Carvin closes Covina store and Sparkdog SCORES!

A friend of mine told me Carvin was closing down it's store in Covina CA and selling everything at deep discounts rather than shipping it elsewhere. I've been looking for an active 5 string so I decided it was worth making the drive and checking it out.

I have scoped out their BB75 since it's available with a 19mm bridge (a must for me) and the specs sound killer, but I figured the odds of finding one in stock that would meet all my anal-retentive criteria were long.

So I walk into the store and hanging on the wall is a Cherry Sunburst BB75 (possibly my all time favorite color) with a maple fretboard (another must for this instrument). I pick it up...hmmm, nice and light (put a check in that box too).

I plug it in and start playing. Houston, we have a problem. This bass is seducing me. The rear humbucker barks and snarls, the front pickup is deep and smooth with tons of bottom.

I've checked these out online so I know a new one with all the upgrades this one has would be in the neighborhood of $1500-$1600 bucks. This one's marked down to $1050 and once we started horse trading I got it for a hair over $1000 with a hardshell case and new strings included.

All my basses are traditional type instruments (Precision, Stingray, Lakland DJ5) so I was looking for something very different. This fits the bill nicely. Tone is super versatile and sweet and the neck plays as well as anything I've ever tried.

For spec junkies (that's all of us, right?) it has:

Ash body
Asymetrical maple neck with tung oil finish
Birdseye maple fretboard
Graphite nut
34" scale, neck through body construction
18V active preamp or full passive
Soapbar humbuckers
Hipshot A-style 19mm bridge, string thru or topload
Stacked bass/treble knob
Stacked mid frequency/sweep knob
Volume knob
Blend knob
Gold hardware and Schaller straploks

The pics were shot in crappy lighting and don't do the color justice, it's a deep beautiful red with a very subtle burst.

I'm a happy camper!

tapp01 said:

It's a beaut!

Carvin makes some of the best instruments out there IMO. A truly great company to deal with. Enjoy your new baby!

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Amen brudda! Where else can you get an American made bass of this quality for under $1500?

I'm a big Carvin fan, I play B1500 and B800 amps with their BRX cabs, and they sound as good as anything I've heard, including much more expensive stuff from Epifani, Aguilar, Eden, etc.

But I always found their basses to be a little tame in the tone department. Well, now they are using an 18 volt circuit in their active basses, and I can really hear the difference. Much more aggressive.

This BB75 has growl and punch like crazy, and something that really surprized me: a GREAT low B string. I have a Lakland DJ5, and have owned 55-01 and 55-02 basses. This competes with them easily and might actually have better clarity in the lowest frequencies.

lindseyp said:

Did they have any BRX 10.2 NEO cabinets on sale?

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Yes, everything in the store was on sale. Anyone that's familiar with Carvin knows they are a direct sales manufacturer with no dealers, so they offer American designed and manufactured instruments, amplification, and PA gear at prices well below comparable equipment from other manufacturers. So when they mark THOSE prices down it's a bargain and a half.

Unfortunately, Saturday was the last day of the sale, and my understanding is that anything left in the store at the end of the day was getting shipped off to their Santa Ana store. I guess they felt like those 2 locations are close enough together geographically that they could be combined.

Carvin makes incredible PA gear and you can buy a complete system...literally every component you need to do a show...and if my business were not so slow due to the suckish economy I would have walked out of there with a full PA too!

For anyone wondering at this point, I don't work for Carvin

I just think they are unique in the industry and offer some of the best values you can find for instruments, amps, and cabs.