Ive been thru a bunch guitars and I keep coming back to my old Carvin.

Pine Apple Slim

Pine Apple Slim

Kick Henry Jackassowski
Teles, Strats, Gretches with Filtertrons and Dynas, Epis and Gibsons with HBs and P90s....
And I keep coming back to the guitar I've owned since 1983. My old Carvin DC 100. It just seems to do it all.
The neck is fast without being overly skinny. Its compact and comfortable and not too heavy. It rocks hard and twangs in all ways from heavy rock to blues to country, and its can spank the funk like nobodies business. Roll off the tone on the front pup and there is a convincing classic jazz tone. I haven't tried downtuning it for modern metal but Im sure it would work well. Really all it lacks is a whang bar which Ive never really been a big fan of anyway.
You wouldn't think it would be so versatile given the fairly high output humbuckers and standard VVTT wiring but it is.
When I pull it out I always think why have I bothered with all this GAS over the last 20 years instead of just STFU and play.
The last couple of days Ive fell in love with it all over again just running a few basic pedals, a couple of ODs, a Ph90, and a delay into the Carr with its awesome verb and trem. Hook the Bassman up to handle a dry side and it should be illegal how good it sounds.

IMG_0286.jpeg
 
The pic is from a month or 2 ago. My signal chain yesterday was only 4 pedals and a tuner.
Tuner>Blues Driver>Phase 90> California Sound>Dan Echo, with the wet dry split just before the delay.
The Cali Sound is a really nice pedal BTW for like 30 bucks. Very smooth and Dumbley at low gain.
 
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Well as far as appearances go, that one blows away the Carvins from that same era that a couple of my friends had.

Playability, tone etc. - love is where you find it. That’s cool that you have held onto that one for so long.
 
I was poor and it was $325. Cheapest in the catalog. Came in white, black, and red. I knew better than to spend extra money on bling. If I could have afforded more I would have bought a Fender or Gibson. I loaned it out for 10-12 years to an old high school buddy while I was concentrating on bluegrass. Sadly he passed away with cirrhosis and I got it back from his Dad around 2008. It has a little fret munch but not bad enough to make it play out of tune. Built like a rock, the truss rod has never been touched.
 
CBHScott said:
That second ad may have graced a wall of my lair back in my earlier days... :love:
Click to expand...

Yea there's more than color that's hot in that ad. I was a little old for that by 88', I was bumping close to 30 by then.
I played my Carvin a lot from 83 till around 86' but after that I bought my Martin and it went in the closet for a long time.
 
The '80s Carvin necks are my favorite necks. Carvin lost me when they changed specs in 1992. They just never felt the same.

I will say my original Carvin, the '84 DC160T I bought in 1984, the regular Carvin pickups were a bit weak compared to, say, a Seymour Duncan JB, or other hot pickups.

I now own 2 old Carvins that have the M22SD in the bridge, and that pickup is night and day better than the regular M22, imo.
 
That's back when they made great guitars.


The second guitar I ever built was a Carvin Kit.... Solid Maple body with some interesting flame, maple neck, ebony board, 24 frets w dots, and a Schaller fine tuning hard tail. Man.... That guitar and I went through a lot.

When I built it, it had one bridge pickup, a C22. I quickly disliked that pickup and tried out an EMG 81. Pretty cool at the time and I put a couple switches in there for a solo boost, and I played it with my first bands. In college the hyde glue separated from the neck pocket enough to mess up the neck angle, so I got a Dan Earlywine guitar building book and figured out how to inject vinegar into the neck joint while heating up the lower frets with several layers of tin foil and an iron. Once the neck was out, I glued it back in with carpenter's glue and I've never used hyde glue since. It was painted neon pink... then white... later black... then I tried silver and blue... I basically painted it like every other month (because I couldn't afford new guitars) and when I finally went to sand it back down, it ended up looking like a Vernon Reid's swirly weird thing, and I left it like that for probably the next couple years. At one point I routed a neck single.... and then later grew to hate the tiny neck, short scale length, and bright (remember it's solid maple) tone when I put Duncans in it.

At that point I started playing Charvels and it was the last time I ever played EMGs (except for when I buy a guitar that's equipped with them and play the EMGs for a day or two until I rip them out and put passives in. :grin:

At some point, I should clean it up, put some decent hardware and pickups in it, and make sure it's in good shape for my kids. It still has one of the two 24th fret dots made out of little shavings of pickguard and superglue, because when I had to reset the neck, I melted one of the inlays. :grin:
 
baimun said:
That's back when they made great guitars.


The second guitar I ever built was a Carvin Kit.... Solid Maple body with some interesting flame, maple neck, ebony board, 24 frets w dots, and a Schaller fine tuning hard tail. Man.... That guitar and I went through a lot.

When I built it, it had one bridge pickup, a C22. I quickly disliked that pickup and tried out an EMG 81. Pretty cool at the time and I put a couple switches in there for a solo boost, and I played it with my first bands. In college the hyde glue separated from the neck pocket enough to mess up the neck angle, so I got a Dan Earlywine guitar building book and figured out how to inject vinegar into the neck joint while heating up the lower frets with several layers of tin foil and an iron. Once the neck was out, I glued it back in with carpenter's glue and I've never used hyde glue since. It was painted neon pink... then white... later black... then I tried silver and blue... I basically painted it like every other month (because I couldn't afford new guitars) and when I finally went to sand it back down, it ended up looking like a Vernon Reid's swirly weird thing, and I left it like that for probably the next couple years. At one point I routed a neck single.... and then later grew to hate the tiny neck, short scale length, and bright (remember it's solid maple) tone when I put Duncans in it.

At that point I started playing Charvels and it was the last time I ever played EMGs (except for when I buy a guitar that's equipped with them and play the EMGs for a day or two until I rip them out and put passives in. :grin:

At some point, I should clean it up, put some decent hardware and pickups in it, and make sure it's in good shape for my kids. It still has one of the two 24th fret dots made out of little shavings of pickguard and superglue, because when I had to reset the neck, I melted one of the inlays. :grin:
Click to expand...

"At one point I routed a neck single.... and then later grew to hate the tiny neck, short scale length, and bright (remember it's solid maple) tone when I put Duncans in it."

I have an all maple MIK Hamer Standard and, every time somebody says tonewood is BS, I want to scream, YES, THE WOOD DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
 
Bob411 said:
"At one point I routed a neck single.... and then later grew to hate the tiny neck, short scale length, and bright (remember it's solid maple) tone when I put Duncans in it."

I have an all maple MIK Hamer Standard and, every time somebody says tonewood is BS, I want to scream, YES, THE WOOD DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
Click to expand...

And resonance. I've had hard ash bodies that are super dark, and lightweigh swamp ash bodies that are soooooo bright that I've changed the pot values to darken up the pickups.
 
Speaking of the old M22SD pickup, I guess Jeff DOES listen to the customer occasionally. I was just on the Kiesel website, and they have a new pickup which is basically the old M22SD with just the standard 12 poles instead of the 22 the old ones had. Other than that it's supposed to be the same M22SD pickup.

Must be very new, I can't find any reviews of it on youtube. It is the standard pickup on the new Jason Becker signature. I guess he liked the old M22SD too :)
 
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