Carvin SX-200H Head

I bought this amp head in January of 2005 when Carvin was having a clear out sale on their website. It is a two channel 100 watt solid state amp with digital effects and channel switching. It also has an effects loop. It has active controls which require a little more patience to adjust - but I think in the end they are very versatile. I bought the footswitch for an extra 30 bucks and it is well made and sturdy. You could use any other two-button footswitch too(Peavey etc,). For the price I paid, I feel like I practically stole this thing. It has a alot of great features at a great price. I can't complain at all. You'd have to be an idiot not to like this amp - it'll easily keep up with Marshalls and Mesa's. I know, I've played'em along side each other! Don't get me wrong, I love tube amps too - I just don't enjoy their inherent unreliability. No tubes here, yet very good tube emulated tone!

I use Gibson LesPauls and few other humbucker equipped guitars. I think this amp suits my musical style just fine. I play mostly hard rock and metal. I don't know what some of the other reviewers are talking about but I think the drive channel is awesome. This amp has a ton of gain and can rip your face off. The clean channel is great and sounds awesome with a little chorus and reverb from the digital effects. This amp responds like a tube amp too - if you play harder it breaks up more. This amp reponds to your touch very well. I'm using this head through a Randall 4x12 equipped with Celestion 7080 speakers and I believe I get good bass response with shimmering highs and nice mids with this set-up. The other reviewers must have shitty or worn out speakers. Yes, speakers do wear out with time. The rest of your set-up does impact your tone. I've used this head with Marshall 4x12's equipped with Celestion GT12-75's and have also had great results.

I've used this amp head for 9 months now and have played it everyday for rehearsals and live. I haven't had any problems with it. It seems well-built and is light in weight which I like. I've driven it around and taken it back and forth and it has stood up well. I do look after my equipment and am careful with it. I practically stole it for the price I paid for this thing.

Haven't dealt with them really other than over the phone when I first ordered. My experience with them was pleasant.

I've been playing for over 16 years and have played all the big brand name amps as well as various "vintage" amps - fenders and voxes etc. They are all great amps too but I think there is alot of nostalgia and marketing that surrounds much of this equipment. If you pay $4000 dollars for an amp you're going to tell yourself it was an awesome purchase no-matter what. This SX200 easily keeps up with alot of the amps out there and was a fraction of the cost. Piece of mind that didn't cost an arm and a leg. It's too bad they've discontinued it. Maybe the quality was hit and miss. Mine seems to be working well and I'm very happy with it. I would hate to lose this thing or have it stolen. I would probably replace it with another Carvin offering.

I brought this carvin sx200 head in feb 2005, I brought it to mainly play metal (EG Chimaira, stone sour) and grunge/punk music. The amp comes with 2 independant channels and 2 independant jacks, so 2 guitars can be plugged in, or alternative you can use the 2 channels as clean / overdrive. It comes with built in effects (chorus, reverb, echo, delay). The amp is solid state and and has 3 band EQ on both channels with one channel sporting an overdrive knob.

The amp also uses carvins 24bit valve amp modelling technology, which is alledged to sound exactly like and valvel amp........highly dubious. It is also 100 watts RMS at 8ohm for a single cabinet and 100watss RMS at 4ohm for dual cabinets. Ii also has an effects loop and a foot switch (not supplied) that can be used. There is also a 'blues' button which changes the tone some what.

I currently play with a fender jag stang and a schecter A-7 with EMG 707 and 817 active pickups. This amp is relatively quiet compared to some no hissing, or noise. You can squeeze some reasonable tones out of the EQ but dont expect anything to warm, I would say theres a distinct lack of bass at low volumes with this amp to.
The effects are good, I prefer the reverb and chorus to that on my BOSS GT6 pedal which is saying something. The blues button is far too muddy for my liking and I dont really use it becuase of this.
This amp is pretty darn loud overall when cranked and should be enough to play most venues.
Lets talk about the gain knob.......WHAT GAIN? You have to be kidding carvin!! This gain knob is next to useless I cant get any kind of overdriven/distorted tones out of this amp I would use for anything.
On the other hand I used this amp with a BOSS GT6 pedal and used the preamp modelling and distortion from that and the story was a little differant. The amp proved its worth when used with this pedal as it is capable of producing a pretty good sound. And because the amp is so loud, this can work out well.
In other words if you just want an amp that is loud and can drive 2 cabinets (4x12) and plan on using none of its features - buy this amp. For 200 GBP it is unbeatable in its class IE 'marshall VS AVT 150 head' & 'Laney TF II 700 head'. These amps are no where near this tihng for value and output.

On its own I rate it 3 / with the boss GT6 it will get 7

HA! Reliability?!!?! forget it this isnt it. About once a week both channels on the amp will go quiet until you switch on and off.
Not that often, but it happened at a gig to me and I wasnt impressed,
Hence now I have bought the real deal : a hughes and kettner warp X, it cost over 4 times as much but you truely only get what you pay for.

Ive heard the laney and marshall equivelent ive mention above are both just as suspect for reliabily so dont be fooled into buying something else!!

Never dealt with to be honest, I got this on import and it took 3 months, I will never wait that long again so I will sell it for cheap instead to just to get rid of!

The botton line is : dont buy this amp as a stand alone solution because it isnt. But it is cheap better then the rest at this price and can be turned into a good setup if used with a good pedal. Reliabilty is an issue if you plan on gigging, so bear this in mind when considering buying on of these.

This is the Solid State 100 watt SX200 head. Mine is the 2003 model. 2 foot switchable channels, blues switch, FX loop. I bought it on a whim when I was in a hurry and needed something quick. I didn't have the cash to shell out for a decent all tube Marshall or Mesa or whatever. This head, for the most part, is pretty decent. Its got some good mids and would be really good for classic rock or alternative, or perhaps some modern rock. When I bought it, (I bought the 4x12 cab also) I was in a detuned metal band. We played 7 strings tuned to low A. I was hoping to get a good scooped sound, but no matter what I did to tweak it, all I could hear were mids. Now, this amp didn't produce terrible tones. Just not good enough for what I wanted to use it for. If you're in a blues band or classic rock band, this head would be perfect. I needed alot of gain and a heavy bottom end and this head didn't really deliver. Again, not a bad head...just not good for what I needed.

I was using an Epiphone Flying V 7 string and an ESP 207. The Epiphone had the stock pickups (which were kinda thin sounding) and the ESP had active EMG's. The cleans were pretty good. The built in effects were ok, but I didn't use them too much. If I used them at all, I used a little chorus on the lead channel. I ended up buying a Boss phaser that I used way more often that any of the effects, save for the echo which I had turned way down. The distortion isn't bad, but no matter what I did, I couldn't get the mid-scooped sound I was looking for. I turned the highs all the way up, the mids all the way down, and the lows up about half way. To make up for this, I ran a boss metal zone into a Rocktron Ganiac for a while...but had to give those toys up as they were the other guitarist in the band's and he sold them. I ended up buying a Hughes and Kettner Warp Factor distortion pedal and ran it on the clean channel and that took care of it. I adjusted the gain on the lead channel to break up just a bit and I used this setting to get a little volume boost when it was time to solo.

Hmm. About 3 months after I had this...actually the same day I bought the H&K distortion and Boss phaser, the head went belly up and fried. I plugged up the pedals and got nothing. I tried different cables and all that jazz, but all the head would do was make a hissing noise. I even unplugged the pedals and ran straight into the head and still got nothing. I ended up having to send it back to Carvin.

When the head fried, I had absolutely no problems with the customer support. I called them, told them the problem, gave them my warranty info and shipped it off. My only qualm is that it took a little too long to get it back...about 3 weeks. The head came back and has worked perfectly since...this was about a year and a half ago.

Overall, this isn't a bad amp. I've been playing for nearly 15 years and this amp would probably be middle of the pack as far as sounds and stuff like that. Not a super great head, but not a terrible head. For as cheap as it was, I'd be upset if somebody stole it. I doubt I'd buy another one though. My other guitarist had a JCM 900 head and the Marshall was far better as far as tone goes. But suprisingly, my little solid state was just as loud. Granted, when he had his volume on 3 or 4, my volume was up around 8 or 9, but still...it kept up.

Two channels,bass mid,treble, presence,effects,etc.Solid state,light weight,decent cabinet work.

Deploys well from Fender jangle to" Marshallesque" mids. And, with a reasonably good speaker cabinet there is some killer huff to be found on the low end. I ran this amp's output directly to the 12" speaker in a Marshall AVT 50 and noted about half again as much bass as the Marshall could put to its own speaker.The tube like saturation in the drive channel coupled with the clean bright jangle on the clean side have had Me gigging for the past two years now with my 64 Deluxe and 66 Twin mysteriously absent from the bandstand. The echo and reverb choices have eliminated two pedals. I do,however,pefer my "boutique" chorus pedal over the offering on this amp. The only problem I've had concerns the effects adjustment settings from the clean channel to the lead in that while it remembers to go to the newly assigned effect for that channel it brings the previous channel's settings with it. Carvin guys said "send it back so we can fix it" , but that would mean giving it up for a week or so and I'm not willing to do that yet. The very light internally braced speaker cabinets I build use Electrovoice Force 12,Peavey12",and Celestion G12T100. Just lately I put in the new Celestion Neo Dog. The total amp,cabinet and speaker weigh within about 3 lbs of my Hamer with P90 and S.D.Phat Cat in it's case!

This thing is well built. A peak inside reveals not much to go wrong.For that matter,not much I recognize from my two years repairing radios as a US Army draftee. After this much time I have to say this thing is always reliable.

Always very helpful at least to their level of knowledge.

Anyone who can't get decent tone out of this one probably doesn't have much experience with amplified equipment. Sometimes when first starting out we embarrass ourselves by making outlandish statements based wholly on a lack of knowledge and the lure of being able to use some forum like this to trash someone or something for the sick little rush it affords. Thankfully a few short years of maturity usually rounds out these lost souls.

2 channels each with it's own tone stack(EQ)

Digital effects

the norm

It gain sounds are rather weak.
The gain channel is not a stand alone gain and so far has been pretty useless with every pedal I've tried it with.

The Clean is no better. It is flat, dull and lifeless. I was hoping to get some sweet Jazz tones out of it but at this point....all hope is lost!

It sounds nothing like a 12AX7 stage and I don't know why they claim that in their add other then to sucker HONEST people like myself into buying this hunka junk.

It hasn't broken down or anything but I don't think I'd be taking this amp on tour.

I am looking for someone to dump it off on as I type.
This amp is the biggest waist of money I was ever suckered into.

It has a piss poor useless tone. They need to take this amp back to the shop and revamp the entire thing.

If someone stole it I'd be pissed about the monetary value but other than that I'd pitty the person who got stuck playing through it.

I got the half stack(with the head obviously)in 2003,but it might be a 2002 model for all I know.Ive had it for about 4 months now.
I'm in a working band doing hardcore punk,but I'm a metal nut at heart.I love old slayer,iron maiden,death,dying fetus,old metallica,decapitated,immortal,monstrosity,arch enemy,old in flames,old soilwork,god dethroned,the crown,at the gates,the haunted,children of bodom,exhumed,dies ira,sceptic,lamb of god e.c.t.
Some say this isn't good for heavier stuff without a pedal,but I think it cranks out a pretty mean tone.It has a real good chunky palm muted crunch when cranked that pounds the chest.I actually found it hard to get a bad sound out of it without using my metal zone(over-rated piece of sh*t...and yes I run it while in the clean channel).As long as the mids arnt scooped,the sound cuts right through the mix...and we have a loud mix.Turning the bass up compensates for it if you need a scooped sound.
Its a simple 2 channel head.Thats all I need.The smart effects are great.there usable unlike many over the top 'out there' effects on other amps,though you can get them 'out there' if needed.Yeah it has an effects loop,but dont use it as my cry baby does a volume drop through it for some reason.Its the only pedal that does that...I probly need a mod for it or something.I forget if it has a headphone jack or not.I dont care.Why would you buy a 100Watt head to plug in some cheap radio shack headphones and play in your room???

I wish it had a less sensitive volume knob.I dont really use the flanger,phaser or echo,but the chorus adds some depth.
I keep the stack at our rehearsal space.You can hear the amp when at zero...seriously.Your at gigging volume around 3 o'clock.Higher than 5 is nice if you want to scare the sh*t out of somone by suddenly switching to the distorted channel.There isnt any gradual increase in volume which is the amps only downfall,but thats small stuff.Its easily dealt with by a gentle touch.Not good if you have parkinsons though...

I use a esp ec1000 stocked with 81's as my main axe and a ibanez rg with dimarzio(evo's)swapped pickups.Suits my style just fine(metal).
This is a noisy amp,but I havnt heard a good sounding amp that isnt.The crud is rid of by a boss noise gate so noise isnt realy an issue.
Like I said before,its tough to get a bad sound out of it.The clean channel is exactly as the name implies.Plenty of distortion for me.I still dont see how anyone wouldnt be satisfied with the gain on this thing.It crushes my friends lousy crate 1200...wait...Do I really need to compare this head to a crate?Let alone the 1200?

Fine after 4 months.I gig without a backup as a result of not having one.I know its not a good idea,but worst come to worse I'd run my axe through my mt-2 into the p.a.
I take good care of my stuff since I'm a poor bum and its a solid state so I dont see any future problems.Nothings for sure though and every company has 'bad apples' so you should always be cautious.

I forget how long the warranty is.I would just take it to a local music store anyway.I wouldnt want to deal with shipping back and forth.
The dude on the phone was really nice though and answerd my questions.

Been playing for 4 years.Not long,but I jumped in with enthusiasm.
Ive got my stack,a little roland practice amp,my axes,a few pedals,bass,bass stack and a little p.a equipment.
I would buy it again,but I also want a rhino beast,line6 spider 2,and tech 21 trademark 300.Stealing from me is stupid.
I Love everything about it except the volume knob sensitivity.
At the time it was the best priced head I could find,but theres other great stuff for a little more.I looked at randall(not too bad...looking)crate(bleh)peavey(bleh,except for the XXX and 5150II)Marshall($$$$)b-52(where did they come from?and what an ugly head)and lots of others.Best head for the money spent(I got the half stack)for somthing like $650+ shipping.
Nothing much else I could ask for...well...I wish it was filled with tubes and gave ideas for lyrics,but oh well.
One of the best heads for the money.If youve got the money for a soldano or diezel or other $$$$ head then go for it.If your a poor ass like me then take a serious look at the sx200.Go for the 300 if you need three channels to live.

Later! \m/

It's a 2002 model, seems to do everything well enough besides metal. Im sure you can look at the other reviews for what all the knobs (14) do and such.

I've got 3 Ibanezes I use with it. I play metal, and the tone is mediocre at best for metal tones. It just sounds muffled to me. No bite at all.

But I have a Boss SD-1 I use with it. I use the SD-1 as a preamp boost, and it adds so much clarity and sheer tone to the amp it's incredible. It's got bite, beefy mids, definition, and that all around metal flare I'm looking for now. Sounds like someone took a blanket off the speaker. The review I'm giving is WITH the SD-1. Without I'd say the distortion channel is just average run of the mill solid state distortion. But with the OD boost it has a nice thick dark crunch to it, just what I'm looking for. It really does make a world of difference. I have the amp gain on 10, and the OD pedal's gain is usually around 3-5.

The clean channel seems very clean, sounds very nice. But I dont spend much time doing clean stuff. The DSP is nice to have, the reverb is cool, I use it a lot. THe Smart-Settings whatever feature it has is ingenius, it makes a DSP actually usable in a live situation. As you can have a setting activated on one channel, switch to another channel and it reverts to your last setting on that channel, whether it be a different effect or no effect. And you can switch whatever effect you want for that channel on and off and then when you switch back over to the other channel, the same effect you had or didn't have on before you switched will remain on/off like before. Neat stuff.

This is actually my 2nd SX200H. My first one had problems a week into owning it. When I switched channels from dirty to clean the dirty channel would actually stay activated...??? You could do some neat stuff with it that way by tweaking each channel's volume knobs, but I sent it back for a replacement anyway.

The new one I got back within 2 weeks and it's been going strong for 6 months now. I think the other one was just one of those electronics issues where it will either fail soon after manufacture or last forever. And this one has worked flawlessly since I've gotten it.

The Carvin people are great. I told them what was going on with my amp and they were awesome about replacing it. I did have to pay for shipping it back to carvin though. Anyway, I got my new one back before even 2 weeks passed and everything went very smoothly. I trust Carvin to take care of me. Unlike Ibanez, who knows who the hell works in the US Ibanez headquarters, I'm doubtful it even exists. They make some great guitars though.

All in all I'm glad I have it. I wanted to get a nice cheap solid state head to use as my main rig for a while until I got a nice tube head and then have a nice solid state head to have as a backup. And this head fits the bill perfectly. Without that Boss SD-1 it doesn't sound nearly as good, but boy with it it really does sound great. For the price I really couldn't be happier.

2003 model with 2 channels and the "blues" switch. It came with a FS22 footswitch. There are flanger, echo, reverb, and chorus digital effects to choose from. You can adjust the level of the chosen effect. The amp remembers the effect you assign to each channel. There is a reveb button that adds a set level of reverb to your tone -- too much reverb for most player's tastes. You can only adjust and add your choice of reverb if you select it as an effect. If you do this, you can not choose any other effect such as chorus. The amp is 100 watts.

Decent clean tone, but it seems to get very shaky when the volume is above 3. The Overdrive channel is capable of rock and that is it. The blues switch elevates the mids and mellows out the overdrive for bluesy tones. I like the blues tones you can get. However, the overdrive is NOT sufficient for metal of hard rock. The amp lacks harmonic definition and you can barely elicit palm muting. I play humbucker and single coil guitars and both sounded passable in clean moode and blusey, rock at best in overdrive. The volume adjustment on the amp goes from quite to extremely loud from 0 to 1. There is no gradual variance in volume. The overdrive channel gets noisey when the gain is past 6 and you really do not get much harmonic gain, so ther is no decent tradeoff between noise and tone. I was anything but satisfied with this amp's tone and returned it. I ran it through a Carvin VE212 cabinet.

Seems very solid and light weight. If it fell, it would not do too much damage to itself. The knobs and hardware are very "budget" looking. and I would bet they don't hold up too well on the road. However, I really cannot judge this category fairly given the 8 days I owned the amp.

Decent. Carvin answers your questions quickly and allows you 10 days to try out the gear before returning it.

I really wanted to like this amp. i tried for hours to elicit the tone I was searching for from it. I tried an MXR distortion +, and several tubescreamers, but the results did not get any better, sub-par tone. I have been playing for about 16 years and have had too many amps to admit over the past five. This one, although not the worse, was no where near the "better" amps i have seen out on the market in the $300-$400 price range. One thing that urks me is the constant praising of this amp by people on the Carvin website. I bought it based on their gloating, but they seemed to be blind in the realms of good tone, I guess. Look elesewhere for Fender, crate, Peavey, and Marshall solid state amps -- better tone.

The SX-200H was purchased in Sept. 2002.....It features the added blues switch, 2 channels, Echo, Chorus, Reverb, Flange....Also has a FS-22 Footswitch Carvin throws in for free.

2 Channels, drive and clean. The drive has the blues button, press it and it goes from a modern gain to a older tube-esque sound. Real good for vintage sounds.

I play every genre out there, the amp has the versatility I wanted in a head.

Im using a Quilt Top Les Paul (Epi), a Alvarez 12string Accoustic, a Epiphone G-310, and even use my Rouge bass on it sometimes. The sounds are absolutely amazing out of the head. The speakers I have suck, so the distortion tones aren't quite what I wanted, but I blame the speakers, not the head for it (cheap POS speakers, gonna get a VE212 soon).

The clean channel is far beyond any other amp I've heard in the price range....Recording worthy.

The drive channel is great as well, the tone is not as well defined as what I wished, but again, I blame my speakers, not the amp.

Clean channel can nail country-twang, Creed-esque clean, really anything you'd want with tweaking. The 4 band EQ lets you do what you want.

The distortion channel can be as brutal or as timid as you want. The blues setting gives it just a right ammount of overdrive for blues at 1-4, old rock for 4-7, and vintage hard rock (AC/DC, Sabbath, Zep) at 7-10. The modern gain settings are very heavy at any setting really, even at 2, its incredibly brutal.....Fully cranked its nuts.

I'm giving it a 9 since I haven't heard this through a good cab yet, but I have yet to have a complaint with this.

Never had a problem with it yet..Solid state so no worrys about tubes. I trust this amp more than other amps I've owned.

1 year warranty...Carvin was friendly when I was asking about the SX-200H on the phone and in Emails.

I have yet to play an amp that sounds this good for $300.

The other amp I played in this range was a Marshall AVT (I think a 15 or 30 watter), this thing beats it hands down in distortion and clean.

I'd pay darn well near $500 for this...

I had a religious experience last night. It was the first time I put my new SX200H onstage since I got it two days ago. It's been logically designed and very well layed out. You can read about the controls anywhere in the other reviews, no need to go over them again, however one control stands out and that's the drive control. With other heads like Marshall and Crate for example, you need a good input level and adjust the channel gain and adjust the input gain and somewhere along the line you'll get a sound you're comfortable with. With the Carvin, all that's needed is to dial in the amount of overdrive. That's all. I play dancable classic rock, from Doors to BonJovi. I found myself using the amp overdrive a lot as opposed to my Zoom GFX-8. The on board digital effects are very usefull. As far as the "tube emulation", well it works. This thing is as far away from a solid state sound as you're going to find. It's not tube but unless you're that picky even when nobody else can tell, it's a close copy. Oh yeah, that religious experience? It has "Oh MY Sweet Jesus" power. I could only get the overdrive channel up to 2. Even at that low setting, it was vibrating my pant legs.

I've been using a Musicman Sillouhette for the last couple of years. It has the H-S-H Dimarzio combination. With this thing in the overdrive channel I finally heard the clicky single coil sound most Strats get. The bridge humbucker sounded very fat and powerful. As I stated before I use a Zoom GFX-8 amp modeler and a talkbox which is powered by a small Vox. The ability to layer an extra reverb on top of my already processed sound or to ad a nice echo when the Zoom is maxed out as in when I use the harmonizer is very cool. The overdrive is NOT a Marshall clone. The best way to describe it is that it sounds like a Carvin. It really sounds the way a tube amp should. I tried other heads including Marshall's AVT50. No mid control on the lead channel. Half the power. No effects. Crappy plastic foot switch. 'Nuf said. I tried a Jackson 100 watt tube half stack. No EQ on the lead channel. No effects. Thin sounding overdrive. 'Nuf said. See where I'm going with this?

If I get the same reliability as I have with the Carvin 412 cab I have it matched up with, then I'll be a happy SOB. I bought my cab as part of a Carvin SX400 halfstack back in 1990. It's still in exellent shape and still puttin' it out. Rating is for previous experience with Carvin Products including my Carvin sound system and my keyboard player's bi-amped Carvin stack.

I've had great dealings with Carvin beginning with an order placed in 1990. I sent in my order with my payment but I had ordered from an expired catalog and there was a price increase on the halfstack I ordered. They called and gave it to me at the old price. I had problems with my PA crossovers and all were replaced within days. They even sent me the wrong x-over, one for an 18" sub and they said keep it. Thats an $80 x-over. Very cool to deal with. Normal warranty is 1 year.

I foolishly got rid of my SX400 head 'cuz I thought the cool thing would be to downsize my rig but all I did was sacrifice a lot of guts. I won't do it again. If this thing continues to do what it did last night (and we were f**king loud) then I won't be getting another head for a long time. I've been playing for 37 years and have owned Marshalls, Fenders, Peavys, Yamahas and a few others. Quite simply put it just sounds better than anything else I've owned. The overdrive with it's effects and extra reverb processor blows away the Marshall AVT50. Twice the power, two onboard effects processors, 4 band eq on both channels and $150 less. Just sounds like a beter deal to me.