What If I told you that there was a US company that had been making good-quality electric guitars, PA equipment, and instrument amplifiers since the 1940s, in the United States, and for about the same price as better foreign made goods? And the company has remained in the same family for all those years? There is only one such company that I am aware of, and to be honest, I have never used a single piece of their equipment beyond a replacement humbucking pickup and a couple of raw speaker drivers. And you probably haven’t either. The company is Carvin. While the appeal of the Carvin brand seems limited to aging hair metal’ers, fusion-bros, and faith musicians, it’s hard not to have a strong dose of respect for this resilient, independent corporation.
Lately i’ve been noticing that Carvin’s 1970s guitars are starting to look pretty fresh in an inscrutable WTF iron-curtain sorta way. So I think it’s time to dig into my pile of 70s Carvin catalogs and get the discussion going here on these charmingly-misshapen sleepers.
This week I will be uploading original Carvin catalogs from the early, mid, and late 1970s. Like I said, I can’t claim to have any particular knowledge of these offbeat items but maybe my readers can weigh in with some personal anecdotes about ye olde Carvins.
