View other reviews for this product:
tjon901 « HSS guitar made to your specs »
Published on 07/14/11 at 19:34Carvin is a well known company in the music industry in America. They make just about everything you need to put on a live show. Their PA equipment is some of the best out there. They also make custom guitars in the same factories. Carvin has been hand making guitars in the USA for 30 years. Every guitar they make is made to order and sold directly by them. There is no middle man when it comes to Carvin guitars and this allows them to give everyone factory direct prices. They save the cost of selling to suppliers and pass the savings on to the customer. The customer is able to customize any part of their guitar and get any kind of wood or electronics configuration they want. The DC135 was introduced in 1990 and is Carvins most popular model. You can get pretty much any wood you want with this guitar but the standard options are still great. Standard the DC135 comes with an alder body with a maple neck through design. The neck comes standard with a ebony fretboard with the 25 inch Carvin scale. My model had a tune o matic bride with a string through stop tail. There are options for tremolos that include a Floyd Rose or a Wilkinson non locking tremolo. It had the C22 pickup in the bridge and two AP11 pickups in the neck and middle for an HSS configuration with a splittable bridge pickup.
UTILIZATION
Carvins offer great playability on their guitars. They are handmade and well setup from the factory and when the frets and radius are to your specs you do not have much of an excuse when you dont like the guitar. The neck through construction means that you have no neck joint heel. The cutaways are deep and you can easily reach up into the highest frets. The neck radius and fret size and material are all selected by the user. You can have a fretless wonder Gibson fretboard or a super flat fretboard with extra jumbo stainless steel frets. It is all up to you. One thing that I have noticed with Carvins is that when you select the option for the Floyd Rose the option of a locking nut is not automatically selected. I have seen many useless Carvins for sale second hand because the original purchaser forgot to select a locking nut with their Floyd Rose. Another thing to be aware of if you start loading up with optional electronics you may be better off buying a higher level model that comes with those electronics as standard instead of buffing up a lower model.
SOUNDS
The Carvin pickups are pretty average when compared to the rest of the great guitar. They are decent for the basics but if you are playing a more specialized type of music you will need more specialized pickups. The single coils are pretty good and they have good clarity without being honky or super bright. They are pretty mellow when it comes to single coils. The humbucker in the bridge is pretty mediocre when it comes to output. You will not be knocking any walls down with this pickup. It doesnt have much output but at the same time it does not sound vintage or anything. It is a strange combination of modern sound but vintage output. There is a reason most Carvins you see used have after market pickups in them.
OVERALL OPINION
Carvin is a great custom guitar builder and you can pretty much get whatever you want from them based on their models. When this HSS custom guitar you can get much of your strat sounds with the added versatility of a humbucker in the bridge. If you want more of a strat tone they make bolt on strat style custom guitars. This guitar with its neck through construction will never nail the strat tone but with this pickup setup you can get close.
UTILIZATION
Carvins offer great playability on their guitars. They are handmade and well setup from the factory and when the frets and radius are to your specs you do not have much of an excuse when you dont like the guitar. The neck through construction means that you have no neck joint heel. The cutaways are deep and you can easily reach up into the highest frets. The neck radius and fret size and material are all selected by the user. You can have a fretless wonder Gibson fretboard or a super flat fretboard with extra jumbo stainless steel frets. It is all up to you. One thing that I have noticed with Carvins is that when you select the option for the Floyd Rose the option of a locking nut is not automatically selected. I have seen many useless Carvins for sale second hand because the original purchaser forgot to select a locking nut with their Floyd Rose. Another thing to be aware of if you start loading up with optional electronics you may be better off buying a higher level model that comes with those electronics as standard instead of buffing up a lower model.
SOUNDS
The Carvin pickups are pretty average when compared to the rest of the great guitar. They are decent for the basics but if you are playing a more specialized type of music you will need more specialized pickups. The single coils are pretty good and they have good clarity without being honky or super bright. They are pretty mellow when it comes to single coils. The humbucker in the bridge is pretty mediocre when it comes to output. You will not be knocking any walls down with this pickup. It doesnt have much output but at the same time it does not sound vintage or anything. It is a strange combination of modern sound but vintage output. There is a reason most Carvins you see used have after market pickups in them.
OVERALL OPINION
Carvin is a great custom guitar builder and you can pretty much get whatever you want from them based on their models. When this HSS custom guitar you can get much of your strat sounds with the added versatility of a humbucker in the bridge. If you want more of a strat tone they make bolt on strat style custom guitars. This guitar with its neck through construction will never nail the strat tone but with this pickup setup you can get close.