Holdsworth HT2 Electric Guitar

as featured in the Vol. 7, No. 11 issue of The Guitar Magazine

"- one of the most intriguing guitars we've come across for ages."

Now and then a guitar comes along that really does buck existing trends. The Steinberger and the Parker Fly are obvious examples, and now we've got the Carvin Holdsworth - one of the most intriguing guitars we've come across for ages.

Despite what you see in the pictures, this is no ordinary Tele-esque solidbody. In fact it's not even solid. The two-piece, centre-joined alder body is virtually totally hollow - apart from, obviously, the area around the bridge. This hollow cavity is sealed by a 6.4mm thick centre-joined, book-matched quilted maple top, an optional extra over the standard alder.

The body is a fairly standard 43mm thickness overall. It doesn't have any contouring due to its hollow nature but the sides have been rounded into one large radius, avoiding the basic slab-like feel of the trad Telecaster. One neat touch is the cut-out at the base of the body (reminiscent of an old design by Brit-builder Hugh Manson). This allows the use of two strap buttons, which makes for a guitar that will happily (not that we recommend it, mind) lean unaided against your amp.

The neck is unusual, too. Made of two pieces of centre-joined alder, it's reinforced with two graphite rods plus, of course, a dual-action truss rod for adjustment. The shape? Well 'massive' springs to mind. The well-rounded section makes our reference PRS 'wide-fat' neck seem almost trim - this one's into baseball bat territory.

However, with the flat 20" radius ebony board (inlaid with small pearl dot inlays) and the 24 chunky but tall frets (2.7mm wide x 1.57mm high), the well rounded section feels surprisingly good - once you've got used to the bulk. The heel goes the full depth of the body and it's a little on the big side; add to that the Tele-like upper shoulder and top-access isn't super-easy, though it's manageable enough. The frets are all tidily finished and polished, and although the board's edges have been left pretty square, the overall quality of the fingerboard and the low-action setup can only be termed excellent.

The back-angled headstock has a matching quilted maple facing and it's extremely small. With two tuners on the bass side and four on the treble side, grabs for the pegs tend to be wayward at first; we do get straight string-pull over the Graph Tech nut, though, so that's all right.

The hardware is straightforward enough. Carvin have gone with a Sperzel/Wilkinson combination, the virtual industry standard; a USA-made VS100 floats high above the body with an additional back routing offering a tone up-bend on the G string and down nearly to slack. The Carvin H22 pickups have been voiced by Holdsworth; they use 'weakened' Alnico V magnets so they're not as loud as Carvin's C22s, and they've got 22 cross-head adjustable poles on both coils of the pickup. Er, 22? Yep - the theory is that the additional polepieces act almost like a blade polepiece, avoiding any drop in volume as you bend away from the centre poles. Both humbuckers are ring-mounted but there's an additional fixing screw on the bass side to increase stability and to allow some tilt adjustment to get the pickups exactly parallel with the strings.

Wiring is standard: a master volume and tone control, a 3-way toggle switch and a side-mounted jack socket. The amount of attention to detail displayed on this Carvin is reflected by the rear control cavity. The cavity and coverplate are properly foil-screened, while the cover plate is tidily recessed and held not by your standard screws but by tiny bolts that fit into tiny threaded inserts.

Our guitar has a custom finish, a high gloss lacquer with a black stain underneath that looks to have been applied directly to the timber. This method creates a different result to using a colored lacquer.: any marks are emphasized and the grain patterns are usually enhanced. One side effect, unfortunately, is that the neck-to-body glue line and the centre-join line up the back of the neck are also enhanced; still, you can't fault the finish quality. It's certainly wee in line with what you'd expect from the likes of PRS or Music Man.

Strapped on, the Holdsworth's light weight makes for an unusual feel. Attaching the strap to the bass-side bottom strap button helps, but the top button is behind the heel - not my personal fave position, as the strap gets in the way and the guitar tends to tip forward. However, the light weight makes up for it, and once you've got used to it the chances are a Les Paul will seem ridiculously cumbersome by comparison.

Sounds

Acoustically the Carvin Holdsworth offers an almost semi-acoustic ring and a surprising amount of volume. Plugged into a clean amp the bridge pickups exhibits a strong humbucker tone that's bright in the high-end, tight and firm in the lower regions and full and ringing around the midrange. The top strings have a noticeably snappy attack - not what you'd expect from a set-neck guitar.

The neck pickup's low end is richer and the mids are fuller but the highs are still well represented with, again, a slightly semi-acoustic-like snap. This percussiveness suits the twin pickup mix well, creating a very punchy Fender-like sound - a useful balance between the neck pickup's low end depth and the bridge pickup's tighter, brighter tone. Holdsworth is apparently keen on his signature model's wide dynamic range; certainly, light picking and then really hitting the strings produces two very different sounds and output. Roll the tone control off and you have a warm, jazzy voice; alternately, pull the tone back up and hit it hard and you've got some really funky slap.

At volume the Holdsworth is extremely resonant. The bridge pickups boots out a juicy, full tone with a warm midrange; the guitar's natural treble response is perhaps a little short and plinky but on higher gain settings it becomes smoother and fuller. The neck pickup's old-style almost hollow-body jazz tone under cranked up tube conditions becomes a fluid, smooth-bodied beast - something that would be near impossible to achieve with a conventional solidbody electric. There's not as much smoothness or body as you'd get with, say, a PRS, but the grainy acoustic-like texture makes for a very musical, dynamic alternative. Controllable feedback is easily achieved, too.

To sum up, this really is a different sounding electric; I suspect it'll appeal to players aware of the different tones available to those on top of their picking technique. This wide, dynamic response isn't for everybody, but if Carvin's - and Allan Holdsworth's - intention was to nail the halfway point between a regular solid and a hollow-bodied jazzer, they've pulled it off admirably.

Verdict

They enjoy a deserved reputation for cost-effective quality in the USA, but Carvin's range of guitars, basses, amps and PA gear has never received much attention in the UK. You want proof? Well, despite the fact that the company has been in business since 1946, this is the first Carvin guitar we've ever reviewed. Oops!

But the wait's been worth it. Carvin are capable of finely-built, highly professional guitars, and this is a top example. It doesn't perhaps represent Carvin as well as one of their more 'regular' guitars, but Holdsworth's intentions were obviously to create an instrument with a sound and performance different to the norm. If you crave resonance and an almost archtop-like dynamic response - and you're prepared to pay for it - then you should give this a spin.

Is it perfect? Well, in terms of construction it's well worth the price; aesthetically it ain't the cutest thing on the block. But surely no-one would buy a guitar like this on looks alone; it's the sound, feel and playability that make it different. Long may Mr. H. continue to fashion tunes and guitars as individual as this one.

"No, the Ibanez was the only one," Allan assures us. "I was playing Charvels before that, custom made by Grover Jackson - a great guy. When he left Charvel I had the opportunity to work with Ibanez, but while the first model was great, the rest weren't so good.

"The I discovered the Steinberger - I've played those for the longest of any guitar. After that I had Bill Delap build me some custom guitars, all wood but with Steinberger hardware and the Steinberger TransTrem. I've worked with Bill for years, but he became so busy it'd take him ages to build the guitar I wanted, and by the time I got the guitars I didn't want them any more! I got a bit fed up"

Holdsworth's frustration led him to Carvin, one of the USA's longest established makers. "I'd seen some of their guitars and felt they'd really come a long way," Allan reflects. "They're close to me and one day a couple of years ago I went down to see them and asked if they would be interested in building me a guitar. We made numerous prototypes before we settled on the one you have there."

And why the hollow body? "Well, I've been working with this hollow body concept for some time," Holdsworth considers. "Steinbergers are hollow, and I started wondering how they sounded so good, and Bill and I started experimenting with hollow chambers. With Carvin, basically, the goal was to come up with something that included the features of my experience but didn't look too weird. It doesn't bother me personally what a guitar looks like or what color it is, but it was really important to have the totally enclosed semi-hollow body to make it really dynamic with a wider range of expression. Solidbody guitars tend to limit that expression."

How about that weeny headstock?

"Headstocks can never be small enough," insists Holdsworth. "There's less extraneous string length - apart from the fingerboard where it belongs - and for tuning stability, I believe the less extra string length the better. I'd have made the head smaller if we could."

It also seems our man is a believer in the 'big-neck-equals-big-tone' school of thought. "Definitely," Allan agrees. "When I started having guitars made I realized it's not only the feel but the bulk of the neck that is responsible for the sound. I did a lot of experimenting, but the big neck wins every time. We tried maple and ebony - a combination I'm a big fan of - but then Carvin made one with an alder neck, partly as a weight consideration because we'd made the body lighter, and I preferred it.

"Overall the guitar has a softer sound. A lot of rock'n'roll guys won't like it: it'll feed back quicker and they may perceive the wider dynamic range as sponginess.

"Electric guitars are definitely 'acoustic': if it doesn't sound good acoustically, it's no good. In the old days, I had two Gibson SGs; they looked and played pretty similar, but one sounded good and one was sh**. I swapped the pickup but it still sounded [like] sh**!

"But, you know, the whole deal with Carvin was that if I didn't play it, it wouldn't come out. So the nut width, the neck depth all these things were important. I didn't really have any intention of making it cool for anyone else!"