If you get a carvin I would highly suggest you get the five peice neck option. Their one peice necks are in my experience weak. They have trouble getting near dead straight neck without maxing the truss rod out. I had got a real nice looking used seethru green, neck thru body, carvin yrs ago & I ending up getting rid of it cause of its weak neck. I used Rotosound Swing66 std gauge 45-130 and other similiar tension strings. The 40-125 gauge set worked better for low string action truss rod wise, but any well made bass and certainly in the carvins price range. Should have stronger necks then that for single peice maple. And Ive read of many also having truss rod issues for five stringers with the single peice neck. The five peice neck is much stronger and better choice imo.
On the plus side the bass was one of the very few whose low B string sounded really good to me. The 2band active eq was good though Ive had better in some imports by other mfg. Fretwork and built with the exception of neck strength was all excellent. I wish it had been a 5 peice neck one. I might still own it if it had been.
Well that's some interesting comments.
Oddly, I haven't heard or read any excessive problems with Carvin's necks being weak. Sure, there have been a few bad necks here and there, but by high and large Carvin owners don't have many problems with the bass necks. At least not from what I read and heard. I just received my B40 14 days ago, so it's too early for my persoanl experience to count. But so far the neck is very nice and stable. Especially considering that where I live (in the Charlotte, North Carolina area), we have drastic temperature shifts from morning to afternoon.....late afternoon to night. Often, 20-30 degree rises and drops in temperature. And the humidity is brutal right now. The winter gets dry and cold and the summer's hot and humid. This type of weather is brutal on bass and guitar necks.
So I'll have to keep a close eye on this B40 neck and see what happens.
Is it possible that your experience may speak more for the neck through basses? Because the B40 is a bolt-on four string. Not a neck through and it's not a five string.
Furthermore, you bought it used. So there's no telling what the previous user may have done to the bass or put the bass through.
Have you personally ever owned a B40, SB50 or SB5000?
Could you direct me to where you have read of these weak neck problems? I'd like to read up on this.
Seems to me you're a making blanket statement about all Carvin bass necks, which could very well be misleading and inaccurate. But who knows, maybe you're right. I'd like to read up on it.
).
