Carvin Bolt Kit

Finish: Tung oiled neck, water-based laquer brushed on body (self-applied) then level sanded
Strat type, w/tummy tuck and forearm cut, though less deeply done than on the Strat
Bridge: hardtail narrow spaced Strat-type string-thru body
Carvin tuners
Neck: All maple, 25.5", ~1-11/16" wide at nut, 22 jumbo frets w/good height for bending.
Bought kit 2004, assembled 2006, played 6 months now.
Controls: 5-way, w/additional bridge switch for '7 sounds'. Vol. and Tone pots: 500 ohm
Pickups: S/S/S Carvin AP11, passive
Wood: All maple neck, swamp ash body
I rate as 8 as this goes beyond the usual Strat; all parts are competent and well executed, though not revolutionary

Suits my rock/folk/blues styles well (60's-70's-80's). (Hendrix, Eagles, Pretenders, etc)
Mainly played through a 60's Fender Vibrolux Reverb, w/reverb on and with some preamp saturation.
It is quiet except at the highest volumes, which I avoid due to neighbors, and that noise could be the cable anyway as the guitar is shielded.
The sounds are the big surprise. Due to the 500k pots it can be brighter than my Strat (Tele territory?), but roll the pots down and it can duplicate many Strat sounds, and roll down more and you can get somewhat dark. The voume knob full up pushes the amp harder than my Strat for a bit more edge and bite, but roll it off and it is cleans up well. Combining the neck and bridge pickup is fun and is my favorite selection (a full thicker sound).
I give this a rating of 9. More more variety than I initially expected or encountered. It has made me a believer in using the tone and volume controls, which wer pretty much useless on other guitars. Here they are part of the tone arsenal, not tone suckers. Certainly it can not do everything, but does much more than I had expected so is not a copy guitar -- it is it's own animal.

I'm very pleased at the way the kit came. The amount of adjustment to set action, intonation, etc, was well within my ability and really was all I had to do in that respect. Assembly took little time. 99% of the time was consumed on finish. Since the swamp ash has open pores, and since I had read it is hard to finish with tung oil, I elected to used a water-based lacquer over a wood pore filler. Keeping the finish level, thin, and not sanding through the layers was a big task, and I, in the end, had to settle for less than factory-perfect results, given my less than state-of-the-art work area. Nevertheless, I am happy with the results, or overlook the blems, which would come with age anyway! Tung oil on the neck, by contrast, was a piece of cake and I took my time and followed the clear instructions.
Rating: 9 as the finish was my deal....If you choose alder, you can simplify your life -- a lot.

I would use this guitar in a live setting (assuming I was invited!) I might want to change out to strap locks just for the extra security

Well, Carvin did not call me and it languished for a while-- until I bugged them only to find out it had been ready some time already. They were cool about it and by way of apology gave me a case for free, so I can't complain.
All the parts were per my instructions. No mistakes

Hm... playing far too long for the level I'm at, or maybe not playing near enough for all the years I've owned guitars (since 1975)!
No regrets on this guitar; more versitile and fun to play than I expected. Besides the great sounds, the neck is really nice, and has good width (not too narrow like many Strats) and string bending, pull-offs, etc, are a pleasure. It's almost a shock to go back to the Strat as this neck has totally spoiled me.
I wanted a kit guitar to improve my luthier skills and knowlege of what goes on 'under the hood'. The ideas was to do further modifications including series/parallel. I'm pleased enough that I don't feel the need for more changes, though I am curious if I could squeeze more happy surprises out of this guitar -- and I think I could.

Hard to rate this since obviously you choose the features you get at Carvin and as for other stuff like finish that is up to you. This one specifically has three single coils and a fixed bridge though you can get a bridge humbucker and a tremolo.

Holy crap dude, this thing is awesome. I have been playing off and on for about 10 years now. My first guitar was a Fender Standard Tele made in Mexico and my second was a Fender Stratocaster Deluxe Hum - Hum. I replaced the pickups in both of those guitars with USA pickups from Fender and EMG respecitively, and originally I assumed I would replace the pickups in this one when I got it put together. I was wrong. This guitar's pickups are great. I have never played a guitar that is more versatile [and I will admit I certainly haven't played a lot of high end guitars] this thing can go from hard rock to Jazz with just the twist of the volume and tone knobs. Seriously, I love this guitar. I ended up spraying mine with a nitrocellulose paint job in surf green and really it is my only regret about this project. If I had it to do all over again I would just have rubbed some tung oil on the body like I did with the neck, that was really easy and worked very well. In any case, get the Carvin bolt kit, it is a sweet guitar that is affordable and has a lot of good sounds.

The setup is of course up to you as is the finish. As for things like the frets they are installed nice.

Hopefully I sprayed enough nitrocellulose lacquer on this thing that it will last a while but if not I will just make it look like a relic or else I will re-spray it.

Sent them an email once when I was finishing it and they responded promptly so I guess they deserve a 10.

If you want a quality guitar for under $500 get this and finish it with tung oil, it is so easy to put together and you won't believe how good it sounds considering you built it yourself. My brother played it and liked it more then his USA made G&L Legacy. Trust me, it really can stand toe to toe with the best out there. In the interest of full disclosure I have to admit I was actually skeptical when I ordered it, I really just wanted to see what finishing a guitar myself was like. I mean Carvin's add's remind me of Amway for some reason, but I ordered it anyway. I am happy I did. If you are looking for a quality axe you should too.

The standard features you get with the Bolt Kit are quite impressive. I purchased mine with significant upgrades. I added a Swamp Ash Body, C22B Humbucker in the bridge position, Birds Eye Maple fret board, Black Chrome Hardware, Sperzel Locking Tuners, and a White Pearloid Multi-Layered Pickguard. The guitar comes standard with a switch to allow between single coil and humbucker modes on the bridge pickup, as well as a standard "strat" style 5-way pickup selector switch, and one volume and one tone pot.

Building the guitar was a simple as Carvin says it is. I did a Tung Oil finish on the body and the back of the neck. The key is to be patient and apply at least 6 coats of Tung Oil to the body and no more than three coats to the back of the neck. This will take approximately 6 - 7 days. You can only apply one coat of Tung Oil per day. You need to do very light sanding between the last 3 coats on the body and after the first coat on the neck. Once the finish is complete the assembly is very easy. It takes less than an hour to assemble. The guitar was actually quite playable before I even took it to my local music store for a professional set up.

The guitar is capable of covering many styles....Rock, Blues, Country Twang to Jazz. The AP-11 single coils are slightly hotter than standard Strat pickups and also appear to be much quieter. The C22B Humbucker reminds me of a Gibson PAF. Very warm and yet can scream at higher distortion/verdrive settings. It cleans up nicely when you roll back the volume pot.

The guitar was a kit. The only issue I had was the pickups came wired out of phase but my local technician was able to correct the wiring. Other than this one isse there were no flaws.

This is a top notch professional guitar. I would play this guitar in a live setting without hesitation. The playability is very good. I have no complaints at all. The overal quality of this guitar is much greater than the price paid.

I have no isses with Carvin and I have purchased other products from them as well. I find them well informed about their products and quitehelpful.

Awesome guitar. I plan on buying another one to build. For the money I paid compared to the many other guitars I own it is the best guitar I have ever owned.

This guitar was assembled by its original owner and I had bought it from him off of Ebay. It has a walnut body instead of the usual alder. Fixed bridge. It came with Rio Grandes in the neck and middle positions and an Evolution in the bridge. I replaced the Evolution with a Duncan Alnico pro 2 and wired it for series/parallel/split. The rest is your standard bolt kit. With the 3 pickups and the 3 options at the bridge, this thing is very versitile. Has a wide/thin neck, similar to the Ibanez wizard.

I play mostly rock to hard rock and this thing works great for that style. I tried many different Duncans in the bridge before I settles on the AP2. The guitar sounds great. It seems to accentuate the lower midrange. Sometimes I wish it had more upper midrange but I'm just being extremely picky when I say that. I like to play old stuff like Aerosmith and Rush. It can do the 70's sounds great with the vintage pickups I have in it. I'm sure it could do modern too when loaded with the right pickups.

The guy who assembled it did a great job. I've had the guitar apart many times, had the neck off it many times and it goes together nice and tight. Adjusted the truss rod once 2 years ago. Stays in tune great. Very solid and giggable feeling. I don't baby it.

Very solid. Some people complain about the quality of the switches and pots. I have replaced all of mine. It doesn;t cost that much if you do it yourself.

Haven't used them but I've heard good and bad.

Been playing for 30 years. I have had Explorers, flying vees, sg's, Strats, Schecters, a Martin solidbody electric (rare) and various others I can't remember. No Les Pauls, sorry, they never felt comfortable to me. This is the one I've liked the most and its the only electric I own anymore. I keep going into music stores and trying all kinds of Fenders and everything else out there. I'm sure I could find something that sounds better for about $3000 but I have yet to find something that I can play better. The necks on these things just blow Fender and Gibson to hell!

Finish was done by me, so N/A on that. Strat body style, slightly scaled down. Hardtail bridge. Carvin standard tuners. Beefy neck, but shaped for shredding...very friendly to the hand. Built it in 1997. 22 frets. Volume, tone, 5-way selector, and toggle switch for bridge pickup always on (yields 7 different pickup configurations). Originally bought it with HSS configuration, but preferred SSS configuration. Alder w/ maple neck & ebony fretboard. I've toyed with the idea of making the toggle switch into a series switch for the bridge and middle pickups, but haven't tried this yet.

Great sounding guitar. I play through a Marshall JCM800 or a Peavey Classic 50, depending on my mood, and I boost the gain with a TS9. I originally got the guitar with the C22T in the bridge. Sounded kinda blah with that particular bridge PU, so I later bought a 3-single-coil PU pickguard and stuck one of the AP11 single-coils in the bridge and the bridge pickup sound improved dramatically. I also tried one of their M22SD's in the bridge, but it was too "metal" for my taste and the guitar lost too much of its shimmer. The three AP11's are by far the best-sounding "stock" configuration for this guitar, IMO. It's like a strat on steroids...it retains much of the strat character, except it has BIG BALLS. Roll off the tone knob slightly, and you can get a nice EVH scream out of it, even though it's a single-coil in the bridge. It leaves me asking the question "Who needs humbuckes?" Very versatile guitar, although I'd recommend a bridge 'bucker for brootal distortion if that's your bag...otherwise I highly recommend the 3-single PU version, even if you're not a single-coil fan. It has a little of the single-coil buzz, but nowhere near as much as a Strat's. I play old-school heavy guitar rock, and it's perfect for that. I also got the hardtail version and this thing SUSTAINS like no other strat-style guitar I've ever played.

Guitar plays great. I bought the guitar in 1997 when they first came out, so it's got the older shredder-style neck. Factory setup is kinda N/A because I had to build the thing, but once I got it set up it played great. One beef, though...the "D" string slot in the nut was cut too deep and sometimes I get a bad open D buzz. This is the second Carvin guitar I've owned and this is also the second time I've had this problem. Get it right, Carvin! I did the tung oil finish, and if I can do it, anyone can. I am no woodworker. Neck fits perfectly in the neck pocket. I have yet to see another bolt-on that fits that well.

I've dropped this thing on concrete by accident, and while it scuffed the finish (easily fixed...it's tung oil) it didn't even go out of tune. By far, the most solid guitar I've owned. Holds a tune for weeks. I've had it for nine years and played numerous gigs with it and it has never let me down.

Carvin customer support is kinda weak. I've emailed them several times asking various questions and never ever got a response.

Overall a huge, huge bang for your buck. While based on the strat design, this guitar is its own animal. It will do the strat thing, but don't expect to get the exact same tone, because it's a much beefier sounding guitar than a strat, even with the three single-coils. I've been playing for 25 years, and it's easily the best strat-style guitar I've owned. I might prefer if it had a full-size body (it's slightly scaled down from a strat), but other than that it's superb. If I had the $$$, I'd buy a second one just to have one to grab if I break a string at a gig.

I built this in the Spring of 2005. It has a humbucker with coil tap in bridge position and two single coils. Hardtail bridge, no whammy bar. Got the cheaper form fitted case with it for half price. Pretty much the same features as a fat strat, plus the coil tap. As electric guitars go, you can't get much more versatile than this.

Sound is awesome. I use it with various distortion pedal and through a Roland Micro-Cube (best investment I ever made) and a Fender tube amp. I really like these pickups and don't find them a lot different from Fenders. I think its great for blues, rock, rockabilly etc...Same things that a USA Strat would be good for.

You can build this guitar. It was really almost too easy. I found myself wishing for more of a challenge when I was done. I did the tung oil finish and I highly recommend you do too. Action and setup were great. This is the best playing guitar I have ever owned, including pre-CBS Fenders. One thing to keep in mind though. Be sure this is what you want before you buy, because regardless of how good it comes out, the resale value (for instance on ebay) is very poor.

It is very solid and will last a very long time.

It took a really long time to get this, like about 6 weeks! And they charged my credit card as soon as I ordered which I thought was kind of dink. They were nice, just slow.

Fun to do, almost too easy and you will have an excellent guitar if you do your part. No resale value. I recommend that you buy this kit.

2004 Carvin Bolt Kit Made in MY SHED, USA, parts, made in USA

construction/scale bolt-on neck, 25 1/2" scale
body Alder
neck Hardrock Maple, graphite reinforced
neck width 1.69" wide @ nut, 2.22" wide @ 22nd fret
fingerboard ebony - 12" radius
inlays standard dot
hardware Chrome
bridge FT6 feed through body fixed
frets 22 medium jumbo .103" wide X .048" tall
pickups 2 - Ap11 single coil 1- Bridge C22 Humbucker
electronics master volume and tone, 5 way selector + mini switch
tuners- I added Schaller non-locking tuners
color black stain, clear gloss fast drying urethane
guitar dimensions 38.75" long, 12.5" wide body, 1.75" thick body
weight 7.25 lbs

Inculded truss wrench, strings (9-42), and 2 picks

Play mostly Clasic Rock, Rock, Blues, and Alternative. Suits some of my styles, mainly Classic running distortion. Pickups don't sound like strat, louder and more defined. Guitar is NOT noisy at all, I also soldered (tacked) control cavity copper foil shielding together in 5 places. Pick ups are bright and clear. A fair variety between the Hum and singles. I'll probably change pickups, as I always change them on any guitar I own. I felt the Hum lacked "punch".

I set it up and did finish work (DON'T TRY ANY FINISH EXCEPT TUNG OIL!), so depending on your set up skill level, the guitar will play accordingly. Carvin does do a "pre-setup" that could be close. I had to raise bridge saddles on mine to eliminate fret buzz, and a slight truss rod tweak. Wood quality was excellent, controls good, neck was EXCELLENT. Action was low, as I set it up, the laser straight neck made low action possible.

One note: DO NOT attempt a non TUNG OIL FINISH unless you're an auto painter, or have equal experience. My embassing story took 4 tries, and a half baked job, complete with runs, sags, and orange peal is the result. Does not "hurt" anything except my pride.

Very well built- would gig, if I played live.

Called them a few times, better them some large companies, try actually TALKING to Fender or Gibson. Kit, so parts only warranty.

I've played for 2 years, I run this thru a Fender Bules Jr, with a SansAmp GT2, sounds good with stock pickups, but I'll change the Bridge at least. More precise than a Fender strat, fret work EXCELLENT, the neck is my favorite part, plays great, pups most least fav part. Great price/preformance value here. Best under $500.00 guitar that I can think of, period. If you're a little handy, and have the time, buy it and build it. Just use the TUNG Oil finish method, otherwise, you may be sorry.

This is a follow up to a previous submission. I've replaced the Carvin pickups (C22B in bridge and TBH60s in the neck and middle) with a set of Lace Hot Gold sensors (6k, 6k, and 13k). I use a 250k volume pot and no tone controls. I've also installed a mini-switch allowing me to select the bridge and middle pickups in series and the brdige and neck pickups in series.

The tone is a LOT more vintage than before. The Carvin pickups were great for very fat overdriven tones, but didn't really do the trick for bluesier, classic rock sounds. The Lace sensors are great in that capacity. You will find that the tone is much brighter than the one provided by the Carvin pickups, but there's not much loss in bass, if any. Thus, you will probably lower the treble control on your amp and/or pedal(s). The series wiring option allows me to get heavier tones (more mids) when needed. I recommend this modification to you bolt owners.

Alder body, maple neck, ebony fretboard, standard tuners, graphite/teflon nut, white pearl pickguard, twin-blade humbuckers (single-coil size) in neck and middle positions, C22B full-size humbucker in bridge position, hardtail bridge, custom wiring (installed 2 mini-switches to have neck and middle pickups in series and/or out-of-phase with each other). The "10" rating is given becuase this guitar has all the features that suit my needs.

I play jazz-rock/fusion and blues. This guitar seems very well suited to these styles. I can get VERY heavy sounds as well as more elegant clean tones.

The twinblade humbuckers sound true to Carvin's description of them, meaning they offer nice and crisp clean tones, albeit with more mids than your typical single-coil pickup. This makes for a "fuller" sound that still retains some of the crispness of single-coils. With heaps of overdrive, these pickups offer powerful and crisp sounds that one wouldn't easily produce with standard single coils.

The neck and middle pickups wired in series provides a very rich and powerful sound with very littel treble - great for situations when the guitar is the dominant instrument and you don't want the screach of the brdige humbucker to cut your audience's heads off. These same two pickups in series but out-of-phase produce a hollow/piercing yet powerful sound (Brian May used this sound for the first solo in Bohemian Rhapsody).

Selecting the bridge and middle pickups together automatically shuts off one of the bridge humbucker's coils, making for great "quack." The bridge humbucker, when selected alone, offers great saturated sounds that have more pronounced highs than my Les Paul (of course, this could be attributable to many different factors).

So far, I've played this guitar through a Tech 21 Trademark 10 practice amp and through my live rig (Vintage Rat into a Fender all-tube Concert II head driving 2 celestion-loaded 2x12 cabs) at high volume. Sounds good in both setups.

The action and finish are largely determined by the customer since it's a kit guitar. The instructions are very easy to follow. If you take your time following the wood finishing instructions, you can get a very elegant looking guitar.

The fit is the only area in which I have a complaint. All components fit perfectly together (including the fret work, which is done at the factory), except for the neck joint. This may sound like a big deal, but in my case it really wasn't. Essentially, the neck seems to be ever so slightly misaligned relative to the body, although it has no impact on the sound nor on the playability fo the guitar. I could always put a tiny shim in the neck pocket, but I wouldn't want to alter the guitar's sound.

Carvin should be regarded as one of the most csutomer-friendly guitar companies out there.

I've been playing for over 14 years. I've owned Ibanez "super strat" guitars, Fender American strats, a Gibson Les Paul Standard, a Godin Acousticaster, and a Yamaha electro-classical. This guitar is unique and can clearly "hold its own" in the company of my other guitars. If it were lsot or stolen, I'd get another one for sure! The aspect I probably love the most about it right now is that I put it together myself and it plays very well. Gotta be proud of myself.

2004 Bolt Kit
Alder body
Maple fingerboard
2 AP11 single coil in neck and middle
1 C22B humbucker in bridge
Gold hardware
Sperzel tuners
Wilkinson bridge

Carvin does offer many features on their kits that are not listed on their site. So if you don't see something listed, call them they may be able to accomodate you. Just for the variety of features offered, I'll give them a high mark

These pickups are utter crap. Very easily the WORST SOUNDING pickups I have ever used. And believe me that is saying something because I'm generally not that fussy. The C22B especially, is essentially garbage. The sound is extremely thin, no balls at all. The single coils are also very thin.

The neck is awesome. Its the best thing about the guitar. Its a very fast neck. The rest of the guitar, well.... lets just say I bought the kit to get some experience in building guitars. So in that case I suppose I got my moneys worth because I'm getting a lot of experience and practice trying to set up this thing properly. However I never expected to have this many problems with it. The neck joint seemed a little loose, tuners rattling, strings buzzing, action REALLY high, bridge saddles needing major adjustment,etc etc etc etc . Again its a good learning experience, but don't think for a minute you're just going to slap this thing together and be ready to play. It will need A LOT of adjustments.

As durable as any other guitar I've owned I suppose. It hasn't fallen apart yet.

The WORST. First off it took 12 WEEKS FOR A FREAKING BOLT KIT. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!! Their site says 2 to 4 weeks for kits. I called them every week after week 4 and was always told "uh......it will be shipped next week" TWELVE WEEKS LATER IT FINALLY ARRIVES. Oh correction there were a couple times where the rep said "Uh....I don't know, the guy in charge of that is not here right now. We'll have to call you back next week, and let you know whats happening" What a JOKE!!! The service reps are basically useless. Waiting 12 weeks for a freaking bolt KIT. If I could give less than 1 I would. The worst company I've ever had to deal with, BY FAR. And what really pisses me off was that about 6 weeks after I ordered the kit they cut prices for the kits by 50$ or so. When I called to complain that since I've been waiting 12 weeks for it I should get a 50$ refund. They never did get back to me about that complaint.

Been playing 14 years. Own 5 other guitars. The only thing I love about this guitar is the neck.

I just can not get a decent sound out of this guitar regardless of how much adjusting I do. I've tried different amps, different setups, I've tried everything. It just sounds so freaking thin.

I am learning a lot about setting up and repairing guitars from this though, so I suppose that is the one bright side of this whole ordeal. Because of the absolute piss poor customer service I've received at Carvin, I will never use them again. I intend on building more guitars in the future and will definately go elsewhere for the parts, without question. I will never shop at Carvin again, ever