Carvin Going out of Business

[tapper mike]

It's a sad day for the industry.

I've played carvin guitars twice ever. I was highly impressed back then (the 70's) as I didn't think you could ever get a decent guitar via a mail order company. I also remember a band mate of mine having a carvin amp back in the 80's While I've been enamored by the ethos that is Carvin I've never been that impressed with the tone (sorry carvin users)

[JCJR]

I liked the Carvin gear I've seen/used. The pieces were well-made and good-performing for the money. When broken were easy to repair. Most "affordable" analog gear was designed for "lowest parts count consistent with good performance" and Carvin designs were IMO admirable in that respect.

A friend had an "early model" rather big 8 bus carvin console, marketed mostly for live sound but he had used it many years in his studio with analog tape and later on a trio of Tascam digital 8 tracks, still later the 24 digital tracks in tandem with computer/cakewalk via MOTU 2408 audio interface and three TDIF cables. Anyway after some years the thang had developed a few niggling problems and all the big swinging-needle analog VU meters had worn out. We located not real expensive needle VU meters "close enough to the correct size" but different electrical specs. The mixer wasn't hard to work on, refurbishing some worn parts and modifying the meter drivers to run the replacement meters. There are many mixers from that era (and later eras) where such work would have been a painful chore.

In 1970's and 1980's when studying on analog circuits, manufacturer appnote example designs and textbook working examples tended to have many more components and circuit complexity than found in such as Carvin, Peavey, Mackie. But I suspect the production "stripped-down" designs worked as good or better than more complicated textbook/appnote examples, which would have been more expensive to manufacture because of the larger parts count. Not only costing more in components, but in extra circuit board area to accomodate the parts, chassis size, power supply requirements, etc.

At the time sometimes wondered at this-- Were the practical designers smarter than textbook writers and semiconductor company appnote engineers or what? Seemed weird to write a book or appnote explaining only the complicated way to do something but not the simple way, if in fact the author had been aware of both the simple and complex approaches. Maybe the practical designers just had bigger motivation to find the lowest-parts-count-but-workable solutions? Or maybe the practical designers had more time to look for low-parts-count solutions, wheras the EE perfessor or semiconductor company tech writer was under time pressure to finish one chapter and get on to the next chapter?

[PurpleCatfishBettie]

Kiesel is owned by a relative of the Carvin people? ...like one of the Carvin founders sons or somesuch? I heard Kiesel Guitars will continue on? Interesting reading about how Carvin were fairly 'bread and butter' products. ...always liked Peavey and Mackie, too...

[masterhiggins]

Damnit. I just bought a bass amp from them a few months ago. Now it'll have no warranty whatsoever.

[JCJR]

Damnit. I just bought a bass amp from them a few months ago. Now it'll have no warranty whatsoever.

Though devices can fail at any time after manufacture-- If the device is not abused-- Statistically if a gadget avoids infant mortality failure within the first few months then it PROBABLY won't fail until many years after the warranty has expired.

I'd expect it especially true for products such as conservatively designed bass amps when operated under expected conditions. For instance it may be a little riskier to nightly run a 100 watt amp near its rated 100 watts. Safer to run the 100 watt amp at 50 watts or less. For best reliability, if you really need 100 watts then get a conservatively designed 200+ watt amp. Etc yadda yadda.

Conservatively built bass amps are typically easy to repair. If the terms of warranty would require shipping the entire amp back to Carvin, then it could possibly be cheaper to repair locally on your own dime rather than pay shipping, even if the amp is under warranty. Just depending on various factors.

I mean, dunno if your particular amp is conservatively designed and well-built but earlier Carvin guitar/bass amps I've been inside seemed to be so.

User reviews on the Carvin solid state PA amps over the years have been spotty, some folk bragging on them and others not. I've not had experience with the PA power amps. Just from superstitious "what has worked for me" I'd probably buy Crown, Crest or QSC high power solid state amps. Well, Ashly and maybe others but unless the price happened to be really good on a low-mileage used Ashly--. New Ashlys are typically priced higher than my wallet's pain threshold.

I mean, if I needed a bass amp and happened on a good price decades-old solid state Peavey or Carvin bass amp that works, I'd buy it having confidence it would continue to work for quite awhile and be easy to fix if it fails. If it happened to be more than a decade old would probably check out and possibly replace the power supply capacitors when I got it home, as those can dry out and cause other parts to fail.

Bass amps can be built quite stable and inexpensive because about 1 percent distortion is "clean enough" for that application. The bass speaker distortion will be lots more than even 1 percent amp distortion. If you allow about 1 percent distortion you can make a very stable linear solid state amp. It is when you try to make a linear amp less than 0.1 percent distortion that they can become temperamental if not well-designed and well-built, which is often the case with rack-mount PA type high power amps. Cost-cutting measures on a low distortion amp might beg for troubles sometime or the other. Actually many loud PA applications work fine around 1 percent distortion as well, but such amps are often sold for both stage and studio and "high end home stereo" use. And even for live use, some customers think they need much lower factory distortion specs than is actually necessary.

[werp]

It's only Carvin Amplification that is disappearing. Carvin guitars will still be manufactured.

[Vaylos]

Oof, that's a bummer to hear. I bought an AG100D 100W combo about 5 or 6 years ago, and I'm currently using it at rehearsal with my keys and a Reverend Double Agent OG 20th Anniv. I know the AG100D had some issues with the power amp in the first couple revisions, but I've had zero issues with mine. Maybe the 3rd revision finally fixed the issue, I don't know. Might end up using it as a personal monitor once we start performing.

I was considering replacing my ART SLA-1 with a DCM200L to power my nearfields (the ART still works, but its fan died a few years ago, not that it gets real hot). Also had a weird tweeter squeal one day when I turned it on (that was about 4 years ago), so I've been wary of it, but it's been fine since then.