Custom carvin guitars series#

How do you compare an alder body/maple neck guitar with an all-mahogany or koa guitar with a an all-walnut guitar, when one has an HSH configuration, another an SSS configuration and yet another an HH configuration with an active preamp built in? There are C-series pickups, S-series pickups, M-series pickups and Holdsworth pickups. Because there's such a wide variety of available woods and configurations (and pickups), there's not a common denominator, as there is with, say, a Les Paul. The real problem is that there's really no Carvin guitar that you can point to as a model of their tone. Greg Leon (wiki him for a funny-sad read) picked up one of my Carvins, an all-maple V220 from the late '80's, and pronounced it one of the most balanced guitars, both sonically and setup-wise, that he'd every played for his kind of music. The knock on Carvin pickups that I usually hear is that they're 'sterile' - and I think that comes more from the fact that the old M22T, V and N pickups don't have a particularly defined 'personality' as we seem to be used to, and from the fact that for years, all Carvins were solid maple. The C22J is an outstanding neck pickup - beautifully articulated. And it plays very well with middle-position single coils if you've got a five-way. Aside from being a nice raucous and very punchy lead pickup (particularly on a mahogany or koa guitar), it also coil taps *beautifully*. I've got the M22SD (a fairly hot - ~14K - Alnico V) in the bridge position of several of my guitars. Some of these are very nice guitars, and are immediately available. Right now, after NAMM, they sell the NAMM show guitars out of the factory store. The necks almost always play great, and I really like an ebony fretboard with SS frets. obviously many here do this with all sorts of guitars including Gibson, PRS and others. If you order one with covered pups, you can easily swap pups to your choice. the 'hold their value' issue can work to your advantage.

They are very good at finishing, and often the quilted tops in particular are eye popping. and one with a FR doesn't retail for $3k. That being said, they play great, I like that you can get a variety of finish and other options. more evenly balanced pups, and no chambering.

Custom carvin guitars series#

Their current singlecut series is a very nice guitar, certainly more similar to a PRS SC than a Gibson LP. I've played hundreds of guitars, and owned several. I also live a few minutes away from the Carvin factory.