Carvin Contour 66

2006 Purchased new from the San Diego store. 2 humbucker, flame maple top w/ blue burst paint job, fixed bridge w/ string thru body. Not sure about the radius, nice and flat, but not overly flat. Excellent modern C type neck shape. Tung oil finish on neck.

Sounds excellent. I run it through a Carvin Legacy 1/2 stack and a VHT Ultralead 1/2 stack. I own many guitars and this one is the loudest unplugged guitar I have. It is light and extremely resonant. When held next to my body, I can strum an open chord and the body vibrates like crazy. Very well balanced sound. Not too much of any one thing. I really love the tone knob. Most guitars have a tone knob that is useless. You know, like when you turn it down it just sucks all the highs out and it sounds like a mess. NOT this one. It really changes the tone. WOW!! Imagine that, a tone knob that actually changes the tone, for the better.

Well, typical Carvin fare here. Awesome. The best neck I have played on, hands down. It is so smooth to play on, I can't really put into words what it feels like. Frets are PERFECT!! Steve Vai said in an interview talking about his EVO guitar, that sometimes when you pick up a certain guitar, it feels just perfect. The playability, way it feels against your body, the balance. It feels like home. Strange way to put it I suppose, but I now know what he was talking about. I play, and love ALL my guitars very much, but after playing the other ones for a while, when I come back to this one it feels just....right.

I have only had it a couple of months, so I can't really rate it yet. There is nothing about this guitar that would make me think that it would be undependable.

Great. I have since ordered another guitar and bought a couple of amps from them and they are great. I had a problem with an amp, and they sent some tubes out right away.

Played for 20 years, and I have finally just discovered Carvin. I was always turned off because I felt like they were second rate for some reason. I don't know if it is that they are less expensive or what. I finally decided to give them a try and I am very happy that I did. They are one of the only manufacturers that really and truly care about musicians. If they were in it for just the money, they would have guitars in every Guitar Center in the country. They would have expanded and sent much of their manufacturing overseas. They haven't done that. All they do it make a great product that is affordable. I got a guitar for cheaper than a lot of Korean made LTD's. I don't care what anyone says, LTD's are junk. I can't believe that people spend a grand on one of those, when they could have a guitar like this. If I would've wanted an ESP or Jackson with these same specs, it would've cost me over $2000. Even then I wouldn't have been able to choose any of the options that you can with Carvin. If you want that from those other companies, now you're into the "custom shop" and are staring at a $3500 minimum. What a joke. For anyone thinking about Carvin, but are concerned about the lack of "image" they have, do what I did. I pulled my head out of my a#@ and gave them a chance. It was the best thing I have done, as far as my playing is concerned, in my 20 years as a musician.

I ordered the guitar in April 2005 using Carvin's on-line process. As I specified what options I wanted, I have to give this a high rating. The only items I wanted that were not available were trim rings for the pickups.

Standard Features include:
C22 humbucking pickups with 5 position pickup selector allowing both humbucking and single coil modes
Alder body with maple top
Bolt on maple neck with tung oil finish
Sperzel locking tuners
Ebony fret board


I added the following items:
Quilted maple top with cherry sunburst finish
Dunlop "low wide" frets
Abalone block inlays
Gold hardware

The combination of single coil and humbucking pickups is very effective. I prefer to use single coils for chording and humbucking mode for lead lines. The sound is very crisp but full at the same time. The sound stays the same even when you roll back the volume with no loss of highs.

As can be expected, there is a drop in signal level with the single coils and there is a little bit of background noise. Not bad and not unusual.

I haven't heard many bridge pickups that I really like but these sound good to my ear. I have an old LP with the small humbuckers and the bridge pickup almost sounds brittle to me. The Carvin bridge pickup has a fuller sound.

I use a couple of old Music Man amps and the Contour really works well with them. With the amp turned up it is easy to get good distorted tones.

The pickup selections are:
Neck Humbucking
Neck Single Coil
Neck and Bridge Single Coils wired for Humbucking
Bridge SIngle Coil
Bridge Humbucking

The center position - both single coils together for humbucking mode - sounds somewhat different than what you get with two humbuckers and the pickup selector set to the middle. Not quite as much of an out of phase sound as with humbuckers only.

It is hard to describe what it is like playing this guitar - almost smooth like glass. Although I chose "low wide" frets, they are not like what you sometimes see on a Les Paul. These have a nice crown and have no buzzes, rattles, etc. The action is great. Bending strings is clean and it is easy to get good vibrato.

I don't know the radius of the fretboard, but it feels very flat.

This is my first guitar with a neck finished with tung oil. Between the frets, radius and finish, the neck easy on the hands.

The abalone inlays look great.

There are no flaws that I can find in the finish of the guitar. The binding effect on the top is a nice touch. The quilted maple top with sunburst stain also looks great and the scuplted body makes the guitar comfortable to play.

This is not a complaint - only a comment. The finish on the guitar looks like polyurethane or something similar. Not as fancy as the finish on my LP, but probably much more durable.

Only two minor issues:
1). The ouput jack seems to come loose and allows the cable to wiggle (or maybe I need to use a little more torque the next time I tighten it ?).
2). The tops of the coils of the neck pickup were not parallel. Given the quality of the rest of the guitar, this is a little odd. No issue with the sound so I never bother to see if they would replace it.

This guitar seems to be solidly built and looks like it would last a long time. The Sperzel tuners are really effective in keeping the guitar in tune. The bridge appears solid - nothing rattling or buzzing. I have never tried to adjust the string height or intonation so I don't know how easy it is to make corrections.

I haven't gigged with the guitar so I don't know how it would stand up to use on the road. Nothing I have seen would indicate that it wouldn't hold up. I got the vintage case - nice looking but the ABS case would probably hold up better in the long run.

I don't have major issues with Carvin, but considering they depend on direct sales for their business I am surprised the process of checking on the status of the guitar was not easier. I called a couple of times in the middle of the day and was told that they guys in the shop had gone home for the day and that there was no way to check on the completion date. I eventually spoke with someone who seemed to have a clue and got an answer and great follow up. It was almost like they assigned the new guy to answer the phones - someone just learning the ropes.

Compared to a lot of the crappy service that is common today, they weren't bad. I just expected better.

I started paying guitar in high school but didn't keep up with it once I went off to school, got married, had kids - all that stuff. Although I have had guitars for about 40 years, I haven't got anywhere near that amount of time invested in playing.

I like just about any kind of music with lots of guitar in it. I have seen Johnny Winter more times than I care to count - 15+. Johnny Lang and Kenny Wayne Sheppard rank pretty high was well.

I started getting Carvin catalogs when I was a kid. I have an old, beat up Gibson Victory that I love and wanted to find something similar (single and humbucking modes). The Contour 66 doesn't sound the same, but works out well for me.

I looked at lots of guitars over the past couple of years - Les Pauls, Firebirds, SGs, PRSs, Teles and just about anything else they had at the Guitar Center near my office. Nothing really made me want to spend my money until I saw the Carvin catalog with the Contour 66. It was a leap of faith buying the guitar without ever seeing one in person. Even though I wasn't really impressed with their Customer Service people, the guitar is great and I would do it again.

Other guitars - 75 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe, Gibson Victory, Epiphone Dot, Ovation Preacher Deluxe, Baldwin/Burns Vibraslim. (I grew up in Cincinnati - home to Baldwin - and my guitar instructor had one. Bought it used. Hard to play but sounds great. )

In additon to the Music Man amps I have a Mesa Subway Blues and Roland VG5.

This is a 2005 Contour 66, USA made in California.
22 frets with a laminate (ultra-thin, no noticeable tone effects) flame-maple top.
Mine has a volume and tone knob (I opted for black strat-knobs), and a five-way pickup selector for the HSH configuration. I have the C22B-AP11-H22N config, and I love it, I would even disagree with some of the negatives about this config. I'll discuss those more in "sound".
Passive electronics.
Body is alder with said maple cap, maple neck, and rosewood fingerboard.
Finish is translucent greenburst over the maple with faux-binding (the finish is offset on the top to highlight the flamed maple around the fringe).
Strat-style body with a hard-tail bridge.
Sperzel locking tuners.
25.5 scale with medium jumbos.
All hardware is gold, btw.

I agree about the "not so custom" comment. Though I got the options that I wanted on the instrument, it would be nice if HSS were available, as well as several other options.

Stylistically, I cover a lot of ground. For church, this axe does a great job of "drying up" and sounding "acoustic enough" in the mix (when necessary). I'm very pleased with the crisp attack.

For personal stuff, the instrument really runs all over the place. The humbuckers are strong on their own, but they stand out in the in-between positions. Many have complained that Carvin's non-traditional wiring (positions two and four couple FULL humbucking with the middle, not just one coil) is unusable, but I've been quite satisfied with the consistency of output and quality of sound.

I play this thing through a Carvin solid-state amp, and it really sounds phenomenal. The cleans are indescribably beautiful, and the distorted tones are nice, full, and crisp. I'm sure the bolt-on neck helps with the crispiness. I rarely use effects, so my opinions aren't much affected by them.

There IS some noise in the instrument on positions 2 through 4, but this is expected because of the odd number of coils in use. Otherwise, the instrument is pristine, and even that hum is barely noticeable, even in a quiet church.

The sound is closer to the bright end of the spectrum, but awfully close to the middle.

Carvin typically does a great job in this category (I've owned two others), and they didn't disappoint this time. Some minor truss adjustment was needed, but this is a given when the guitar is coming from Southern California to Southside Virginia.

The pickups were adjusted perfectly, though this is more of a subjective issue.

As always with Carvin, the top is beautifully matched and the bridge is routed to perfection.

No flaws.

My Carvins have always stood up to the test of vigorous play, and this one is doing a fine job. The strap buttons are Dunlop Straploks, and they'll do just fine.

Only a fool would go to a gig without an extra instrument. I've always hated that question. Do I think it will break in the middle of a song? No.

Carvin is always friendly, and a handful of people are even pretty knowledgeable, but it seems that the majority of people that you get on the phone don't know this from that. I suppose this might be expected from salespeople in a rapidly growing enterprise, but it has certainly declined since my last orders 4 years ago. This is not a good thing when the website fails to list all available options. The salespeople need to be on top of the latest developments so that buyers don't find out weeks later that they could have had something that they really wanted.

The warranty is great, and so is the 10 day guarantee.

A 6, simply for the predominantly ignorant sales staff.

Is anything ever perfect? The Carvin satisfies to the extreme, and nothing comes close for the money, but I refuse to say that this would be better than something that I designed myself for myself.

I've been playing for 8 years. I currently own another Carvin (DC127FA) and an LTD DV8-R (sweepstakes prize).

I got what I wanted on this guitar because I talked to the right people. Calling several times and talking to several folks always helps.

Of course I would replace the thing, it's my main axe! I will always buy more Carvins because I can count on getting a quality, well-set-up player's axe for a decent price.

I love the feel and the crisp attack. I hate the fact that I couldn't get it with the tune-o-matic bridge option. My favorite feature is the general feel of the instrument. It's entirely comfortable.

It was either this or an EBMM, and I went with Carvin because of my previous experience and the options/money ratio. I still want some EBMMs, but sometime down the road.

I wish it had the M option (tune-o-matic bridge w/ string-through-body).

Mine is an alder body, flamed maple top with matching headstock. Color is black stain.

Pickups are a C22 bridge and an H22 (holdsworth) neck. Do NOT get this combo for this guitar. That combo may sound great for their CT models..but for me...the C66 doesn't work with this combo. Sound isn't very balanced between the pickups. Locking tuners...strap locks..etc. The neck is the best I've played. I love it..ebony is so smooth...even if a little bright and snappy.

You get the features you select when ordering. You basically get it the way you want. So feature wise..it's only as good as you make it. Mine is perfect for me. However, I kind of regret not getting the middle position single coil. Oh well...next time.

I had no idea about woods when I ordered. Alder body..maple top..and ebony fretboard make for a VERY bright and snappy guitar. Punchy as heck too...but not as warm as I'm used to. My fault...I spec'd it out when I ordered it. I do love the tone though. My musician friends complemented me on it heavily at the first gig I used it at.

Action was high from the factory...strings were barely loosened when I opened the case...I had to have a tech do a setup that I like on my guitars. The flamed headstock overlay wasn't glued down too well in a small spot. It's barely noticeable...but come on Carvin...you guys should do better quality control like Suhr or Anderson if you really want to match up to them. The C66 is basically Carvin's answer (clone) to their guitars. Carvin has to produced a lot of guitars each year..so they don't have time...(or probably the overhead) to nit-pick every teenie tiny small detail. A guitar tech friend of mine said the headstock overlay is stupidly simple to fix. So I'm not sending it back to Carvin.

Carvin is famous amoung internet message boards for having crummy electronics. Mine are fine for now...but they are getting changed soon. ALong with a new set of Duncan Pickups...the Carvin PU's are a joke. (to my ears)

I think this guitar will last and perform extremely well for the next 10 yrs. I take care of my guitars like they are children, so it should last. Strap buttons are solid. I'm not sure about the finish. The maple cap is pretty thin. I hope it doesn't start looking like ass...but only time will tell.

Carvin was helpful on the phone and believe it or not..the completion date on my post card mailed to me after I ordered was DEAD ON. It finished and shipped on time. Perfect timing for a gig I had. The sales team I dealt with was good too. No issues.

# How long have you been playing? What other gear do you own?
# Is there something you wish you had asked before buying this guitar?
# If it were stolen or lost, would you buy it again or get something else? - Yes I would...it's a great guitar.
# What do you love about it? What do you hate? What is your favorite feature? - Love the ease of playability..hate the brightness...but oh well...
# Did you compare it to other guitars? Which ones? Why did you choose this one? - For the price...you can't beat Carvin. You really can't...for the price I paid I would have gotten a very modest guitar from another top name company that starts with an "F". My Carvin is way beyond their stuff.
# Anything you wish it had? - I wish it came stock with Seymour Duncan Pickups...Carvin PU's are just weak.
# Anything else you'd like to share? - The best band for your buck guitar on the market. You simply can't beat the vaule.

c-66 Made in Carvin's custom shop. Swamp Ash body, quilted maple cap, Floyd Rose, Hum-single-hum pickup config., maple neck, birdseye maple fretboard, quilted headstock covering.

5 way switch, volume and tone control. Finished in transparent blue. I requested the stainless steel frets.

I rated Carvin an 8 due to their "Custom Shop" tag line. While most options are available, a true custom shop offers unlimited features. Some features are limited to certain models. I was disappointed to learn the Floyd came fully floating, no surface mount. I was also disappointed to see the neck was available only with birdseye fretboard, rather than birdseye neck.

With the swamp ash body/maple neck/stainless steel frets, its bright sounding. Granted, this is to be expected. The pickups were warm and full sounding. Acoustically the guitar resonates well. You can really feel the neck quiver as you strum chords. I did replace the bridge pickup with a Dimarzio humbucker to give it a little more "omph". That said the bridge pickup is quite usable.

The guitar was setup great from the factory. It came with the Elixir Strings. Personally I find the Elixir's hit and miss in regards to quality. The "d" string was dead out of the box. With a quick replacement of the entire set, the guitar was up and running. I can't fault Carvin for string failure.

The finish, fit, quality of construction is excellent. As a guitar builder and repairman I'm very critical of the setups and final assembly. That said, the guitar was excellent.

I've never had a problem with Carvin's instruments. Other than setups, they've always been very reliable.

Great sales staff. That said, their follow up in regards to delivery questions, completion dates, left alot to be desired.

Overall I'd give them a solid 8.5 with the only drawbacks being the unfortunate customer service and somewhat limited "custom" features.

I've been playing 25 years and from a repair shop standpoint, Carvin guitars are a great bargin. I compare most guitars to my Ernie Ball MusicMans and my Taylors. These, in my opinion, are some of the finest production guitars in terms of quality, consistency and reliablity. The Carvin comes very close.

This guitar was manufactured in the California factory in 2003 and is in essance a super strat. It has a 22 fret, 25 1/2" scale maple neck that is finished in tung oil and has an ebony finger board and a traditional 3x3 headstock. The body is made out of two pieces of alder and a flame maple cap, with a faux binding (clear coated on the side). It is finished in a cherryburst. It has active electronics (with a push/pull pot installed in the volume control to deactivate), a three way switch, a coil tap for each pickup and a phase switch. It came with the C22N and C22B humbucker pickups and a beige finish. The bridge is a Wilkinson Tremelo, and the tuner are Sperzel locking tuners. The case was included free and all options were 50% off for US and Canadian customers. I rated this a 7 because the standard features are very good, but since Carvin guitars are made to order, this category can really be as good as you like. Personally, I would rate my own guitar a 10 for me, because it has everything I could ever possibly want.

The active electronics are dead quiet (when the guitar is humbucking). The range of controls means that there really isn't a sound that this guitar can't get at least close to. When playing through the pickups as single coils, they do buzz. The neck pickup is definatly better than the bridge, which I find to be too hot.

This guitar was shipped to my house from the factory and arrived setup perfectly. Even after the transcontinental journey (I live in Florida) it still arrive tuned a half a step low. The bookmatching on the maple top is very nice and to my liking.

I am currently a studio musician, so I don't gig and thus don't take a backup with me. If I was gigging, I probably would anyway, not because this guitar is lacking, but because that just seems like the smart thing to do. I added strap locks, because I don't want to take chances with an instrument this beautiful.

I have never dealt with the customer support though it is supposed to be excellent. This guitar comes with a five year warranty, and I have known people who have had their entire electronics or pickups replaced and shipped to them.

I have been playing for seven years. In the past I have owned a pawn shop special, a Ibanez RG 120, a Fender Cyclone, a Ovation Acoustic/Electric, and two Alvarez Acoustic guitars. This is the most expensive guitar I have ever owned, but it is also by far the best. This guitar plays better than Les Pauls that cost two and a half times more than it does. If it was stolen I would buy another, but most likely off ebay, where they are available quiet cheaply.

Carvin's answer to Tom Anderson, John Suhr et al. 22 fret bolt-on strat style with direct-mount humbuckers, ebony fingerboard, satin finish neck, blueburst AAA maple top on alder body with scraped "binding", matching headstock overlay, Sperzel tuners, chrome hardware and hardtail bridge with thru/body stringing. Passive volume, tone and 5 way selector for both humbucking and single coil tones.

This is the most basic setup Carvin offers for this model, but it has everything I want and need. There are a number of options, but they cost extra.

I'm a jack of all trades and this guitar sounds great with the stock C22 pickups. Its bright, snappy acoustic tone -- thanks to the ebony and maple construction -- translates well when played clean through an amp. If you favor a darker tone, the snappiness is easily tamed with the passive tone control. Much variety can be achieved with the 5-way selector. Both pickups play well with my distortion toys - BD-2, Tubescreamer, Big Muff.

I like the individual single-coil settings too, though they produce some noise. The neck single coil setting is suitably airy and works with jazzy material. Through stompboxes, the bridge single-coil offers a bright, glassy alternative to the crunchier mid-heavy overdriven tones of the bridge humbucker setting.

This guitar is perfect and perfectly set up. Seriously. The flame maple top is beautiful, the blueburst is nicely graduated and the finish and "binding" flawless. Pickup routs are clean, hardware is very solid and firmly attached. No gaps in the neck joint. Frets are all properly seated, crowned and polished. Quality-wise, this specimen is every bit as good as any boutique maker's effort.

Playability is where the instrument really shines. The satin finished neck has a profile that's slightly sleeker than a strat neck while retaining enough girth to maintain a Fenderish feel. It's a really good compromise between a shredder's toothpick and a traditionalist's baseball bat. The body, which has a "bent" top and a radical body cut, is ergonomic without looking space-age. All edges on the bridge are smoothly rounded, so there's no discomfort resting your palm there.

The build quality inspires confidence; we'll see. It's medium weight and feels solid.

IME, Carvin staff are very friendly and helpful over the phone. However, the website and its online ordering capabilities leave a lot to be desired.

I've been playing guitars for 19 years in every style imaginable and have owned and sold a variety of instruments, from G&L to Ibanez to Anderson. Sorry if I burst anyone's bubble, but in the custom Strat category, this CNC-carved mailorder instrument stands head to head against any guitar from any name maker du jour. You can pretty much cover any style requiring a solidbody electric with this one instrument: rock, funk, country, smooth jazz. It really is a fantastic value.

2004.
Options I got:
Mahogany body
Quilted maple top with Crimson Red stain; matching quilted headstock
Floyd Rose trem (no locking nut; graphite nut & sperzels do the trick)
Middle "hot rails"-style humbucker
Cream&black coil C22 humbuckers (including center p/u)
Abalone dot inlays

A nice feature in all new Carvin guitars is the SNAGG chip that's installed in the headstock. If your guitar is ever stolen, they can trace it back to you as the rightful owner if it ever shows up on the market somewhere.

This guitar sounds great. The C22 pickups are great when combined with the mahogany body. They're very "vintage" sounding; which is fine with me as I prefer a warmer, cleaner pickup signal and then let the amp do the work for distortion. The "split" positions tap coils in both the big humbuckers and the center pickup, so you can get some fairly strat-ish sounds if you choose. Having all the pickups direct mounted into the body offers far superior harmonics and tone in my opinion. Played through a variety of tube amps, the guitar will easily cover any hard rock/rock/blues/country thing you're looking to achieve. Those looking for over-the-top metal sounds may want to specify the M22SD bridge pickup; the C22's don't have a particularly "hot" signal.

This is what Carvin is all about. Finish is amazing, quilt top is gorgeous, fretwork is perfect. Action is 1/16" at 22nd fret. There's nothing about this guitar that isn't as close to perfect as you'll get. There were a couple of small flaws in the finish from the guitar being played in the factory showroom, but that wasn't Carvin's fault.

Seems as solid as any other guitar I own. All hardware is top-end.

Guys in the sales showroom were not what I'd call experts. I have no idea what the warranty is; I didn't ask. I've heard that Carvin's support isn't the greatest, but they've always seemed nice enough in my dealings with them.

I'd never owned a Carvin before, but had been getting the catalogs for years and waffled over the notion of ordering a custom-built guitar. I'd been visiting the San Diego production factory off and on for a few years while traveling on business, and tried lots of their guitars in the showroom. I've always been impressed, but was still nervous about ordering something and hoping that it would come out like I wanted. On my last trip to San Diego I stopped by again and there it was, hanging on the wall. The exact guitar I wanted. They were trying to sell it for $1300; I found a few flaws from it having been handled by customers and managed to talk them down to just over $800 including a hardshell case. This is a fabulous guitar that plays as well as anything else I own. I couldn't be happier.

Made in 2002 in USA
22Frets
C22 Humbuckers (H/H)
Maple body with binding
Satin Finish
Strat Style
Hard Tail Bridge
Sperzel Locking Tuners
Ebondy Fretboard on Maple Neck
Case Included

This guitar sounds amazing. I have played tons of diiferent guitars in this range of craftmenship and the C66 stands with the best. The action is amazing and the easy of play is what hooked me on this guitar. You can get full hard rock sounds and when you flip it into the neck positions the pickups put out clean warm tones that will turn anyones ear. Lots of variety in sounds. I love this guitar and will never get rid of it. This will be a collectors item in the future.

Set up was flawless.
Pickups were perfect in position
No flaws on the guitar when I purchased it from the Carvin store in Hollywood
The craftmenship on this guitar blew me away.
Carvin does a great job on their body work and the paint looks fantastic.
This is the kind of guitar that one would put in their lobby to show off.

This guitar is solid
I play out with it every week and it can take just about anything that i can throw at it

I dealt with the guys at the Hollywood store and they were fantastic

Fantastic Value!
If it were stolen I would weep and then search for the poor soul that took it until found. This guitar cannot be replaced.
I highly recommend this guitar

Manu. 2003 in USA.
22 Frets
1 volume control, 1 tone control, 5-way selector
Dual humbuckers- C22s
Passive electronics
Body- mahogany, top- maple, neck- maple
Quilted top
Strat body style
Floyd Rose Trem
Sperzel tuners
25.5 scale, thin, flat neck
OHC

Suits blues and classic rock playing styles well
Amp is Rivera Quiana 2x12, delay pedal
When front pu split- noisey
When bridge pu split- noisey
Middle position (inside pu on both hums selected)- noisey
Full neck pu- quiet
Full bridge pu- quiet
Rich sound, not bright, split pu's sound weak, full humbuckers sound good.
95% of the time, I play through the neck pu. Rolling the tone knob all the way down and maxing volume control knob produces strong classic rock tones (Sabbath, Cream, Zep). The bridge pu doesnt sound as good w/same settings, but not bad.

From factory, guitar just needed to be tuned. Everything else, including action, was fine.
PU height was fine.
Quilt top was less than inspiring. Other quilted Carvins Ive owned were of higher quality.
Bridge routing- fine.
Other than the quality of the piece of quilted maple on the top, the guitar has no flaws.

Withstand live playing? Yes.
Hardware quality is solid, no forseeable problems.
Only possible finish concern is painted headstock. Paint looks thin. For $1000, Carvin should deliver all maple top guitars with matching maple headstock.
Wouldnt ever play live w/o back up, no matter what guitar Im playing.

Carvin customer service blows. Dont believe the hype you read on their Web site/message board. This fact is documented well enough through other HC reviews. I could spend an hour documenting the problems I had with my order. The only satisfactory service I received was from the sales department. In the end, I got a good guitar for a fair price with horrible customer service.
Warranty- five years.

Playing on and off for 20 years.
If it was stolen, the only way Id get a new one is if they had the same model with the same features in-stock. Have no plans to order another Carvin from the "custom" shop.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!!!