Why doesn't Carvin make a P type pickup?
 

I would love to have a b50 bass in a p/j configuration, wouldn't you?

Why don't you ask Carvin ? :eyebrow:

lol... you honestly think we know?

I dunno, TB is full of know it all's. Someone will at least claim to know.

You should call them bro. Let us know what you find out.

Because they don't match those 80's-style head stocks? :hiding:

I did send them an email but got no reply.

I'm going to treat OP's question as rhetorical and give it a +1. For a J-style bass, I much prefer a Carvin to a Fender. But for a P-bass, I play a Fender, cuz Carvin doesn't make one.

I would suggest maybe posting on the Carvin forum.

there is a guy that works at Carvin that goes in the forum pretty often.

nothing wrong with posting about it on TB, but it'll be easier to get carvin's atention in the carvin forum.

I have the SB and I would buy the P if they offered the option.

A B50 with a p/j pick up configuration? I'd buy one in a second! May even consider a B40 with that set up too.

It certainly couldn't hurt to pester Carvin for it. Who knows? Your request could complete the critical mass that finally nudges them past the tipping point.

But FWIW, Carvin has been fielding requests for a P Bass and P Bass pickup for years. And to the best of my knowledge, they've never built one yet. :hmm:

Can you provide the irresistible force that overcomes Carvin's "immovable object"? Time will tell... :smug:

MM

I know you are joking, but they actually have several different headstocks, not all 80s style.

Like this one, for example, which doesn't look 80s at all:

I am quite sure there is a tb member who had Carvin built a bass with no pickups and he had somebody route in a precision pickup.

As far as why they don't? No clue, but I doubt this is the first time they've been asked... maybe precision basses are evil...

You can buy a kit from Carvin and modify it to accommodate P p'ups.

Getting a pickup cover to match the new pickup routing might be a challenge, though.

Might be fun to make a custom pick guard to replace the original. Perhaps birdseye maple, like the Conklin sidewinder!

I've seen that one, its a fiver.

That would be your best route(!), get Carvin to build the kit with NO pickup routes, then do it yourself.

Yeah, I was just joking, though that headstock looks very much like the Ibanez SR headstocks, from the 80's. :D

Still joking, no insults intended.

Carvin has never used P pups. No reason to. The founderrs of carvin was into J and staked J humbuckers and soapbar type pups. Carvin wasnt interested in making variation of fender basses. They was interested in making own original basses.

No reason to? I see no reason to build a bass with jazz pickups.

I think Carvin started making the J and MM pickups because they were getting popular at the time.

before that, and the current soapbars, they had some original designs like these humbuckers from 1977:



I had one of the older plastic covered humbuckers in my '73 Rick, and it had a very nice tone. Before the humbuckers they made single coil soapbars, like in the old Mosrite basses.

Carvin has been making pickups a long time.

They used to sell Fender instruments. Here's their first bass from 1959 with one of their own pickups:

Seeing those pages sure makes me wish I'd kept the catalogues I got in the mid 60s.

I have one from '74 around somewhere.

Guilty as charged. I ordered this B50 unrouted pickups. They routed for electonics and all that stuff. This is how I got it:



Then Pat Wilkins was kind enough to let me be the guinea pig for his new line of pickups, so I ended up with the very first Wilkins VR5P pickup. When he was done it looked like this:



It's strung with LaBella flats, and so far it's knocked a US Fender P5 and a few other basses out of my arsenal...