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Stoner / Doom Bassist Thread - Part 18

#902
The only experience I have with Hartke is a player from highschool had one of the older all aluminum 4-10" cabs, XL I think. The band covered a Tool song, which utilizes a little grind in the signal. It sounded very clear and punchy. However, that's not a hybrid and it's not a 15", so, take that for what it's worth. (probably not very much)

Doomwise, needs less silver. If I owned one, I would mask the logo and spray paint that grill black. Not a fan of the aesthetics. I saved about 12lbs and about $150 per cab on the Carvins I have been enjoying.
 
#903
JoeVictim said:
The only experience I have with Hartke is a player from highschool had one of the older all aluminum 4-10" cabs, XL I think. The band covered a Tool song, which utilizes a little grind in the signal. It sounded very clear and punchy. However, that's not a hybrid and it's not a 15", so, take that for what it's worth. (probably not very much)

Doomwise, needs less silver. If I owned one, I would mask the logo and spray paint that grill black. Not a fan of the aesthetics. I saved about 12lbs and about $150 per cab on the Carvins I have been enjoying.
Click to expand...

How's Carvins customer service?

When most gear sounds usable and is recently priced, I try to find other things to compare such as morals/ethics/customer service/etc.
 
#905
If you are getting cabs, there shouldn't be an issue. My only complaint with them is that when it was time to build my bass, I called them up and was like, yeah, this is the first bass I have ever bought from you. The salesman was like, ok what do you want? I anticipated being walked through the process, I wanted him to ask me all the neccessary questions. Instead, I had to go get my Carvin book out to tell the guy.

Now the ebay department was a joy to work with. I called them on a clearance cab they had. The ebay guy said watch it in 10 minutes. I went back and it was another 10% off the clearence price. Awesome!

So I'm batting .500 on their service. But with a no questions asked 10 day return policy, there's not much to lose except the time it takes to go from CA to you, and back to CA.
 
#907
Corey Y said:
I've been building a LPB Jazz bass with matching headstock, with a gloss black single ply pickguard, every month on Warmoth for the past year. That Atomic Bitchwax video definitely flared up my GAS big time. If I could find a 64 RI one within my budget, I'd buy it today.
Click to expand...

I'm not seeing LPB as a finish, do they call it something else at wormoth?

edit: nevermind, found it.
 
#908
JoeVictim said:
If you are getting cabs, there shouldn't be an issue. My only complaint with them is that when it was time to build my bass, I called them up and was like, yeah, this is the first bass I have ever bought from you. The salesman was like, ok what do you want? I anticipated being walked through the process, I wanted him to ask me all the neccessary questions. Instead, I had to go get my Carvin book out to tell the guy.

Now the ebay department was a joy to work with. I called them on a clearance cab they had. The ebay guy said watch it in 10 minutes. I went back and it was another 10% off the clearence price. Awesome!

So I'm batting .500 on their service. But with a no questions asked 10 day return policy, there's not much to lose except the time it takes to go from CA to you, and back to CA.
Click to expand...

Could you post some rig pics?
 
#909
Here's a quick one with the old OLP.

0042.jpg
 
#910
I just traded away a Hartke HA2500 to get the poweramp for my new rig. It's good solid stuff, reliable as hell, clean and transparent. The 2500 is 250W and didn't have enough headroom to compete with my guitarist's laney half-stack. My only complaint is that it was a little too sterile, no growl or drive to speak of.

The cabs are solid and a good value used, I'm not a big fan of aluminum cones but to each their own...

Larry Hartke is very active on TB and is quick to answer any questions/concerns. The first one I bought had a silica packet break open in the box, and a bunch of the little silica pellets got stuck in the fan, disabling it, which lead to an over-heat and shutdown at practice. Called Hartke and they paid to ship it back to them, and sent me a new one no questions asked.
 
#912
I know you asked Joe, but I also have a lot of experience with Carvin products, new and used. Carvin has a pretty clear and well understood upside/downside to them. Their products sound and play well and they're affordable. The resale value isn't very good, because they're factory direct and not in the chain stores. Their cabs are probably their weakest link (which isn't a slam), but if you diversify as much as they have you can't be great at everything. They can be fair to good sound wise, sometimes they switch driver manufacturers and their quality wavers. They still use rat fur a lot and their tolex is known for being thin and easily damaged. They do have warranty issues with some of their stuff (electronics more than instruments), but they have good customer service if you actually deal with them. You get the best results if you call and talk to someone, since they're a small company. Most of the complaints I've read/heard about Carvin come in the form of really unreasonable expectations or refusal to actually use the customer service they have in place and just complain (or only email and never call). They're not the type of company that screws people over. Being a factory direct company, they're built on word of mouth reputation. Still, they are a business so they don't give the farm away and you have to have a reasonable expectation about how problems get resolved. I'm a little more sensitive to that though, since I deal with customer service for high end custom products and I have to put up with a lot of BS from people that have unreasonable expectations and don't use the resources available (such as "my windows failed 15 years ago, but I'm just telling you now...what do you mean they're not under warranty?!" or "I ordered $50,000 worth of hardwood products with no finish or primer and left them outside for a year. Now they're damaged, replace them all for free").

IMO, Carvin's guitars and basses are their high point. They put a lot of R&D into them and they're really high quality for the price. A lot of their amps are pretty close, but the older models are more reliable since the kinks have long been worked out (and they keep revising their bass amp lines, so they still have issues). They do have a short but no questions asked return policy on everything they sell though. Which might not include shipping costs, not sure, but that's not unusual.
 
#913
+1 to Corey.

The cabs may be the weakest link, but that's only a compliment to their other stuff. The cabs are good. Just don't expect a Schroeder for the price. As to drivers being sourced, yes. The 2-1x15" cabs I have have mixed speakers. One is 500 watts the other is 400 watts. Tonewise, no difference. They also gain volume at about the same pace when using them through independent channels on my power amp. Tweeters are useless for what we are doing here. Hope that helps.
 

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