Carvin DC150
I decided to semi-retire my Univox, and in 1985 or 86, after much reading and searching and trying out, went with a Carvin DC150. It had all the features I was looking for (plus), and was pretty reasonable. Maple set neck, ebony fretboard, Kahler Pro locking trem, dual humbuckers, and that cool Les Paul Jr. double-cutaway shape that I’ve always liked.
This guitar was a real surprise when I received it. I had high expectations (it was the most I’d ever spent on a guitar after all), but out of the box it was setup incredibly well. Not like most of the partially or poorly setup guitars in area shops. It was in tune with great intonation and incredibly low action with no buzz at all – perfect, really. The Carvin is a machine. It is precise, very heavy for it’s small size, very punchy and bright for a guitar with humbuckers (probably due to the hard maple body?), and it cuts through the mix extremely well. It prefers high gain amps. This guy and a reasonably good high gain amp nail the Santana sound. To this day the guitar does not go out of tune unless I de-tune it. As long as it gets played reasonably regularly and the strings are in halfway decent shape it stays in tune. This guitar has been incredibly stable.
The Carvin was semi-retired a few years ago. I decided the Strat was more suited to the music we were doing and the smokey bars we were playing. The nice thing about a strat is that if something breaks, you unbolt it and put a new one on. Not so with a set neck guitar.
The downsides…As I said, the guitar is an absolute machine, but it’s sound can be characterized as somewhat “soul-less”. It’s very articulate and not at all muddy, and because of that it sometimes lacks character and a voice of it’s own. Carvin guitars of this era were advertised as being able to cover a wide range of sounds, and it certainly can. How many are really good sounds is another story. The humbucking sounds are all excellent in my opinion. I never swapped the pickups because they’ve always done what I’ve wanted them to do: The bridge is hot and can drive an amp well; the neck is much rounder and fuller and the two pickups balance well. The guitar has switches for splitting the pickups and running them out of phase as well. I use those once in a while, but not for long. I have never used anything other than the standard three pickup positions when playing live. The split positions sound weak and nasally in comparison to the standard full humbucker. This is comparable to just about every guitar I’ve played with split humbuckers. It’s not that they sound bad, just that they don’t sound as good. And they don’t really pull off the Strat sound as some would have you believe.
There were a couple of construction issues that turned up over time. First the truss rod was set very close to one end which meant that after a number of years and many setups and adjustments, the truss rod reached its end. It cannot be adjusted any further. Fortunately, the neck has been rock-solid and it hasn’t been a problem, but really the truss rod should have more room to adjust.
The second is more of a finishing issue. My guitar is plain white, and after a few years the neck joint and body joint started to become more visible, just slightly under the paint. If you look at older set neck guitars with solid finishes you’ll see it’s very common. The uncommon thing is that at the bottom of the body near the strap button a dark “crack” appeared. I had Doctor Bob (guitar tech who had done all the setups) check it out and it was only a finish crack with whatever was underneath starting to show through. In the years since the crack has not gotten any bigger, and it never had any affect that I could tell, but it’s a cosmetic flaw that really shouldn’t be there.
The Carvin is a very ’80′s sounding guitar and takes well to effects. It’s relatively high output compared to most other guitars and that is a large part of it’s signature. Very easy to get squeals and harmonics, and even with the Kahler trem it has outstanding sustain.
I read that Carvin started producing the DC150 again…that model seems to have disappeared from their catalogue now. That was a much different guitar, and is most likely not at all like the older model I have. Carvin guitars have changed significantly since then. I have had good experiences with them though and wouldn’t hesitate to at least try one of their models out.