Anyone did a carvin bolt kit?

[kiteman]

I'm planning to get one for myself and I'd like to know what you've done with yours. I like to get the swamp ash body and color stain it then clear coat it. I'm not sure what color I want but I saw an amber stain on swamp ash and it's gorgeous. Most likely I will choose amber but I also like red, green, and blue.

I wonder how it'll look in four colors.

[tunghaichuan***]

I have a good friend who is a materials engineer and guitar player. He built a Bolt kit and liked it quite a bit. One thing he remarked on was the neck: the combination of the truss rod, carbon fiber stiffeners and ebony fingerboard make that neck very bright. The stock single coils are kind of dark, so it balances out, but you may not be able to find any aftermarket pickups that sound good in the guitar. If I were to order a kit, I'd pay the upcharge and get a maple or rosewood fingerboard.

You may want to rethink the ash, I ordered a "swamp ash" bodied guitar from Carvin a few years ago. The guitar I got was as heavy as a Les Paul, so I ended up sending it back. I If you do order ash, make sure you specify that they pick out a light body for you, otherwise you could end up with a body that feels like it is made of cement.

tung

I'm planning to get one for myself and I'd like to know what you've done with yours. I like to get the swamp ash body and color stain it then clear coat it. I'm not sure what color I want but I saw an amber stain on swamp ash and it's gorgeous. Most likely I will choose amber but I also like red, green, and blue.

I wonder how it'll look in four colors.

[kiteman]

Thanks for the tip about the swamp ash as I already have an lp copy that's heavy enough.

I have another option that I get the body in texured black. That'll solve my color delimna. They also offered a tung oiled neck so all I had to do was put it together and play baby play. Since it's texured it'll be alder.

I have about $230 worth of upgrades on it so it's going to be a real superstrat. Humbucker in bridge, twin blades in middle and neck, black chrome hardware, stainless steel frets, sperzel locking tuners, and white pearloid PG. With the texured black and tung oiled neck the bill is $619 less shipping. Hell, that's a lot of guitar for 600 bucks.

Here's a pic that's close enough to see what this guitar'll look like.

[pie_man_25]

those carvin kits are probably pretty good, for my kit experience I got a saga,
which was at a store so I could look VERY closely at each and every part before I bought one, unless you could do the same I don't recommend sagas, the carvin should be great though, another good strat-style would be here:

http://www.internationalluthiers.com/electrickits.php

and then for some good pickups you could get GFS ones.

[Spudman***]

Rather than dealing with a kit they offer the bolt finished and put together for:
Bolt-on neck guitar For a limited time, take $100 off this instrument!
List Price: $ 1399.00
Direct Price: $ 729.00
Sale Price: $ 629.00
Shipping: $ 0.00

Depending on what color or other options you want the price will change.

If I was going to spend $600 plus on a guitar I'd want to make sure the manufacturer put it together and everything was perfect instead of relying on whether or not I could do it right. You might want to consider since the price is not much different than the kit you want. The kit is $420 and no finish or assembly. It makes more sense to me to have it done right and finished for an extra 200 bills.

[marnold***]

If you head over to the Talk Bass forums, do a search for Carvin kits. I saw some pictures of Carvin kit basses that were just plain hawt.

[kiteman]

There should be no problem with the kit Spudman. Since I'm the one putting it together I'm the quality control. The kit will be $389 plus the options as I don't need the tremolo. I've talked to many members of the carvin forum and many others elsewhere and they can't praise carvin enough.

I was going to get a gibson studio or a fender superstrat. They are $1200 apiece. Looking around I found carvin and I joined the forum. I had plenty of time for researching and did a lot of exploring, learning stuff like fretboard radiuses, fretworks, and woods, and found carvin to be the best choice of the lot. At half the prices too.

I'm getting the carvin bolt kit.

EDIT: Pieman, I saw the link and they certainly are nice but they do involve a bit of work. I also found a site called wd music and they offer a nice kit that included a painted body in your choice of color. Since I don't see any pics I'm kinda wary but they have a good reputation.

[Bloozcat]

I've heard nothing but good things about the Carvin Bolt kits, although I've never had any personal experiences with them.

I did order a wired Bolt pickguard once though. I got it with an AP-11 in the neck and middle positions, and a single coil size THB60 dual blade pickup in the bridge position. The THB60 pickup was just so-so. I wasn't all that thrilled with it. As to the Ap-11's, I found them to be bright and spikey as wired in the pickguard. The pickguard came std. with dime sized 500k pots that I replaced with CTS 250k and re-wired the pickguard like a Strat, removing the coil split switch and adding a second tone pot. This turned the AP-11's into totally different animals. While they never did get a true vintage single coil vibe (they're ceramic magnet pickups), they were very useful single coils none-the-less. They surprised me to the point where I really couldn't find any fault in them. They deliver nice musical tones. For the record, I tested this pickguard in an alder bodied Strat clone with a maple/rosewood neck with a Fender type single truss rod.

I would avoid the C22T bridge humbucker. I have one, and it's one of the brightest, spikey-est humbuckers I think I've ever tried. The only way that I was able to turn it into anything approaching a usable pickup was by changing the Alnico 5 magnet to an Alnico 2. Even after that, it's only a fair pickup. The M22 and H22 humbuckers are both much smoother, and more toneful pickups. BTW, I wouldn't recommend trying a magnet swap in a Carvin C22 pickup. Instead of the vintage style construction using screws to secure the coils to the base, Carvin hot glues the coils to the base. They're a real PITA for changing magnets.

[Sparko]

I got a left-handed bolt kit three or four years ago, swamp ash body, alder neck, ebony fingerboard, locking tuners & three humbuckers (two single-coil size). The Bolt has always been a great player, with one of the lowest actions I've seen. Definite value for money. The sound was also very good, but a couple of weeks ago I dropped in another pickguard fitted with three Irongear Smokestack stacked & tapable humbuckers in it. Sounds terrific. My only regrets are that I didn't opt for gold hardware and a tremelo.

Just a couple of things I didn't like about the Bolt... Carvin's side-by-side humbuckers have two screws on one side, so a straight replacement by another 'normal' humbucker isn't possible (hence my new pickguard). Also, the neck pickup was tapable via a microswitch, but I didn't really notice that much difference in sound and the tappiong didn't fit in well with the middle and neck pickups, which tended to overpower the tapped bridge pickup.