 |
AC40
Acoustic Bass |
as featured in the February 1996
Bassics Magazine.
"The end result is that Carvin is producing excellent quality instruments in much greater quantities than the norm, at below norm costs."
The acoustic bass guitar has become popular of late, whether due to the "unplugged" resurgence or not, but acoustic music in general has prospered. Carvin recently introduced the AC line of semi-hollow acoustic basses, including the AC40 and AC40F (fretless), as well as the AC50 5-string and AC50F (fretless). I decided to check these instruments out, and paid a visit to their brand new facility in San Diego, California.
Carvin has always been known for its superb quality vs. cost, but I thought this was exclusively because of its factory-direct policy, eliminating the middle man. But this turned out to be only part of the picture. After 50 years of instrument production, Carvin has developed some state-of-the-art construction methods that not only save the consumer money, but provide incredible technical tolerances. All of their instruments, including the AC line, feature neck-through design, excellent woods, great sounding electronics, and precision surfaced fingerboards. Plus, as with many manufacturers, countless custom features are available. As you will discover upon further reading, a review of any Carvin guitar isn't complete without an examination of their construction process. When viewing any of their instruments, and especially when you take a real close look, a sense of something being almost too perfect occurs, and it's for good reason. Every element of a Carvin instrument seems painstakingly attended to, from the finish on both the neck and body, to the fret installation, even the radius of the fingerboard.
How can they create such a fine instrument for such a low price? Here's the skinny... After 4 years of development, Carvin has equipped its Fadal Engineering computerized CNC machine with the programming required to shape, rout, and prepare wood to incredible tolerances to come up with as close to perfect a guitar as can be produced. Every hole, cavity and physical structure is microscopically attended to. And then, a diamond surface grinder provides a uniform thickness tolerance of less than .001" from one end of the fingerboard to the other! This is not to infer that the human touch is irrelevant, in fact, Carvin discovered they needed even more people to complete the manufacturing process, because in addition to requiring humanoids to contribute to this automation, the many processes that people do best have been retained, like finishing, set-up, pickup winding, and many other installations. The end result is that Carvin is producing excellent quality instruments in much greater quantities than the norm, at below norm costs.
But back to the AC bass. Upon initial examination, some of the first things you notice are the thinness of the body and the fixed bridge construction. And since the pickups aren't visible, what's being utilized? The answers: instead of a full-bodied acoustic, which can introduce unwanted feedback and a boomy bottom end, the semi-hollow design was created not so much as a stand-alone acoustic instrument, but to provide a desirable amplified acoustic tone. Mahogany is employed for the neck, which runs through the body (also mahogany, and systematically hollowed-out), giving a smooth transitional heel for comfortable access all the way up to the 24th fret. And this design provides for an extremely comfortable weight of 6-1/2 lbs. Now that's my kinda' bass! As for the unadjustable ebony bridge, Carvin has succeeded in creating a viable setup, both in intonation as well as action setup (once again due to their painstaking attention to detail, no doubt), and the Fishman equipped piezo pickup provides a nice acoustic bass-type sound.
Electronics include a volume, bass boost/cut, and feature "normalized" active EQing that minimizes the effect on volume that tone controls can have. And lest we forget about strings&emdash; Carvin even took player feedback into account and decided that rather than use the bright, metallic strings that most electric basses utilize, they went with the acoustic quality of La Bella to produce a string that really works! I half expected these strings to bore me with their lack of high-end, but I have to agree with Carvin's decision, they work with this bass!
The AC40 bass I tested was a 4-string fretted finished in flamed sunburst, but as you can imagine, the fretless model I played at the factory enhanced the acoustic tone, so in addition to the 5-string fretless model (AC50F), my ideal version would include the optional quilted maple top, tortoise body binding, abalone block inlays and gold plated hardware. Other well-known Carvin features are also included, like the separate pop-up battery compartment (although this one was a bit tight), and the ultra-neat electronic shielded cavity. I used the AC40 in conjunction with Carvin's new 100-watt AG100-12 amp that was largely designed to compliment acoustic instruments (see following for more details), and set both the bass and amp EQ's at flat. I personally have always felt that if a bass or amp needs a lot of tonal tweaking, there's something amiss. As I mentioned, I had no qualm about the nylon strings, but especially now that I was amplifying the bass, I noticed some buzzing below the 5th fret, and had difficulty hearing the fundamental notes. This was due, as is common in new instruments (especially after shipping), to a bit of a back bow in the neck. But Carvin has made this easy to remedy with both an enclosed instruction sheet and a 1/4" socket screwdriver. A slight counter-clockwise turn of the driver, and voila, the buzzing was gone. As I walked (and ran) up and down the neck, I was greeted with a nice, solid tone. After playing with the tone controls, I settled on a nearly flat setting, with just a touch of treble boost. The acoustic tone was particularly noticeable above the 7th fret, where you get a nice woody growl.
I enjoyed this bass and apparently so did the other musicians I played with, both for its likable sound and appearance. Especially considering its low price point, this is a unique bass that's well worth looking at.
- Ron Garant, Bassics Magazine bassicsRG@aol.com
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