the ground up, the DiMarzio PAF was different. I was going after an imaginary PAF in an imaginary 1959 cherry sunburst Les Paul, plugged into a perfect Fender tweed or Marshall cranked to eleven. I don’t think that was what Ted McCarty or Seth Lover had in mind. 

KS: Using DiMarzio pickups, especially the Super Distortion, was a new hot-rodding effect that you could do on a guitar, that would give you that distorted sound for lead and power chords. It's very good for midrange, soloing and so forth. At the shop, guys were bringing in their stock Strats and it was pretty easy to do. We'd get some decent money for it, and we’d sell a pickup. They would always ask what pickup do you recommend? We’d say, “Well, we have the Super Distortion.” Then sometimes we’d ask, “Have you ever thought of putting a humbucker in the front position?” So, we could use a DiMarzio PAF in the front, a single-coil in the middle and usually a Super Distortion in the rear position. A lot of these guys would bring in their three-color sunburst guitars, solid colors – we were putting them in everything.

LD: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us and share your story. You really helped connect the dots in the colorful story of Southern California guitar builders and the origin of the Super Strat.

KS: I’m still doing this today because I love it. And I’m so grateful to be here, still doing what I love. I may not have made huge sums of money doing this, but when I sit under my Joshua trees and look out over the valley, I think ‘this is my reward…how rich I really am in all the ways that matter.’ I’ve been blessed to be a part of this industry and make an impact, and to have known all of these amazing people. I just hope that I can keep building these guitars for many years to come and that I will be remembered for my instruments and contributions. Speaking of which, I have about 10 guitars on my bench right now…thank you my friends, but I have to get back to work.”

For more information on Sandoval Guitars, visit Karl on Instagram, or www.sandovalguitars.com