Carvin Electric Guitars

I found this unit at local used music store. I paid $400. Everything! First of all, it's hand crafted. The neck position pickup is awesome. It reminds of a top of the line Jackson. It has a little bit of a Gibson vibe as well. Kinda like a Les Paul double cutaway. Like I said, I like everything about it. It's rare to find a hand crafted guitar for under $1000. I have plenty of hand assembled guitars that play well. However, there is something to a hand made instrument. It has an uncannily solid feel. This is the finest solid body electric guitar that I own. I am lucky to have found it. To anyone considering buying a Carvin, don't hesitate. Buy one now! This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

450 on Ebay The neck-thru design gives wonderful sustain and effortless access to the high frets. The active controls are very powerful and help you acheive many tones. The wilkinson trem and sperzel tuners are top notch. You can customize any guitar that you order from the factory, and it only takes two months for them to build it for you. Not much to dislike. My only hangup is that there are so many controls that it detracts from the beauty of the instrument. They should put some of the switches into push/pull pots. I'm ordering a new one with passive controls. Excellent construction. Quality is outstanding. A wonderful USA made product. I have continued to search for the perfect guitar. Every time I come home from the guitar store, I am more in love with this instrument. This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

Carvin is a custom guitar maker out of California. They make all their items in house and sell them directly to the customer. This saves the customer a lot of money and allows them to get a guitar with all the features they want on it. Their electric guitar lineup has two segments. The neck through segment and the set neck segment. The CT624 is in the set neck segment. This guitar is very PRS like in nature. This is a very recent model and up until now you could not get a carve top Carvin with a 24 fret neck. Since every Carvin is built to the individuals specs the specs on the model I am reviewing may be different than the one you purchase but overall the quality of the guitar will be the same. The model I demoed had a very nice flame maple top. The body is mahogany. The set neck is maple with a tung oil back. These come with ebony fretboards as standard with other woods as an option. This one had an ebony fretboard. The frets were 24 jumbo stainless steel frets. Up top you get locking tuners. The bridge on this guitar was a tune-o-matic style guitar with a string through tailpiece. The weakest part of a Carvin guitar is usually the pickups so this model I tested out the owner had swapped in a set of Dimarzios. The controls are simple with a master volume and master tone with a 3 way toggle. UTILIZATION Carvin necks are very nice. They have something called Rapid Play technology. I dont know what it is but the action is very nice. With the jumbo stainless steel frets there is no resistance on the frets and they always feel brand new. They dont wear either so your setup stays true for longer as well. The oiled neck option on this model means the back of the neck does not have any sticky finish so it is super fast feeling. The locking tuners up top are great and every guitar should have them I think. The bridge is very low profile. Its not like some tune-o-matics where the bridge is up an inch off the body this bridge is right down on the body. Dimarzio also includes a little microchip that can help you find your guitar incase it gets stolen as well. Too bad people who charge twice as much for their custom guitars do not do that. SOUNDS Stock Carvin pickups are pretty mediocre. Most people swap them out to their ideal pickup set. When the rest of your guitar is built to your specs you want the pickups to be the perfect set for you. The pickups I had in this example were a set of Dimarzios. It was the newer set consisting of a Crunchlab in the bridge and a Liquifier in the neck. This is the pickup set that John Petrucci of Dream Theater is using currently. This set is very setup for modern heavy music. The Crunchlab does what it says it does. It gives a thick crunchy rhythm sound. The pickup is a tiny bit noisy but when you are playing you do not notice that. The Liquifier in the neck is a super smooth lead pickup. It is pretty much made for leads and cleans only. Its smooth but retains definition for fast picking runs. OVERALL OPINION This is right up there with a PRS Custom 24. With the PRS you might get a prettier top but the cost is going to be 3x as much as this guitar. Its hard to rationalize paying that much for a guitar that wont sound or play any better. PRS will not give you as many options either. If you are looking for a high end guitar you should check out what Carvin has to offer. There is a good chance one of their guitars has the features you want as standard or as an option.

Carvin is a criminally underrated guitar company. They are based out of California and for years they have been making all sorts of gear in house 100% USA made. You can pretty much buy any piece of gear you need to put on a show from them and it would be quality gear. Their guitars are nothing to scoff at either. They are made to your specs and since they are factory direct there is no dealer markup on the prices. You get what you pay for and you pay for what you get. This is one of their higher end models. This is the DC400W. The W in the name stands for Walnut because this guitar uses walnut throughout. Since every Carvin is made to a customers specs the guitar in the review might be slightly different than the Carvin you are looking at or have. The DC400 I demoed had some mods on it that I will mention. This guitar had a walnut body with neck through construction. The wood for the neck ran all the way through the body. The neck was a 5 peice neck with maple and walnut strips. The fretboard was ebony with 24 jumbo stainless steel frets. The tuners up top were Carvin locking tuners. The bridge was their tune-o-matic and string through design. This guitar had a set of aftermarket pickups in it. It had a set of Seymour Duncans. It had the JB and 59 setup. The controls were a volume for each with a master tone and coil splitting for each pickup. UTILIZATION I love the way these Carvins feel. They say their necks have rapid-play technology in them whatever that means. The action was super low and with the jumbo stainless steel frets and the ebony fretboard it was like playing on butter. With stainless steel frets the frets always stay polished so they not get gritty and they dont wear out so the setup and leveling stays true. The neck through construction on this guitar means there is no bulky neck joint to get in the way of your playing. The 5 piece neck with alternating species of wood makes the neck super strong and stable. The locking tuners are great and the bridge is super low profile. It is sitting right on the body. With the use of walnut throughout the guitar it is pretty heavy but this helps the tone I feel. The gold hardware on this model seems durable but an evaluation of that takes time. SOUNDS Carvins own pickups are usually the weakest part of the guitar so many Carvins you will see seccond hand have aftermarket pickups swapped in like on this example. This guitar really sings with the Duncans in it. The walnut construction gives the guitar a very thick natural tone. The Duncan set really brings out the natural tone. The JB in the bridge is a great overall pickup that keys in to the natural tone of your guitar. So on this guitar it had a very thick tone and was very pleasant to play. On some guitars a JB brings out the bad natural tone of the guitar like if the guitar was super bright naturally the JB would bring out that aspect. The 59 in the neck is a super smooth classic sounding design. It is one of the better PAF clones on the market. It gives a super smooth tone. With the thick tone of this guitar it can get a bit muddy at times. Personally if this became a problem I would swapp in a Jazz. The Jazz is like a modified 59 with a bit more top end bite for clarity. OVERALL OPINION There are not many other places that would offer a guitar like this built to your specs for around 1500 bucks. Since Carvin sells directly to their customer everyone gets factory direct pricing. There is no Guitar Center middleman throwing on their 20 percent. This guitar looks super classy as well. It looks like one of the old Alembics from the 70s that cost like 8000 bucks. Im sure this guitar sounds better than an Alembic too. If you are looking for a high end guitar with custom features you should check out Carvin before you go selling your car to finance another custom guitar.

Carvin is one of those companies that continues to produce very good quality equipment at low cost and prices. They have an assortment of musical gear ranging from pedals to amplifiers all the way up to guitars and bass equipment. They make very good quality stuff built in America usually on the west coast and very fun to play This guitar is a very unusual sheet. You can see a little bit of a Charvel star in this guitar and you can see a little bit of influence from the Gibson explorer. But this guitar shape is all its own. It looks like something that was built out of the 80s and it certainly was but you can also be very reliable and usable in today's music as well. UTILIZATION construction neck through body scale length 25" body alder neck maple with V headstock fingerboard ebony, 12" radius inlays standard white dots neck width 1.69" wide @ nut, 2.22" wide @ 24th fret hardware chrome bridge M bridge with strings-through-body tuners Sperzel™ locking tuners frets 24 medium-jumbo, .103 wide X .048 tall pickup 2 C22 humbuckers electronics master volume & tone, 3-way pickup selector, push/pull coil tap strings Elixir Nanoweb™ light gauge dimensions 43" long, 15" wide body, 1.68" thick body weight 8.25 pounds SOUNDS The body is made of alder wood with the maple neck and ebony fretboard. The scale length is a 25 inch and it has 24 jumbo frets . It has to classic carvin pick ups that is from Carvin themselves and not outsourced. The weight of it is just over 8 pounds which is pretty light comparatively to how big this guitar body actually is. That is because of the alder wood that is used throughout the body. It's generally a lighter wood which gets you a good crisp distortion tone as well as being light compared to other guitars such as a Gibson explorer. This is the kind of guitar that is going to be very competitive to Gibson guitars primarily because the body shape and tell. It has a great tone for rock and hard rock and metal music. One thing that I really love about carving guitars is how well they feel in your hand. He feel extremely well built and very polished. So many bigger manufactures don't always feel this way from guitar to guitar. Carvin really makes great sounding guitars but they just don't get the credit they deserve. They are very inexpensively priced compared to other manufacturers such as Gibson or ESP. OVERALL OPINION You can find these guitars for right around $900 which is an exceptional price. You are going to like the body shape in order to buy his guitar. It is a select market is going to be interested in this guitar so if you are interested in this shaping this is body and this is good to be a great guitar for you.

Carvin has been making guitars for decades. They are a custom shop where they make everything to order and sell everything direct. They are all American made to your specs. This is one of their very 80s models. The V220 is like an upside down Rhodes V mixed with an Explorer. The model has some 80s features and is very 80s in appearance as the one I am testing is pink. The guitar is alder with a maple set neck. The ones now are neck through I believe. The fretboard is ebony with 24 frets. The pickups are a set of Carvin M22 pickups. There is a locking nut up top and an old school Kahler floating tremolo down at the back. The controls are not very unusual with two volumes and a master tone. There are a set of mini switches for coil splitting along with a 3 way toggle. UTILIZATION The guitars radical shape gives it decent balance. Although you will need a case or a stand at all times because this guitar does not know how to hold itself up. The heel is pretty small even with the neck through construction. With the radical shape you get great upper fret access. The standard ebony fretboard is great and gives a nice smooth feel. The ebony they use is a very high quality. The Kahler tremolo has a different feel than a Floyd Rose. It feels a bit more bouncy if you are working it but if you like to rest your hand on the bridge it does not effect the intonation as much like on a Floyd. SOUNDS These Carvin pickups have the 80s tone in spades. Overall this guitar has a pretty bright tone. Back in the 80s when everyones rack was as big as their hair you needed a really bright guitar to cut through all the effects. This guitar still has its 80s sound. You will never find a mix you cant cut through with this guitar. The neck pickup is slightly smoother but it is still pretty bright. You can really play screaming not singing leads with this guitar. The bridge pickup being so bright has a very cutting tone. This isnt really a chugging guitar. This guitar is built for Def Leppard style riffs and tones like that. OVERALL OPINION You can get a new guitar of this model now. They have brought back the old V220. The options are slightly different but they have improved the model overall. You can get neck through construction on this model now with a wide range of Carvin pickups. The biggest downside to Carvin is an advantage to many people. They have pretty horrible resale. No one wants to pay a lot for a guitar that someone else had made to their own specs. On the used market you can get great deals on Carvins. You just have to find the guitar closest to the specs you like. It will be pretty unlikely you will find a guitar for sale used with the exact specs of what you want but if you can get close you can get a great deal. If you find a good deal on one of these used and thats very possible you should take it. Otherwise you could probably build your ultimate V220 factory direct from Carvin for not much more.

The Carvin CT4 is their more basic carve top models. The M in the name stands for the tune-o-matic bridge type. The CT4's have a more basic top than the CT6's but all of the important features are the same. This guitar I had was pretty standard apart from aftermarket pickups. The specs on this guitar are very nice for the price. You get a mahogany body with a maple top. The neck is a set mahogany neck with 22 frets on an ebony fretboard. This guitar had the optional jumbo stainless steel frets. Up top locking tuners are standard. The bridge as the M in the name implies is a tune-o-matic with a string through tailpiece for extra sustain. The electronics are pretty standard with a master volume and a master tone with a push pull coil split pot. There is also a 3 way pickup selector. This guitar I demoed had Seymour Duncans swapped in which I recommend since Carvin pickups are pretty subpar. UTILIZATION These guitars play like butter. The American Custom Shop quality means the fit and finish are perfect. You can get a really low action on a Carvin with the factory setup. The ebony fretboard is smooth and feels great under your fingers. This guitar having jumbo stainless steel frets means the frets will never wear out and your setup will stay true for much longer. This guitar being a more traditional design means it has a set neck and the upper fret access is not as good as the neck through models but it is still pretty good. The locking tuners are great and every guitar should have them. The tune-o-matic bridge is well setup. On a lot of guitars the bridge is standing up high on the posts but on these Carvins they are designed so the bridge can rest right on the body and you can still get a usable action. SOUNDS If you are looking at Carvin guitars you probably know what the weakest part of the guitars are. The weakest part on these guitars are the stock pickups. Since Carvin makes everything in house they make their own pickups and they just arent that good at it. This example had a set of Seymour Duncans swapped in and I have used stock Carvin pickups it was like night and day in tone. The guitar has great natural tone already but with some high quality pickups you can really take advantage of the natural tone. The guitar had a JB in the bridge and a Jazz in the neck. The JB in the bridge is a classic bridge pickup. It puts out that classic hot rodded PAF tone. It is just tight enough to do metal but lose and saggy enough to do all your favorite rock and classic rock riffs. The Jazz in the neck is like a more modern 59. It is super smooth like a 59 but has a bit more high end bite so it does not get as muddy with a high gain tone. OVERALL OPINION More people should check out Carvin guitars. They sell everything factory direct so there is no middle man like Guitar Center or Musicians Friend to jack up the price on you. Everything is made in America with Custom Shop quality and at factory direct prices you can get a lot of guitar for little money. With a guitar like this you pretty much get a Custom Shop Les Paul style guitar and the guitar I was trying out was built for less than 1200 dollars. And for that price you get a ton of features you would never find on any Gibson for that price like locking tuners and stainless steel frets. Even with the price of swapping pickups you are still getting a guitar for like half the price you would be paying for a Custom Shop Gibson.

Carvin is a factory direct music gear maker from California. They make all of their stuff in house and their guitars are made to order. This guitar is a newer model based on their CT4 model. It is a CT4 with 24 frets. There are a ton of options you can get from wood to necks so I will just list the options the model I demoed had. All guitars come with set neck construction. The model I had features Honduran mahogany for the neck and body. The guitar had an ebony fretboard with a 14 inch radius and jumbo stainless steel frets. Up top on the headstock it has Sperzel locking tuners and a gold Carvin logo. The bridge is a tune-o-matic style bridge with a string through stop tail piece. It had its standard C22 Carvin pickups replaced with a set of Seymour Duncans. It had a master volume and master tone with coil splits and a 3 way toggle pickup selector. UTILIZATION The playability on these Carvins is perfectly tuned to your wants and needs when you select the options for your guitar. If you like a more traditional feel you can get a lower radius with smaller frets. If you are like me you get the flattest radius and the biggest frets. This guitar had stainless steel jumbo frets. Stainless steel frets means that they will never wear out or get dirty. They always feel new. This also means your frets will always stay level and your setup will stay true longer. The 24 fret model compared to the 22 fret model provides better upper fret access. You have clear access up to the 23 fret or so. The heel is pretty small as well. Locking tuners keep everything in tune no matter what you are doing. The way Carvin sets up its tune-o-matics is very nice. They are very low on the guitar. They are not standing up a 1/4 inch on their posts. It just looks more professional. SOUNDS I have experiance with the stock Carvin pickups and they are pretty mediocre. This guitar has a set of Seymour Ducans swapped in which is what what I would recommend to most people with these guitars if they do not like the stock Carvin pickups. This guitar I tested out had a JB in the bridge and a 59 in the neck. The JB is a nice and crunchy bridge pickup. It has the classic hot rodded PAF sound. The 59 in the neck is nice and smooth and better than the stock Carvin stuff. The 59 in the neck is like an old PAF. It is super smooth for your leads and can even do high gain leads pretty well. OVERALL OPINION Carvin is a great alternative to buying a super expensive custom guitar. With all the options they give you it might as well be a fully custom guitar. All the guitars are made in America and they will help you with your specs over the phone. They sell everything factory direct so there is no mark up on the models. You are essentially getting factory direct pricing. If you want a guitar with exotic woods and playability spec'd out to your unique wants and needs Carvin is probably the cheapest way to go. Cheap price wise but not quality wise.

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 CT series is a newer line from Carvin. It was introduced in 2004 and has a shape similar to most PRS guitars. Carvin customers can get many different types of wood and finishes but the basic CT3M comes with specs similar to these. The guitar has a mahogany body and neck with a carved top. The neck of set neck construction with a 22 fret ebony fretboard with dot inlays. The headstock is topped with sperzel tuners. It has dual Carvin pickups of your choice with a master volume and master tone controls and a 3 way switch. The bridge is your choice of Floyd Rose, Wilkinson Fender style tremolo or Tune-o-matic string through the body bridge. This one I had has a tune-o-matic. UTILIZATION The upper fret playability on this guitar is similar to that of a Les Pauls but maybe slightly better. This guitar is no Ibanez or Jackson. The body is nice and thick and made from good solid mahogany so it is a bit heavy. The arched top is comfortable on your arm and does not dig into you anywhere. The tune-o-matic bridge on my guitar provided great tuning stability and comfort on my hand. I am not a huge fan of tremolos but I suspect the Floyd Rose and the Wilkinson or good options too. The Floyd Rose if you want to do series divebombs and the Wilkinson if you want to do more Fender non locking tremolo type stuff. SOUNDS The pickups are probably the weakest part of any Carvin. The pickups seemed to be voiced more for jazz or classic rock than hard rock and metal. You can get nice smooth sounds from the neck position and even jazzy tones. The bridge position is pretty weak. For heavy music I would recommend changing out at least the bridge pickup. For this type of guitar I would probably drop in a Seymour Duncan custom or something similar to that. Just changing out one pickup wouldnt really call for a active EMG to be dropped in. OVERALL OPINION Carvin is a great company that should get more respect. They are a small American company that makes guitars to the consumers specs. They dont deal with any vendors or anything and offer straight forward realistic prices. When you see Carvin prices you are looking at what it really costs to build a guitar. There is no reason why one Les Paul will cost 3000 dollars while another one costs 1200 and the only difference is a bit of binding or something. With Carvin you select the options and they will tell you straight up how much that option really costs to do. If you are looking for a guitar built to your specs for a reasonable price you should check them out.

The Carvin DC135 is the HSH version of the neck-thru DC series. These are very affordable, made in the USA guitars that are semi-customizable to your tastes. The one I played had the following specs: Neck-thru 25'' scale length Alder body Maple neck with ebony fretboard 12'' radius Tung-oil finish HSH configuration Floyd Rose Sperzel locking tuners One volume, one tone, 5 way switch UTILIZATION Carvin always does a wonderful job when it comes to building guitars, especially for the price. The fretwork on these models are great. The back of the neck feels awesome thanks to the tung oil finish. It's never sticky like so many other finishes out there. The 12'' radius makes is great for both chording and soloing, and the neck thickness seems to be just about perfect. The upper fret access is a breeze thanks to it being a neck-thru model. On top of that, it's extremely versatile thanks to its pickup configuration. SOUNDS The HSH configuration leads this guitar to be geared more towards fusion and shred. The humbucker in the neck can deliver some nice, fat tones. The clean tones are pretty cool, and the gain tones aren't too bad. The split positions in 2 and 4 are probably some of my favorite as you get that real cool single coil kinda spank going on that some people refer to as quack. The bridge humbucker is a bit lackluster, but a simple pickup swap should cure that. OVERALL OPINION Carvin guitars are great value for the money. You can have your own semi-customizable guitar at a reasonable cost, and they even offer a money back guarantee. If you ever get the chance to play one in a store, check one out. Check your local Guitar Center's used section, and don't be afraid to stalk eBay for a bit to find one.