Product: Carvin Contour 66
Price Paid: US $1200
Submitted
02/21/2003
at
11:18am
by
Anonymous
Email: musecrafter at hotmail<dot>com
Features
:
10
Made in the USA 2003. This guitar has 22 jumbo medium frets with abalone block inlays. It has a master volume knob, two tone knobs - one for the magnetic pick-ups and one for the piezo, and one blend knob to blend the two types of pick-ups. It has two coil splitters and one phase switch. The pick-up configuration is H/H with a Fishman piezo bridge. The pick-ups are Carvin's C22 Humbuckers. It also has active electronics for the piezo. The neck is hard maple (bolt on) and the body is alder with optional cherry sunburst on quilted maple which is set off at the edges to produce a binding effect. The body style is "strat". Tuners are Sperzel.
Sound
:
10
This guitar truly does sound amazing! I play rock, blues, and fingerstyle. This guitar is more than up to the task. The fingerboard has very fast action. I haven't been able to reproduce my strats bridge pick-up (yet) but it has a very nice single coil sound. With it set "out of phase" and the pick-up selector in the middle it has a great crunchy gibson sound.
Action, Fit, & Finish
:
9
The action is the best I've seen yet! 1/16th of an inch. My only complaint about the factory set-up was with the strings. I like to whined an etra amount of the string to prevent slippage. The guy at the factory cut the strings too close and two of them slipped completely off the guitar. It was a total pain in the *** to set them back up without buying new strings. Everything else was perfect!
Reliability/Durability
:
10
This is a new model for Carvin so there isn't any history or reliability for this particular guitar but judging from the feel and looks it should hold up like any other professional instrument.
Customer Support
:
3
The folks at Carvin are friendly but the sales person I delt with never returned any of my calls. I find this to be unacceptable. This guitar comes with a 5 year warrenty.
Overall Rating
:
10
I've been playing for 17 years. I have a Strat and have had a LP Custom among many other guitars. I run my guitars through a PODxt into my Mac with Cubase. If it were lost or stolen I'd sell my other gear and buy another C66. Other guitars I looked at were LP Standard, Ernie Ball, Schlector, Ibanez. What do I love about it? How about EVERYTHING. I find myself staring at the quilt top as I'm putting it away. This guitar is SO beautiful!!!
