I just got a new carvin two days ago. The bridge is crooked. Let me share a pic, and my experiences with carvin.
I ordered a bolt on bass from their in stock section about 1.5 years ago. It hadnt arrived after three weeks. So i called them to remind them to ship it. It turned out they never processed the order and got it to me within a week ( 4 weeks after i ordered it). It had 3fairly large chips in the neck pocket and a scratchy electronics module. I kept it because it had an extra light/resonant alder body. If it had been average sounding acoustically it would have went back.
I ordered a BX600 head and a 4x10 from them about 8 months ago. The head arrived DOA. The cabinet was sealed and it had no low end response when i tried it with my GK. I called carvins customer support and they authorized the return. The only thing about it was they made me pay for return shipping, and it was over $100. I think if a company sends a customer something that is broken, they should pay for return shipping. I should have stopped ordering from carvin after this, but i didnt, i just thought i was having bad luck.
I ordered a replacement neck from them in december for the b4 i already had. I wanted to replace the ebony board with maple. Carvins catalog advertises that necks with no special options deliver in 1 to 3 weeks. After 10 weeks of waiting, i called carvin. Their sales guys gave me the "it will ship next week" run around even after i knew they hadn't even checked on it. They also told me they would call me back on 3 seperate occasions and failed to do so every time. So after about 5 calls i end up on the phone with some girl in accounting. She tells me the neck was labeled "shipped" the day i ordered it. But there was no tracking number so it must be a mistake. Turns out the order was never processed and they had to start the neck. They rushed me one in two weeks. It arrived with out the mounting holes for the neck joint and the tuners. I had to drill them.
Since i had ordered my new b4 a week after the neck, i had no idea of the impending trouble that was about to transpire with that order (my "luck" is getting really bad), so i was still stupid enough to place an order for this bass. It arrived three weeks late. It has two cracked inlays, the bridge is crooked, and there are large gaps on both sides of the neck pocket. When i say the bridge is crooked, i mean that the string thru body holes are not lined up with the string thru holes in the base plate of the bridge. They are only half way lined up as you can see in the picture. This means that whoever strung this bass up at carvin had to force the strings through the misaligned holes. This in turn means that they knew they were sending me a defective bass, but they didnt seem to care. Also, the gaps in the neck pocket, which are very odd for a cnc carved bass, seem to be hand sanded gaps. Why would they do that? Well the crooked bridge was causing lateral tension on the strings which in turn pulled all four saddles to the right. This created an alignment issue with the neck. So the geniuses at carvin sanded the neck pocket a little bit so they could get some lateral play on the neck and mount it slightly offset in order to compensate for the alignment issues caused by the bridge. So now they are knowingly sending me a defective bass AND trying to conceal it. I contacted their tech and he authorized a return. He sent me a confusing email about the return process, so i asked him to clarify. He sent me a snoody email with select words in italics and capital letters that made him sound like he was explaining something to a 3 year old. The snyde attitude was very clear and intentional. Maybe he was irritated with their poor QC, maybe he was irritated with me for not understanding his fragmented and confusing instructions, but you shouldn't infantalize your customers. That makes them mad.
I have a sneaking suscpicion that UPS is not going to show up to pick this bass up.
I have to admit i useto really like carvin. But they have very serious quality control, customer service and imo honesty problems that need to be addressed. I am not some troll blasting a manufacturer because he got a bad part, or had a single bad experience and never even tried to contact them about it. I am a customer who has had legitimate bad experiences with a company with 4 or out 5 orders that i have placed over the past 2 years (they didnt mess up my string order). I dont think it's bad luck anymore. If it were not for the latency between orders when dealing with carvin, i would have stopped ordering from them 3 order ago.
Oh, and heres the bass. Dig that impossible to miss f'ed up bridge mount job. The bass is actually very very nice. The ash is very resonant, and the frets are PERFECTLY done. This is the first bass i have ever bought that legitimately has no high or low frets at all. If it were only the cracked inlays and neck pocket gaps, i would keep this beauty. But every time i do pull offs on the g string it comes off the board due to the alignment issues. it also doesnt want to intonate exactly. Yes carvin does make great basses, but sometimes you have to buy with caution.
