Charvel has expanded its signature guitar lineup with the Rick Graham Pro-Mod DK24 2PT MPL, a guitar that pretty much nails the brand’s M.O. as the O.G. maker of hot-rodded Fender electrics.
This doozy of a Superstrat is quintessentially Charvel; built for speed, but kinda grown-up, too, what with the Gotoh 510 tremolo an arguably more elegant vibrato system than the engineering marvels coming out of the Floyd Rose workshop. It even has a nitrocellulose finish, as though some maniac wanted to soup-up a pre-CBS Strat for shred. Very nice.
This is Graham’s second signature model from Charvel. As he notes in the launch video, getting that first one was officially a BFD but in 2025 his needs as a player had evolved.
“This new Charvel has been a real journey. When my first model came out, it felt like a milestone,” he says. “It captured who I was at the time, what I needed, and what I wanted to say as a player. But time moves on, and so do we.”
And so Graham and Charvel put their heads together on a sequel. It arrives in Shell Pink, the Fender-owned high-performance brand borrowing the keys to its parent company’s paint room for that one, and it has been relic’d – heavily distressed, in fact, so much so that it reminds us of Henrik Danhage’s signature Pro-Mod So-Cal Style 1.
Graham’s new model also shares Danhage’s reverse headstock. Another splodge of Fender DNA in this S-style guitar’s design is its licensed Stratocaster headstock, reversed a la, well, a la Danhage but Joe Perry is the player we first think of when we think reverse Strat headstock (okay, Hendrix too, but his was a reversed Stratocaster).
“A little nod to the players who lit the spark for me,” explains Graham.
Those who liked the first Graham signature Charvel should like this, but this is a subtly different electric guitar.
“We’ve kept the shape but this time we’ve gone for resonant alder,” he says. “There is still that lower-back scallop for comfort but it’s now paired with a super-fast maple neck. I’ve always been a huge fan of relics. They just look as though they have already lived a bit, like they have a story to tell.”
Graham’s Charvel has the Dinky body shape that seats a Charvel custom humbucker at the bridge and two custom single-coils at the middle and neck positions, with five-way switching for covering most tone bases.
You get all the Pro-Mod contemporary refinements, such as the rolled fingerboard edges, Luminlay markers, the 12” to 16” compound radius fingerboard (Graham’s is maple), and the 24 frets are jumbo fat.
There’s a Graph Tech Tusq XL nut and a set of locking Charvel tuners to keep things stable.
The Rick Graham Pro-Mod DK24 2PT will set you back £1,399/$1,799 and that price includes a Charvel Multi-fit hard-shell gig bag. For more details, head over to Charvel.
