Buying a Carvin Guitar
As you may know, Carvin sells directly to the customer, and new Carvins
are not available in music stores. As a subscriber to Guitar
Player magazine for the past 17 years, I have read many reviews of
Carvin guitars, and am always favorably impressed by the high praise they
receive. Is it possible that these reviews were influenced by the large
ads Carvin has placed in the magazine over the years? Maybe, but my
experience with Carvin makes me think that they earn the praise. Besides
the apparent integrity of GP's staff, I have read many testimonials to
Carvins on Harmony Central, and they overwhelmingly agree with the stellar
Guitar Player reviews. So anyway, to buy direct, one needs a catalog. You
can call or mail for one (I recommend it), but you can also look over the
entire catalog on the web at Carvin's
website. This is a great option because you can use the "shopping
cart" to conveniently price your options.
The first step in buying a Carvin guitar is deciding which model of
instrument you want. The company offers a wide array of options concerning
wood, color and hardware, but they only offer a handful of distinctly
different instruments. All of their guitars, share the following
characteristics, unless otherwise noted:
-
Neck-thru-body construction
-
Ebony fretboard
-
24 Frets
-
25" scale length, with a 15" radius neck (this
means that the neck is less curved than a vintage Strat's 7.5"
radius, and American Standard Stat's 9.5" radius, or a Les
Paul's 12" radius, which should be good for bending strings).
-
Sperzel locking tuners
-
Graphite and Teflon nut
- Choice of woods: maple, mahogany, alder, ash, koa, walnut
- Choice of hardtail thru-body bridge or Wilkinson tremolo
- Limited choice of neck inlays
The Choices
For your convenience, I will describe each of Carvin's strictly electric
six string guitars (they also make acoustic/electrics and basses) below,
with links to the appropriate section of Carvin's site. The following
descriptions include the specs straight from Carvin, and also my personal
observations and ideas. Remember that except for my own, I have never seen
or touched any of these guitars.
- The
Bolt: This instrument is Carvin's bolt on neck super-Strat. It has
22 frets, a bolt on neck, and non-locking tuners. It is available with
the standard Carvin hardware choices including pickup combination
choices. If I was in the market for an inexpensive Strat-trype guitar,
this would be a good starting point, as it is rather inexpensive
(starting at $589 without any fancy options) and by all accounts, well
made. A comparable made in the USA Stratocaster would cost, I think,
much more.
- DC127:
This instrument is strat shaped, but has 2 humbucking pickups, one
volume, one tone control, and coil tap switches for the 'buckers. It is
shares the standard options listed above. This was a very interesting
choice for me, as I wanted humbuckers for my second guitar, but like the
contoured shape of a Strat.
- DC135:
This instrument is a 3 pickup version of the DC127. Again, the choices
of pickups (while limited to Carvin's own house brand) is broad, and you
could put together almost any combination (except 3 humbuckers).
- TL60:
This instrument is a neck-thru-body Telecaster shaped guitar. It can
come with two (or three) single coil pickups, or can have either the
DC127 or DC135 pickup schemes. This was also an interesting choice, as
it's base price is the same as the DC127, and it would give me a
different shaped guitar to go along with my Ethan Lewis Signature
Stratocaster. However, you have to pay an extra $30 for the DC127 pickup
configurations.
- SC90:
Let's take a trip in the wayback machine. In 2000 I wrote:
"This is supposed to be a Les Paul-type guitar. It has a
single cutaway, with a tune-o-matic bridge, and the selector
switch on the upper horn. On the plus side, it is probably lighter
than a Paul, and has a neck-thru-body, which should make for
better sustain. The only problem is that I think it is ugly. It
looks like a half melted combination of a Tele and a Les Paul, and
I would feel like a doofus playing it."
How time changes things! While the guitar does have some Les Paul type
attributes, I now think that it is very attractive, and would love to
play one. I now recommend it.
- DC200:
This instrument has the Strat shape, but is much more deluxe. It comes
standard with big block Mother-of-Pearl inlays (like a Les Paul Custom),
2 humbuckers, and a neat electronics setup. It has a 3 way selector for
the pickups, each of which can be coil tapped and it has a phase switch.
The knobs are active/passive. In passive mode they are a master volume,
a fader knob for when both pickups are on, and tone controls for each
pickup. In active mode, the tone controls give cut and boost to master
treble and bass settings. This guitar gives lots of sonic choices, but
it is disappointing that you have to have a charged 9 volt battery in
the guitar if you want to play plugged in. Having once seen a battery
leak acid on a night-table, I would be reluctant to have one inside a
guitar.
- DC400:
This shares the same electronics as the DC200, but comes standard with a
flamed maple top and big abalone block markers. It is more or less
Carvin's flagship guitar. It starts at $909, which seems like a great
price for a beautiful guitar with so many sounds at its disposal.
Compare it to a $5000 Jimmy Page Les Paul, which isn't all that hot
looking, has fake mother of pearl inlays, and doesn't have a tremolo
option, and this is a compelling choice. The inlays are very high
quality, but I think they would look even better if the guitar had a
bound neck.
- Holdsworth:
This is jazz artist Alan Holdsworth signature guitar. Not like mine is a
signature guitar either; this guy helped to design this instrument. It
has a 25.5" scale, an unbelievably flat 20" radius, and has a set in
neck. You can also get a hollow version called the "Fatboy". This is a
pretty instrument, but I think that it would take a jazzer or
neo-classical type to want to play a 20" radius neck. In my rock/blues
band, it would be hard to get comfortable with this, I think.
Since 2000, Carvin has added three more solid-body guitars to their
lineup. The DC-150
is a 22-Fret, through body neck instrument, whose looks just don't appeal
to me at all. Also, two new bolt-on models have appeared, the Bolt
+ and the Contour
66. These last two feature rear mounted pickups, and fancy tops
without pickguards. As usual there is a wide array of pickup combinations
available. The Contour 66 has a figured maple top, but the veneer is very
thin; 0.5mm compared to the 1/2" of the neck-through models. Nowadays,
many companies are offering budget models with "figured wood" tops, but
these tops are very thin veneers, like the Contour 66 uses. I think it is
better tone wise, and also self-esteem wise, to have a thick maple top.
The Decision
After a couple of month's careful thinking and research, I placed an
order on July 1, 2000 for a specially tricked out Carvin DC127. Here are
the specs:
- Gold hardware-a classy touch in my opinion, and something I
liked on my Epiphone.
- No tremolo-the Wilkinson unit gets rave reviews, but it looks
bulky, and if I want to use a whammy bar, I can use the Strat.
- Maple neck thru body with alder wings. I considered an all
mahogany guitar ala Gibson or PRS, but wanted to save on the
weight.
- Zebra stripe pickups (one coil is black, one white). I've
always thought this looked cool...
- Coil tap switches for each pickup.
- Abalone dot inlays. Subtler than the blocks, but still kind of
sexy.
- My name on the truss rod cover.
- A 1/2" thick quilted maple top with matching headstock,
finished in "Antique Yellow". The picture at right shows an
artist's rendering of the guitar, courtesy of Carvin's website.
It is really cool to be able to "virtually" try out all of the
color and finish options this way.
In the end, including a cloth strap, 5 sets of strings (Carvin strings,
but amazingly priced at $12.95 for 5 sets), a form fitting SKB case and
$20 shipping, the package comes to $1005.85. While this is a lot of money,
it seems like a great deal for the features. I carefully priced guitars
from smaller builders like McInturff and Melancon, and larger shops like
PRS, and for the woods used in my guitar, I would have paid much more. I
think that this guitar is most comparable to a PRS, which lacks a bound
fretboard, often has a simple inlay, has the same scale length and can
share the same woods (though not often ebony fretboards). The Carvin was
much less money than a PRS in 2000, and while PRS has since come out with
their cheaper, Korean models since then, they don't compare in features to
the Carvin.
The Order Process
The order process was okay. I've never enjoyed going to a guitar shop to
try out guitars, as I am often uncomfortable playing in such a public
setting, and I feel pressured to buy something if I am going to take up
someone's time. So buying over the phone eliminated that problem. On the
other hand, it is weird to buy a guitar in the same manner one buys a ring
on QVC. My salesperson, Carl (randomly
assigned because he answered the phone), was pretty helpful, and certainly
didn't pressure me to buy something I didn't want. He was also rather
empathetic about the difficulty of buying a guitar without playing it
first--especially when I told him I'd been thinking about it since 1987!
The guitars are "built to order" at Carvin's plant in San Diego, and Carl
said that the boys take extra special care with the quilt tops, which led
him to give me an estimate of 8-9 weeks of build time. Three years later,
Carvin has improved their custom shop, and now builds guitars in less than
4 weeks. I was somewhat nervous having to wait so long, but Carvin offers
a 10 day in home trial with no strings attached (so to speak), which is
less than the 30 days they used to offer, but plenty of time. My
expectation was a physically flawless guitar that sounds great and is
comfortable to play. Were my expectations met?
The Moment of Truth
Yes! I got the guitar on August 21st, 2000, two days early. When I first
opened the case, I laughed out loud at how beautiful the guitar was. The
quilt is almost perfectly bookmatched, and it looks like sheets of fire on
the top of the guitar.Click the pictures below to see up-close details.
The guitar is the best playing instrument I've ever touched. The neck is
perfect, and with the flatter radius I can play faster and bend further
than possible on my Strat. The humbuckers sound very full, and when the
coils are tapped, I can get a very good single-coil sound. The Sperzel
tuners keep the instrument at pitch for weeks on end without needing any
tuning, and string changes are a breeze. My Carvin is beautiful, sounds
great, and is easy to play and maintain. What more could you ask? I
heartily recommend Carvin guitars if you are looking for a new axe.
Feel free to download an MP3 of my band playing
Bob Dylan's "Positively 4th Street." All the lead guitar work is me
on my Carvin.
