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-Bass Player staff,© July
1998
Miller Freeman, Inc.
Reprinted with permission from
Bass Player Magazine
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Comments: "Nails that Jaco staccato tone with
the bridge pickup soloed." "Makes you want to turn it up and funk." "Could play
this bass on a variety of gigs." "Great low-down groover."
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 How
does a company sell a bass with beautiful wood, expert setup, and great active
electronics for $799? Why, it sells it direct.
You
can't play an LB-70 in a store unless you find yourself close to one of Carvin's
Southern California showrooms, though. (Just
for the record, Carvin's catalog-published list price for the LB-70without anyoptions
is $1,299.) Butlike all Carvin products, it comes
with a ten-day money-back guarantee.
Our natural
polyester-finished LB-70 came to us with the following options: two-piece koa
body sides, fully rounded body edges, and a maple headstock veneer. The LB-70
was one of the few neck through-body basses in our Shootout; it was also one of
rough-
body construction for better tone. (The bass also features Hipshot's new bass
bridge, which is great.)
Our test LB-70 displayed
excellent construction details. The finish was perfectly buffed (except for the
difficult-to-polish area around the end of the neck), and the flatsawn maple neck
boasted a nice slab of ebony with 24 expertly dressed frets. Some players didn't
like the polyurethane on the back of neck, but others didn't mind it. (Carvin
offers a tung-oil neck finish for $60.)
Carvin's H50N humbucking
J-style pickups provide hum-free performance, but they still offer J-like tone.
(The pickups are located back about an inch from standard J-placement due to the
24fret neck.) A 9-volt battery sits inside a pop-up compartment and powers a Carvin
active preamp that's shielded by a copper-foil-lined cavity. The controls are
simple: master volume with pull passive mode, blend, and 3-band EQ. All of the
controls on our tester worked well, although the volume pot sounded as if there
was a bit of DC on it, which caused a thuddy, scratchy sound when turning the
knob. (Carvin's Dave Flores says, "We are baffled at the problem you experienced.
If this happened to a customer, we would offer them the choice of us sending them
a prewired control module overnight for their tech to install, with a service
labor allowance, or would pay shipping both ways for the bass to be shipped to
us for repair. The ten-day trial period would then begin once the bass is returned.")
Also, one staffer didn't like the treble contour, saying it seemed to offer more
cut than boost.
Jazz Bass lovers will dig
the LB-70. It has good growl and a nice slap tone with both pickups on. We were
also able to coax sparkly solo sounds, in-your-face midrange howl, and dub rumble
from its electronics.
Overall, the LB-70 has a
rich, balanced sound that pleased players of all styles (including some of the
most jaded staff members). Comments: "Nailsthat Jaco staccato tone with the bridge
pickup soloed." "Makes you want to turn it up and funk." "Could play this bass
on a variety of gigs." "Great low-down groover."
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