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AE185
Acoustic/Electric Guitar |
as featured in the June 1996
Vintage Guitar Magazine.
"...before ever plugging this baby in, we had a feeling it was a winner."
"Positively Vintage"
Our movable feast of musical gear begins this month with an offering from the folks at California's Carvin Musical Instruments: the semi-hollow, acoustic-electric, 6-string guitar designated the AE185. These are the guitars that I keep seeing on-stage, from Will Ray's chicken pluckin' to Danny Elfman of Oingo Boingo, but had not (as yet) been able to personally play. It was well worth the wait.
The options loaded onto our test axe included a flamed maple top (the wood quality was terrific), multi-layered tortoise body binding, and open-type, cream humbucking pickups. Now standard on this model is a mahogany neck-through body construction, a 25 inch scale ebony neck, locking Sperzels, and the combination of a standard Les Paul-type pickup and switching system (standard 3-way switch) and the added flexibility of a belly-bridge housing a high quality transducer yielding a realistic and very sweet acoustic guitar sound. The mix and variety available through the blend knob provide more possible sounds than most people can get out of three guitars.
Starting with workmanship and materials, Carvin has surpassed itself again in bringing this guitar to the marketplace. The AE185 has the feel of a well-worn Les Paul Junior, with a perfect fretting job, no raw edges, and an ebony board that is resonant and a pleasure to play. The intonation was right on, assisted by a carved saddle, and before ever plugging this baby in, we had a feeling it was a winner. Adding to the pleasure of playing the 185 was its extremely manageable weight (a bit less than six pounds) and the intuitive feel of the controls-very familiar to anyone who loves a Les Paul.
When amplified, using the Carvin was easy as pie. We set up the electric signal through an old Vibrolux Reverb and placed the acoustic signal into Yamaha nearfield monitors powered by a Peavey power amp (the side of the guitar has two, rather than the usual single, mono 1/4-inch outputs, one for each use). As for controls, there's a group of four knobs at the lower bout (-a rather snazzy single f-hole occupies the space north of the strings), and houses a single volume control, a treble cut/boost knob with a neutral detent in the middle, and a bass knob that does the same for the lower frequencies. Ours stayed pretty much in the neutral position, the tones ranged from biting and aggressive in the bridge pickup-only setting, to warm and ES-175ish on the neck setting. The three-way switch in the middle setting yielded a usable and vibrant combined sound. Number four knob was the secret weapon against the dulls: a blend knob that ranged from all-electric at one extreme to all-acoustic at the other. Nearest the mid-setting (with a detent, naturally), a mix of the two sources yielded tones that were nifty in the extreme: percussive attack, long sustain, rich harmonics.
Very cool.
On stage at our New York dives, there was a discernible need for more attack, and I ended up using the EQ to good effect, cutting right through the mix. Note that Carvin uses their own pickups and hardware in general, which is all to the good. The pickups have an offset pole pattern that produces a great classic humbucking sound and at the same time surrounds the string with a magnetic field that is evenly distributed; hence, no dropout on wild string bends. Tom is already a pretty big Carvin fan, using their amps ("The Vintage Tube Series caught my eye and ear one night on stage, and I bought my Nomad combo the next day," Cosgrove relates) in Europe and here in the States. "This guitar is really well-made, and that's pretty high praise from a vintage lover like me," Marveled Tom, on first handling the AE185. "I like the idea of only a single f-hole...the appearance is really striking. The neck is extremely playable, not too fat in the back, and fits my hand perfectly. The tone is really smooth too, and it's cool being able to blend the different acoustic and electric tones. The front pickup sounds great; in fact, it's a warm sounding guitar, but it can still scream. I've gotten away from that standard Strat sound, and I like this. When Clapton was going through that period where he used the in-between setting for practically every lead...I got sick of that pretty quickly. This is quite versatile, from the acoustic style bridge to the master volume."
As most of our readers know, Carvin is available only by direct sales through their own showrooms throughout California, or through mail-order, with a generous 10-day approval period on all instruments (that's 10 days after arrival, and doesn't include shipping time). Their prices tend to be highly competitive, and for the base price of $799, this guitar can't be beat.
- Stephen Patt and guest reviewer Tom Cosgrove,
Vintage Guitar Magazine
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as featured in the Vol. 8, |
"This is a finely made guitar with highly considered tones" |
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Although our review model Carvin has many standard-issue features it also displays some custom options (Carvin offer a long list of extras which can be added to any instrument). In terms of construction it uses a two-piece, centre-joined 'through' neck to which two mahogany 'wings' have been attached, creating the bulk for the Tele-esque body outline. This slab is then routed out from the front. Most of the bass side of the body has been removed but instead of a central full-length spine like, say, an ES-335, this neck stops under the neck pickup, with one solid block left under the bridge pickup and another, thinner block under the bridge. it's hard to tell exactly how much wood has been extracted from the treble side of the body, but tapping on the tightly grained triple A-grade Englemann spruce top it seems pretty hollow too. The body edges are slightly rounded off, there's a slight ribcage contour on the rear and the area around the heel where the neck flows into the body is beautifully carved - just like a conventional full-length through-neck. Thanks to the treble-side cutaway and that heel carving the double-octave, 24-fret neck is easily accessible right up to the top fret. The 15" radius ebony fingerboard is very clean, as are the custom option mother-of-pearl inlaid blocks. The frets - formed from a chunkily gauged (2.3mm wide x 1.5mm high) wire - are beautifully tidy, but maybe not everyone will love the neck feel; it's well- proportioned in terms of width and depth but the shape is quite square-sided and flat-backed an almost metallish section which feels a little out of place on a hybrid design. Mind you, you can't fault the construction or the beautiful finishing - and if blueburst ain't your style, there are numerous options. The long 11ƒ back-angled headstock does away with string trees and carries Sperzel Trim-lok tuners and a friction- reducing Graph Tech trem nut. The setup is immaculate, the dual action rod easily accessible behind the nut. Contained within the mahogany neck are two steel reinforcing bars, another standard Carvin feature; like PRS, Carvin use a halfway-house 25" scale as standard. Perhaps sensibly, Carvin have chosen to take the `acoustic bridge' route that Hamer also favour on their on their DuoTone hybrid guitar. The ebony bridge holds a precompensated saddle made of Tusq (a synthetic ivory substitute made by Graph Tech) under which lurks a Fishman-made F60 piezo transducer. Strings load from the back of the body, Tele-style. The two open-coil humbucking magnetic pickups are standard 'Classic Series' Carvin issue: a C22T at bridge and C22N at neck. They use slightly weakened Alnico 'v' magnets, and the 11 poles on each coil are designed to eliminate any `drop-off' between poles while string bending, One coil of each pickup has adjustable poles, while on the bass-side two pickup height/mounting screws allow a very rigid fixing plus tilt adjustment if necessary. The Carvin is fairly bristling with controls. Looking at the photograph, the knob nearest the bridge affects overall volume (both piezo and magnetic) and to the right of that is the centre-notched active tone control for the magnetic pickups. Two mini-toggles split the humbuckers (voicing the adjustable-poled outer coils); the lone mini-toggle to the right of those is a phase switch for Peter Green-ish out-of-phase tones when both humbuckers are on together. The piezo has its own centre-notched tone control (directly below the magnetic tone) and the two systems can be blended by the pan-pot placed directly below the master volume. On the guitar's side are two output jacks; the lower is for mixed mono when you're using just one amp, but insert a jack in the other socket and the outputs are split for dual amp set-ups... that's neat. Carvin are real sticklers for detail. The control cavity, for example, is really well screened; the cavity's backplate is held on with small bolts, not screws, and the battery lives in its own separate flip-top compartment. Excellent! Sounds Being a semi, the lightweight strapped-on feel takes a little getting used to - as does the neck, which seems to be longer than it really is (the balance, however, is fine). Plugging in, the 'acoustic' sound - with the EQ set flat - veers towards a tone that's lighter and more modern than the rawer, more flat-top sound of a Hamer DuoTone (the guitar we used as reference for this review). The bass-end is typically clonky, the highs clean and zingy. I didn't find that the quite `active' sounding magnetic pickups needed the additional treble boost; in fact I found myself rolling off a little of the rather hissy-sounding high EQ. At serious levels feedback is obviously a problem, although if you want to use feedback creatively then the Carvin makes it dead easy. Tonally the bridge pickup has plenty of poke and bite, while the neck pickup sounds very fluid - softer than you'd normally expect with a solidbody. The coil-splits are fine, as is the phase if you fancy that thinner strangled sound. Mixing both outputs creates the big hybrid tone that is ultimately the whole point of this style of guitar. It's a wonderfully textured, rootsy rhythm tone and the two outputs mean your choices are wide. The controls works well, with the blend knob conveniently next to your picking hand for very quick and subtle changes. This is a finely made guitar with highly considered tones.
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