9+ weeks for a Carvin?

In the big picture, the wait is soon forgotten. So what if it takes 4 or 8 or 12 weeks. What matters is, when you get it does it sound and play as you expected? When I read the reviews, the main complaint people have with their (brand shiny new just-arrived) Carvins is, the wait was excruciating. Yeah, life is short and we're all impatient.

Somewhat more disturbing are all the other Carvin complaints. Seems their after-sale customer support consists of "drop dead, you're on your own" if anything is wrong or goes wrong. Sure, you can ship it round trip to San Diego at your expense, to get it fixed at your expense, WHEN they get around to it. But that will be a while - they already HAVE your money.

And forget about getting it fixed at a local shop. Carvin produces *everything* proprietary - their own wood, their own electronics, they design and build their own pickups and PC boards and the works. Replacement parts are found only at Carvin's factory, and will be put into an instrument only when they have it in their hands. You can't do it. No local music store can do it.

Your question is pretty easy to speculate about - it's not shipping because you're in line behind a zillion other instruments. It'll get its turn soon enough. But you better pray that nothing ever goes wrong with it. I hear the Carvin people are big on prayer.

i've never had any problems with any of my 3 carvins over the years that i've had them, and if you do, it's easy enough to go onto the website and order replacement parts that any electronics guy can install. lately i'm liking my carvin better than my spector and my custom warmoth jazz. i had the old style pickups, which were replaced, but the bass just plays better than most basses i've played. (and i'm no noob).

jeff schmidt said:

So - I have 10 days to play with it after it finally shows up. If it convinces me I really want to move up to the 6 string- I'll probably send it back for a refund and put a down payment on a custom bass more to my liking.

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Don't be so hasty to play the refund game. Give it a fair chance - you might just discover that you love it. It's been known to happen...

MM

Dude, don't you have a concious? Ordering from a company with absolutely no intension of keeping the product? sheesh.

As a side note, I've been waiting on my SR5 for ~4 months.

Yeah, I confess I was maybe hours from ordering a Carvin when I found the bass of my dreams locally. And what changed my mind was that I was able to try out multiple copies of the "same" guitar (electronics, woods, model, etc.) and found they sounded surprisingly different from each other.

Maybe if I sunk a couple K into a Carvin with all the trimmings I'd "discover" that it sounded like a million bucks. It damn well better, *after* it arrives. But that's like awarding the beauty prize to your daughter.

Nonetheless, if everything I'd tried sounded like a Squier, I'd have taken the plunge.

Ok, I understand now. Yeah, if they won't give you "answers" I can understand why would be upset.

Flintc, most (all?) bass models will have variations between each instrument. After all, wood grows at different rates, will have different densities, etc. I ordered my MTD based on a friends, and IMHO it sounds quite different. This is to be expected, though they are still in the same "family" if you will.

jeff schmidt said:

I think you misunderstood me. I ordered the bass with the full intention of keeping it - 9 1/2 weeks ago.

But now after 10 days of getting dicked around on the phone about the "status" of my instrument from Carvin - I've come to the conclusion that I don't like the way the people at Carvin treat customers.

So - it's Carvin whose "conscious" should be under scrutiny.

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Dude, you ordered a custom bass...it takes time to put things together just the way YOU want them. 9 1/2 weeks really isn't that long. If you ordered from most other custom places...you can wait up to a year or more!

I just dealt with Carvin last month. I waited about 10 weeks for my Carvin XB-75. They were very good with giving me updates (e-mails) on the progress. Including a regular postcard stating that it was done and has been shipped and to watch the mail for it. Carvin also has a cool feature on their site called GuitarTrac. You can see what department your bass is in at all stages of it's creation.

I'm not sure what you expect them to say to you on the phone when you call them everyday. It seems like they are telling you exactly what's happening...It's in the "Quality Assurance and Setup Department". Your bass is being worked on...it's not done yet. When it's done, they'll send it to you. Chill the heck out! When they give you an approximate date on when your bass should be done...it's an APPROXIMATE!!!! Would you rather them ship out your bass with noticable flaws just so you can have it a week earlier????? I bet then you'd be right on TB bitching about how Carvin sucks.

You said you waited 16 weeks for your MTD 535. So, why is it so unfathomable to wait 10 weeks for the Carvin?

jeff schmidt said:

But now after 10 days of getting dicked around on the phone about the "status" of my instrument from Carvin - I've come to the conclusion that I don't like the way the people at Carvin treat customers.

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Yeah, I was ready to order an IC6 about 6 weeks ago, and applied for the Carvin credit card. They said I would get the approval in the mail within 10 business days, but I still have not heard from them (about 5 weeks later). Every time I called they said my approval was in the mail. I decided to let a local luthier assemble a Gecko for me (I received the neck today and am assured that I made the right choice due to the excellent quality of the components).

jeff schmidt said:

And finally IT"S ONLY A F'N CARVIN!!! they're not Fodera.

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Why are you acting like a Carvin is a mass market Korean slab? It's handmade in the USA. I don't understand the "It's ONLY a Carvin" comment. Perhaps that is your problem. Your outlook from the beginning has been that you are ordering some lesser "piece o crap" instrument.

Just because Carvins are cheaper than an MTD or Fodera doesn't mean that it's a crappy bass. My Carvin plays, looks and feels extremely nice. It was only $1300 bucks and 10 weeks. I'm willing to bet that if I waited 2 years and spent 7-8 K on a Fodera...I'd probably be pretty dissapointed. Sure it'd be really nice, but that's a lot of investment compared to the small investment of the Carvin.

And NO I'm not even trying to compare a Carvin to a Fodera...don't even go there.

As far as them telling you it will ship...maybe you should speak with a manager instead of a service rep. Most likely they are just trained to tell you that. Just like when you call a big corporation...departments don't always talk to each other.


Why don't you just cancel your order now and not go through the hassle of sending the bass back. You know you will hate it. I mean, c'mon..."it's ONLY a Carvin" You started hating it even before the day you ordered it.

Sean:

You make my point. TRY before you buy, or you're in the position of trying to convince yourself that even though it doesn't sound like what you heard, it must still be pretty good. Because rejecting it is nearly impossible by that point.

I just bought a Tobias, after trying out half a dozen. They all sounded (and were built) just dandy. But ONE of them had the sound I was looking for. Who knows, maybe wood, maybe strings, maybe construction (I used same amp, cable, electronics). Yeah, I'd have been jazzed with any of them. But for me personally the difference between "easily good enough" and "exactly what I was looking for" matters.

jeff:

Calm down. So OK, Carvin is swamped, they're shifting systems, everyone is running around confused (ever changed your software? Carvin is computerized out the wazoo). Changes in management software chop everyone off at the knees; nobody knows diddly. Production systems are temporarily uncoordinated; tracking is lost.

Now I grant you, it's kind of a bummer for the customer when Corporate Policy is to just try to pacify the customers during the changeover. And personally, I would NEVER adopt that corporate policy. In my book, it is MUCH better to say "Golly, sir, we're doing a computer system changeover, everying here is FUBAR, we have *no clue* where your order stands and no way of finding out, and we can only beg that you be patient. It will be perfect when we send it, but we can't know when that is" --- rather than to say "Just a couple of days, no problem, don't call us, we'll call you."

Yes, they are lying to you. They have adopted the policy of "NEVER tell the customer anything he doesn't want to hear." And in (rather bitter) truth, their dishonest policy HAS turned out to be the best one! This is sad but true. Customers who are told there are problems, cancel their orders and never come back. Customers who are strung along with daily false promises get impatient and pissed, but eventually a great instrument arrives and all is forgiven.

And problems happen. Management software changeovers are traumatic, bigtime. Sizeable (larger than Carvin) successful companies (more profitable than Carvin) have gone belly-up due to botched management software changeovers.

I hope that when they get their **** together, they send you the bass of your dreams. I wouldn't be surprised. But you're dealing with mail-order, and this is the way the game is played. I am SO happy I heard my baby in person, and didn't let it get out of my sweaty grip all the way home. It sounds like a million bucks (and did not *quite* cost that much).

I've been trying for the past year to get a damned guitar chord from them.
Their orignal broke and splintered on me.
I've called about a dozen times.
Apparently they shipped it.
I haven't recieved one of them yet.

good luck, it took them months to 'build' my unfinished bass kit. They also seemed to give the run around about the delay and nobody knew anything...

i think you should calm down. you ordered a custom bass and your gonna have to wait the custom wait. it's not like Carvin is a small business with one luthier that knows everything that goes down. Carvin is a huge factory and they have a ton of instruments to take care of.