Carvin SX-200

Amp is new

Jazz Blues New Age

2 channels

This Amp is general purpose. To avoid carrying around vintage tube amps

Has plenty of power.

Bluse switch is great. Amp is very good at getting an overdriven vintage amp sound (for a solid state)

My primary guitars are all custom.

Primary guitar is a NJ Kramer with duncan SH series 18v actives. With THIS guitar I could actually overdrive the clean channel. Haven't been able to do that with passives

#2 is made by me...pickups are hss N 8k midd rw 7 bridge 16 (strat type)

12 string tele type tone zone bridge Humbucker from hell neck both coil tapped

Sounds good with an epiphone LP100 and epiphone "custom shop" Special II (vintage style pickups).

This amp is for when I don't want to carry around tube amps (eg non paying stuff)

I can get a pretty good mimmick of what I put on the album without risking expensive equipment in travel. Over the radio or playing live I think its close enough to recorded sounds that only I can tell the difference from the tubes not the listeners. On one song on my current album I actually slid the R channel on one track .8 seconds behind creating a delay. Surprisingly I can duplicate that with the deay effect when live pretty well. Can't do it with my old epiphone delay pedal.

I do a lot of clean. Rest is mostly blues overdriven. I never use heavy distortion. Seems to work well. Never overdriven the clean channel except with hot active pickups. use the volume at about 3/4 on the guitar to prevent that.

Everyone raves about power...this thing ALSO will keep the tone when played softly makes a good practice/studio amp too.

Seems solid Haven't had it long enough to say for sure. Only backup I plan to carry with this is a tube preamp to hook up to whatever is available.

Very Helpful in picking out the amp.

First Carvin product for me in many years

Been playing since '64

Other equip:(amps and preamps)

Peavey Triumph halfstack
Guild thunderbird Amp (64 vintage tube)
Fender Princeton Reverb (pre CBS)
Ampeg G212
Peavey Heritage VTX
Marshall JCM 800 4010 Lead (vintage not reissue)
Peavey TGRaxx tube preamp
ART SGE MackII effects
Various makes of cabinets 2x10 2x12 4x10 4x12

I'd probably replace this rather quickly.

I actually wish it had a combiner capability for the channels. Like my old VTX.

I chose this because it's only slightly more expensive than Behringer etc and has much better reviews.

Brand new May 2008. Has what you'd expect in the way of tone, plus an extra in the "Blues" switch. More than enough power, probably will never need it at full tilt. 2 channels do what they say, clean one sounds great, the distortion is clearly SS, but I think I've been spoiled by tubes. As someone else said, the effects are nice, but you'll never adjust them on the amp at a gig, so end up not being used.

Sound is very good for the price.

Seems solid enough, no compressed sawdust here. Should last.

Mixed bag. My order was missing something, and it's apparently up to me to find that out and chase it. First rep I spoke to nearly made me send it back, verging on rude/disinterested. Second rep at least apologized for their mistakes.

It's unfair to compare this against tube amps, which I seem to be doing. For the price it's great. I hope I have nothing go wrong as I think then the fun will start.

Would I replace it with another. Probably not, but would have to spend a lot more.

Mine was purchased new from Carvin in 2006. It's a dual 12-inch speaker, solid-state, tube-emulating, 100-watt amplifier. My music styles go from Classic Rock, to mellow ballads, up to some grunge stuff. The amp does pretty well for all those sounds. The amp has two channels (Carvin sells an optional foot-switch to toggle beteen them) and a standard array of built-in effects; chorus, echo, reverb and flange. As an added bonus, channel one has a "Blues" button, which gives a Southern Blues-type sound to your tone.
I've played probably 40 or more live gigs with it and it's worked for everything I've needed. To be honest, I don't use the digital effects all that much, but they're there if needed. It's just not convenient to turn around and play with the knobs in mid-song, or even in between songs.
And it has all power you could need. Too much really. I've played in front of 200+ people and never had it turned up past 2.5. It pretty much goes from Nice & Quiet straight to Disintegrate Limestone, in terms of volume.

The sound quality is pretty good. The clean channel especially is nice. If your guitar has good pickups, or you're running through some good quality pedals, channel 2 sings, and it's never distorted on me. Channel 1 isn't quite as sensational, although it's probably where most people will spend the bulk of their time. There's a little static sound to it, though not more than should be expected. It can go as dirty as you want, but you're not likely to say it's the best sound you've heard. One problem with the sound is the amp is so LOUD, you can't turn it up and get a nice, not-too-heavily distorted snarl without destroying something.

It's solid and well-built. Like I said, I've gigged with it a bunch and haven't had a reliability problem yet. It's not too heavy for a 2 X 12 either.

Carvin's customer support is pretty thorough, if not the most friendly. I've only called them a couple times, and though the guy on the phone didn't seem particularly glad I called, he answered my questions all the same.

I've been playing for around 15 years and don't currently own any other amp. I've been playing a Carvin CT6M and Taylor T5 through it mostly. And sometimes I'll run one of the guitars through a POD 2.0 and then into the amp. It's worked great, sounds pretty good, and has a lot of features for not too much money. You could definitely do a LOT worse than to pick up one of these. And since they're pretty solid, if you can find one used - well, even better. But new they're still only $329 for a 2 X 12, 100w w/ effects. Not bad.

This amplifier was made a few years ago, '03 or '04 I believe.

The sound quality is pretty good for the price and the effects or not something I would record, but they are a cool touch and make playing plugged straight in a bit more pleasing.

The tube emulation was also a bit more exciting than most solid state amps, but nothing all that great.

Very loud, although it gets loud fast, not much in between.

The quality of the sound is alright. I had no complaints for it in the category of it's price range.
Nothing all that great, but not at all bad.

Mine just blew the other day.

I opened it up and it was black with the residue of a small explosion that happened, and the circuit board was melted in the spot that this had occurred. I have never seen this actually happen to an amp before.

Sure, many of us guitar players have had the fantasy of of just "rockin' so hard that your amps just explode. . . and the crowd goes wild. . .",
but I never expected to actually live it out. And it was in a garage at the time. That's kind of lame. Bad timing.

I surely expected that a professional amplifier would hold up to being played at high volumes (especially if it claims 100watts!) and that while playing withing the upper reaches of it's capacity for it to remain structurally and functionally intact. This was not the case.

Not sure, the one previous owner of it said it had cut out on him before - nothing like what I described - and he had sent it back to Carvin and it was replaced without much hassle.

Personally I have never dealt with them, and I'm writing the amp of as a loss. I'd rather try something new than have another replacement of this blow.

It sounds good, but I don't trust it.

I will be replacing the amplifier with something more durable, and I have a pair of eminence speakers lying around that I've been waiting to use on something, but I guess I can say that the box is still in great shape. And that's a good thing. . .

I guess it's a good thing to get a teenager who plays it a few times, less and less frequently, then ends up wanting to play football instead.
Not for a gigging musician though.

I have one of the older versions of this amp...one without the "blues switch"...

The amp has two channels but I just use the clean channel with pedals out front for distortion/overdrive and effects.

The onboard effects are decent and the effects loop works well...but again I tend to use pedals out front and just use the amp's reverb which is good. I've never tried the headphone jack.

It would be neat if the effects could be programed an called up via a footswitch...it might make me use them more...but would add to the cost of the amp for sure.

I use this amp regularly for gigging clubs and casinos...has plenty of clean power...not a lot of "warmth" but with the right pedals out front, it's done well for me...it's solid state so there's no real maintenance to it.

The distortion (on mine) is just that...it really doesn't seem to matter how hard you pick or how you run the guitar volume...it's just on. It doesn't sound too bad for classic rock...kind of resembles an old Marshall but I use pedals for to get more response and variety.

As I said...I stay on the clean channel which has more headroom than I've really ever needed.

I use an Ibanez guitar with two humbukers...nothing special about it and the amp handles it well.

The amp handles what I'm throwin at it fine...I play older rock, soul, pop, country but no metal or heavy stuff...so the clean/quiet headroom this amp offers is good for my useage.

I've been gigging with it off and on for 5 years. It had a problem shortly after I purchaced it but I haven't had any issues since then.

I always have some sort of back up at a gig...a small practice amp that I could mic up in a pinch...it wouldn't matter what amp I was using so that really isn't a reflection on this amp in particular.

As I said, it had an issue shortly after I got it...power seemed to drop off during long sessions of playing...called the company and they honored the warranty fine but I had to ship it back to them at my own expense. They said I could take the "brain" part out and just ship it so I wouldn't have to pay for shipping the whole thing but I was kind of squeamish about doing that. I got it back pretty quick (return shipping was on them) and haven't had any problems since.

I'm in my 40's and have been playing since high school...I own a variety of guitars and amps but nothing really special. I gig with this amp because of the low maintenance and reliability of it.

If it were lost or stolen I can see myself getting another but I might look around at some other options too...but this amp is very inexpensive for the watts...around 300 bucks for a 2x12!

I don't know what the year the amp was made. I play alot of Pink Floyd, Bush, and very popular Stratocaster solos from the 60's on up. Its got two channels but the distortion channel has a special "blues" button that you can use to get a milder distortion. With the button depressed, you get a very heavy metal, chunky sound. -Not really what I was looking for. It does have a headphone jack and a few cool effects. Being lightweight, its great I guess if you move it around alot. It has 100 watts of power and thats plenty for me....almost too much. It's a solid state amplifier.

The amp can play clean, crunchy, or metal. With the effects, you can get your typical chorus, delay, etc.. sounds. I've never played the amp at a high volume because I live in an apartment. I'm probably going to be the first to say that this amplifier is TOO loud. The volume doesn't have much room. Its almost like you go from very quiet to a stadium roar just by turning the volume knob a hair. I use it with a 68 Reissue left handed Stratocaster with Vintage 68 pickups. My style is obviously not what this amp was made for. This amplifier has a very "controlled" or harnessed sound. But the amplifier is great at reducing the hum which my Strat is notorious for.

I don't play at gigs and I've had the amp for a year. Its held up great so far.

I've called Carvin before to check on the status of my SX200. The guy on the phone didn't go "out of his" way to be friendly, or maybe thats because I'm from Louisiana and I expect too much. However, he knew what he was doing and answered all of my questions in a timely manner.

I've been playing for 7 years. I went ahead a bought a Marshall AVT50 watt half stack and it blows this Carvin away. ..Sorry Carvin. If I knew now what I knew a year ago, I would have not purchased a solid state amplifier. I don't "love" anything about it in particular. I'm going to sell it and I would not buy it again. I'm not saying Carvin is bad; the SX200 was a mistake for the music I'm attempting to emulate. I t would be very interesting to hear Carvin's tube-driven amps though.

100W, 2 independent channels, 2 Celestion 70 speakers (rated at 100W each - no worries about them blowing out), "Blues Switch" on the dirty channel, reverb switch, and what Carvin calls "Smart Effects," meaning the amp will remember your settings for available reverb, chorus, flange, and delay when you switch channels. My amp was made in 2004.

First things first - this amp is loud. At 100 watts, it's more than loud enough (on the dirty channel) for pretty much any gigging situation. As always, the clean channel is significantly quieter than the dirty channel, so you may need to mic it if you use the clean channel.

Other features...headphone jack (great for in-home practice), effects loop, line out, and optional footswitch jack. Two output jacks (primary and secondary for ch.2) and volume, bass, mids, treble, and presence knobs for each channel - channel 1 also includes a drive knob and blues switch.

Big, bright red jewel power light, black vinyl cover with metal corner guards, handle on top. This thing weighs 49 lbs...not bad for how much power it has, but perhaps a bit heavy to use if you travel a lot to practice.

For me, this amp has pretty much everything I need - tons of power and volume, great versatility with its effects and EQ controls, and all the extra plugs and jacks I need.

The best sound I've gotten out of my SX-200 was through the use of a Eric Clapton Signiture Stratocaster. One of the most amazing features of this amp is the incredible EQ controls. They're incredible responsive - move the bass, mids, or treble down 1 or 2 and the sound of your guitar completely changes. This, along with the tone controls and pick-up selector on the guitar and variety in picking styles, allows the SX to achieve a great variety in sounds.

With the presence nice and high, blues switch on, drive at a subtle 2, volume at about 2.5 (any louder shook the room!), the Clapton Strat's single coils delivered a beautiful, milky smooth lead tone that works perfectly with my bluesy style. This amp has great sustain and the reverb switch is a great way too add just a hint of reverb in your tone.

Now I'm not a heavy metal guy, but I have to say the distortion is a bit lacking. While, of course, it depends on your guitar and EQ settings, the distortion tends to be a bit thin and metallic unless you REALLY turn the amp up. Great when it comes to gigs, not so much for practice - I'd recommend using a practice amp unless you practice in a place where you have plenty of room for noise.

As for the effects...well, they're effects. The chorus is chorus, the flange is flange, the delay is delay. Nothing exceptional, except the reverb is notably good. I've experienced my fair share of bad reverb (you know what I'm talking about, that fake wobbly sound), and the SX doesn't deal with that. It's clear, consistant, and the extra reverb switch goes a long way to add quality reverb to any other effect.

Overall, very versatile, very loud, very, well, good, I'd say. Distortion can be weak - if you play hard rock or metal I'd recommend adding a distortion pedal to the mix.

As for the SX "tube emulation," it's actually not bad. You have to turn the amp up nice and loud to hear it in the distortion, but it's certainly there. Don't get me wrong, it's no tube amp, but it sounds incredibly close considering it's solid state. I, for one, really like the sound of this amp.

This amp has never broken on me in the 2 years I've been using it - I feel I can rely on it. I knock it around like crazy when I move it, and except for some scratches on the vinyl, there's no sign of it. Nothing's loose, nothing's broken, nothing's wrong with it after a nice beating. I'm very impressed.

On the other hand, I've heard stories of Carvin amps breaking and having problems with loose cases and all.

Would I gig without a backup? Yeah, I would...mostly because I'm a starving college student and too poor to buy another amp :)

Ordered online, recieved amp, looked it over, plugged it in, played, was happy. No need to call customer support, though I hear mixed reviews.

I've been playing for about 5 years now. I own this Carvin SX-200, a Fender Frontman practice amp, a Fender Standard Strat, and a Carvin Cobalt 850 (acoustic). I chose the SX-200 because it had the most power and versatility for the price. I still stand by that decision, as I haven't found a better amp for $300 anywhere. I tried out a Fender Champion 300 for the same price and it was a piece of junk - it was quiet and sounded like my practice amp. I also tried a Spider somethingorother and, while I loved the versatility of the Spider models, I thought the sound was a bit too processed, it sounded sterile. I gambled buying an amp online, and it payed off. And if it didn't...Carvin has a 10 day return policy.

Looking for a cheap, powerful, versatile amp for small or medium gigs? You'd be hard pressed to find one better than the SX-200.

I bought two of the SX200c's. The 100w@8 For what they are selling these amps for, how can you amplain about anything. The effects are great. Even if they didn't have any it would still be a price you cant pass up. Why should you want more effects on the amp? They are used as Amplification not effects. Thats why they put an effects loop in the rear.
I bought two for the stereo ability.They have enough power for what anyone should need.

I use My own guitars as a builder. Others are Gibson,Fender,Travis Bean,Ibanez. All with a veriety of electronics and pickups.
The amp works well with any style of playing.
I use the amps in more of a studio setting. They are quiet as a mouse for being 100w.
I have yet to hear a crack from the clean channels and the distorted channel is choppy with a kinda 12xa7 tube sound.

Haven't had the amps long enough. If they are like the other Carvin stuff I have I would expect to have them for years to come.

From the mixed reviews I have read about the customer service,I wouldn't know what to expect from them.
I have called them plenty of times in the past year debating what to get. Every time I called they were very helpful. They must have done some house cleaning, getting rid of the employees that are not friendly on the phone.
I did have a problem with some speakers that went on sale once. By the time they got to my order, they had sold out and they were not getting that speaker back in stock because it was discontinued. Contacting their customer support, they sold me better speakers as replacements at the same price! To show more apriciation of their customers, they paid the shipping as well!
Now you cant tell me that their customer support is lacking because you would be telling a lie.
You would have to admit that it would really suck being on the phone all day with the public.

Been playing for 32years. I own to many things to list. I have been using computer studios for the past 12years and have been very satisfied with the Samplitude.
I love the amps for the quality and price. And the amp is American made!
I don't hate anything about it.
I did have a Marshall set up. They were heavy, large. You can set these amps up and will get the same or better response.
A couple reviews indicate they wanted more effects. You knew what the amp had as effects when you bought it.For the price they want for the, how can people ask for more? They are only asking what? $300.00 or close to that. They are 100watt and have two of the finest lead guitar speakers ever made. Where can you find a brand new amp with this for what this amp is going for?
All of Carvins products are under priced and high end.

This is 2005 SX200C with two 12" Celestion Seventy 80 speakers.
100 Watts solid state. Extremely loud - as if the volume knobs START at 11 ...
Two channels, both with volume, bass, mid, treble, presence. Channel 1 also has a "drive" control which sets the level of distortion and a "blues" pushbutton that "adds the critical mid tones in the 525 Hz range". To me, it merely subdues the amount of distortion introduced by the "drive" control. When disengaged, the distortion is much heavier with more bottom.
The amp includes a few digital effects: echo, reverb, chorus, and flange. These are somewhat limited, a bit strange to operate, and only one can be active at a time, but they sound nice and can eliminate the hassles of using a pedal for effects that you don't use often. Effects are separately assignable for each channel. There is also a master digital reverb, toggled by a pushbutton, that is independent of the other effects.
Other features include jacks for footswitch (any standard 2-button switch can be used, I had to reverse the wires for channel select/effects on-off on my Peavey footswitch), line out, phones, two speaker outputs, effects send/return, and a speaker impedence switch. The cabinet is very solidly built and while it does not look as sexy as a Marshall or a Vox, it is, shall we say, "handsome".
I give this amp a 10 because the features fit my needs: a lightweight, good-sounding solid state amp for jamming and small gigs with enough bells & whistles so that I can leave most of my pedals at home.

I give this a 9 because it really doesn't sound as good as a tube amp when played by itself. However, I used it in a jam session recently and despite all the other instruments blasting away in the room this amp cut through nicely. Volume was not an issue, except that I had to keep it dialed DOWN to slightly over 1 on each channel.

My main guitar is an Ibanez SA160QM H/S/S with Carvin pickups and an on-board Seymour Duncan pickup booster from guitarelectronics.com. The only pedal that I'm using (excluding the footswitch) is a BBE "Sonic Stomp" Sonic Maximizer that I place on top of the cabinet, hook into the effects loop, and leave on all the time. This is an amazing pedal that is hard to describe; let's say that it makes your amp sound like you just installed very expensive speakers.

I play mostly classic & country rock. The amp is quiet. I haven't pushed the clean channel much so I can't say whether it breaks up at high volumes.

Haven't had it long enough to say. If the electronics are built as ruggedly as the cabinet, it will prove to be extremely reliable.

A friend who had a Carvin bass head melt down says that the only way you can get a Carvin amp repaired is to send it back to Carvin. This could be quite inconvenient, so I give them an 8 for support. All I can say otherwise is that they have always been willing to answer my questions both by email & phone, they ship their items promptly, and I've never received a damaged Carvin product.

The SX200C is an incredible value. I checked out several used solid-state amps, but even the few decent ones cost nearly as much as, or more than, this one brand new. It's difficult to come up with any gripes, but I guess I would like to see them include a footswitch with LED's to indicate which channel is active. A spring reverb with depth control would also be nice, but any of these things would of course add to the cost.

By the way ... it's made in the U.S.A. !

I have a 1993 SX200 with carpet covering and 150 watts RMS at 4 ohms. I bought this at the Carvin Santa Ana store in January of '93. I have used this amp hard for 12 years, and it never failed me once. It's the model with the "Low Cut" switch. 2 sets of 4-band EQ, and 2 clean channels (exactly the same save for the overdrive switch and control on channel A) as well as reverb. What is extremely cool about the channels, since they are exactly the same when the OD is off, is that you can use one channel to boost your level when you go for a solo (with a dist. box in front of the amp to get OD sounds). The effects switch on the FS can also serve as a boost when you turn it off (w/o effects in the loop, that is. all my pedals run through the front). I don't know another amp that can cover this type of boost capability, with full EQ when boosted.

I play a Gibson SG and an Ibanez RT150 through this amp. Styles are Rock and Roll, Blues, Jazz, a little Punk, and Progressive Classic Rock. This amp does very well for all these styles. I also use a ton of Boss and Dunlop pedals with this amp (into the front end), and everything works great. The amp is dead quiet.

Tube amps don't sound like SS amps (restricted frequency response and compression on tube amps), but if you've played through a SS amp that you've liked in the past (maybe a Peavey or a Crate, perhaps), this amp will not let you down as far as sound quality. It's clearer than a tube amp and has more attack. The clean channel on this amp is plenty warm with the British series speakers. The overdrive is clearer and more complex than a tube amp, and offers more sustain at lower volumes...especially with the low cut switch. When you think about it, all the famous guitarists of the 60s and 70s used SS devices to get their signature sounds: Clapton, Blackmore, and May used SS treble booster pedals to get their overdrive sounds. Page and Beck used Tonebender fuzz pedals for dirty tones. Hendrix used a Fuzz Face for almost everything he did on his first 2 records. All of these sounds were the product of a SS device, in conjunction with their tube amps. The sounds that are considered classic in Rock and Roll guitar were produced either entirely or partially with SS devices. None of the tube amps these musicians used could create those classic sounds by themselves. This to me is the difference in the feel of SS distortion compared to tube OD. I personally like SS generated overdrive when it is used for R&R better, like all my guitar influences did. The overdrive on this amp recalls the SS box/tube amp combination sounds of the 60s and 70s.

The only trouble in 12 years that I've had with this amp (and every other amp I've ever owned, tube or SS) is that the pots became scratchy after a while (from dirty damn dust that crept in there). This is easy to fix with a little contact cleaner. I mentioned this only because it is the absolute only trouble that I've ever had with it. Another thing: The power cord that came with my amp was probably the thickest, best quality cord that I've ever seen. Maybe new Carvins have cheap cords. I don't know.

I've heard lots of stories about Carvin Customer Service being crap. Considering this, I'm glad I've never had to deal with them. The people at the Santa Ana store in '93 were alright, about the same as people working at Guitar Center at the time (nothing good or bad about 'em, just regular, typical sales people).

I don't know about the new Carvin SX series, but the '93s are really excellent, and I'm glad I made the decision to buy this amp 12 years ago. They don't have DSP or anything like that, but I always used (and use) pedals.