Michael Ciravolo oversees the daily operations of Schecter Guitar Research, the largest guitar maker in the San Fernando Valley. His high-volume guitar manufacturing is performed in South Korea, while the Sun Valley facility handles custom orders, producing up to 44 instruments a month based on 10 models. The company also makes one to two a month of its ultra-high-end Masterworks custom guitars. President Schecter Guitar Research Sun Valley Question: Have any big-name artists bought your guitars? Answer: Bruno Mars when he did the Prince tribute (at the Grammy Awards) played a Schecter cloud guitar, one of Prince’s guitars. Great bands I grew up with – Cheap Trick, The Cure on to all the new bands, Papa Roach, Seether. Avenge Sevenfold is probably one of the biggest hard rock bands in the world and all three guys play our product. Most of those guys are playing the Diamond series guitar, the same guitar that any kid around the world can walk into a store and buy. What is the price? Our Diamond series starts in the mid-$200s and go up to $8,000 or $9,000 in the Masterworks (series). Our price range in the Diamond series is in that $700 to $1,000 range – that is our bread and butter. Why is Los Angeles a good place for making guitars? It’s actually not because of the regulations and expense. It’s a great area for having artists and bands and things like that. Our biggest client is Guitar Center, they are in the area. This is where we have to be. How did you start making guitars? I grew up as a guitar player in New Orleans and was always fascinated with it. I was out here seeking fame and fortune as being the guy on stage. When that didn’t materialize, this was a great next step. The cool thing is everybody here is a musician. The guys here have such a great pedigree from a lot of the great ’70s and early ’80s California guitar companies. How do you sell your guitars? Through retail stores? Yeah. Besides domestically, we have distributors in almost 70 countries. As people get more accustomed to point, click, buy, it is in a way making the retailer less and less relevant. I have this dream that everybody would buy a guitar like I did as a kid, going into a store, playing it. When you go into a big music store and see that it’s kind of a ghost town, people are buying differently. I guess at some point we could sell direct to the consumer but right now we have a small dealer base. Who are your customers? I would venture to say from 13 (years old) to 70 (years old). I think it’s because our line is so diverse. Most companies allow themselves to be pigeonholed into being a certain type – we’re a hard rock company or we make retro guitars. Not a lot of companies have the versatility that we do. We’ll do electric 12-strings but then we’ll do a nine-string heavy metal guitar. We’ll do a semi-hollow and then a six-string bass. That freedom keeps me and probably a lot of people interested in this. Do people buy guitars because of the sound quality or the look? A combination. I guess with the younger players it is the look. If you are in a rock band on stage, you want something flashy. When I was a kid I was infatuated with a flying V guitar. We do shaped guitars. Our Avenger (model) is pretty radical and aggressive looking and very popular. What is the vision for your company? To stay true to what we started with. I tell myself that when I stop relating, or this just becomes a job and I don’t love the guitar anymore, that I should probably step down. As far as the vision, being innovative and not fearing to try new things is important. Not forgetting that we all were once the person on the other side of the counter, trusting not only a salesperson’s recommendation but putting our money down on something we read or we’re told is a quality instrument. What’s your favorite story about your guitars? I keep going back to Prince. That was such an amazing performance (at the Super Bowl in 2007) and to have it be our guitar was pretty amazing.