A community of guitarists, and musicians dedicated to safeguarding the future of trees essential to guitar building.
Guitars are tools for making music. In pursuit of making the world a better place though music, knowledge of where and how these tools are being produced is essential. It's counterproductive for musicians to allow destruction of forests in the production of the very tools intended to improve people's lives. This project seeks to raise awareness of these issues~
Guitar production is one of the three themes this blog revolves around. Luckily I live in a part of the US where several guitar builders have set up shop. California, Oregon, and Washington host a long list of builders, from small independents to large corporations. My wife and I recently embarked on a road trip to visit three of California’s larger builders—Carvin, Taylor, and Fender.
Arrived at the Carvin headquarters in San Diego, CA
The first of our visits was Carvin Guitars, located in San Diego. There are very few family owned & operated companies in America today, and Carvin is proud to be one of them. They are a relatively small company compared to the likes of Fender, or Gibson, yet Carvin operates a state of the art 80,000 square foot facility, and produce roughly 5000 guitars and basses each year. Carvin was founded by Lowell Kiesel in 1946. Lowell passed away on 28 Dec 2009, but the company continues to be a family venture:
- Eldest son, Carson Kiesel is President of Carvin, and in charge of electronics design & production.
- Mark Kiesel is Vice-President, and in charge of guitar and bass design & production. - Jon Kiesel is also Vice-President, and responsible for speaker cabinet design & production.
- Grandson Jeff Kiesel is Director of National Sales. - Grandson Joel Kiesel is Director of International Sales.
- Granddaughter Kristen Kiesel Lieurance is a production engineer with Carvin.
(L to R) Carvin V220, Ultra V, DC127 Steve Vai's Legacy III wall of tone
I really appreciate Carvin's connection with their family, their employees, and the community-- not to mention their unique business model. What makes it unique is they sell directly to the customer. Direct sales enables them to offer their guitars, amps, and pro audio gear at a price roughly half that of their competition.
Another thing that setting Carvin apart from the big companies is all their gear is American made. In a time when all the large companies offer cheap, imported versions of their US models from Asia, Carvin focuses on offering only the best, American made instruments. There was a time however, when Carvin experimented with offering imported acoustic guitars (the Cobalt series), but discontinued the line for several reasons. Carvin has a long-standing reputation for the way their guitars are setup; the string height (i.e. action) is very low, resulting in a very comfortable playing guitar. Each of the imported acoustics received a QC, and setup at the US facility, which required a considerable amount of staff time. As time went on, the orders were taking longer and longer to receive from the sub-contracted builder. After giving the imports a fair try, Carvin decided to discontinue the series, and focus their attention on their US production, and reducing their Custom Shop build times.
Carvin's latest amps & extended scale guitars
Builders like Fender and Gibson mass-produce guitars, send them through the distributors to a network of dealers where the guitars sit and wait for customers to come along and buy them. They also have smaller divisions they call “custom shops” where a person could call and request specific features such as non-standard colors, etc. to suit their tastes. The cost of these custom shop guitars usually begins at double the price of their standard versions. Carvin bucks this trend by being only a custom shop. For instance, Carvin begins by establishing a baseline version of a particular model, then the customer decides on the additional options such as color, finish type, wood combinations, hardware—you name it. The guitar is not built until a customer places the order. Operating in this manner eliminates waste in many different ways, such as eliminating unsold stock at years end, and minimizing the demand on the forests for the woods required. The customer receives a guitar built to their specifications, to meet their needs rather than having to modify a guitar bought off the rack. Additionally, the customer saves a considerable amount of money by dealing directly with Carvin.
Carvin does not offer tours of the facility, but they do have an on-site showroom/store. During our visit, product specialist Mike Jones, and assistant manager Jorge Camberos took the time to visit with us, and talk about some of the new things happening at Carvin. They also let us have a sneak peek at some special guitars out from the back- fresh from QC, and awaiting delivery to the customers. The guitar that stood out from all the others was a special order Sky Blue Metallic single-cut that had a finish, which used three different sizes of hexagonal glitter. The guitar had a deep, 3-D look too it; like you could drop a coin on it, and never see it land— very cool! It was ordered by a young lady who has a steady gig playing guitar in a band at Disneyland. I was told (not asked) to NOT take any photos of it… they wanted to present it to her in person rather than her seeing it for the first time on the web. After she received it, photos went up on Facebook for all to enjoy.
Steve Vai's Legacy III amp trimmed in classic sea-foam green
We also got to see first hand some of the new amplifiers, tuning keys, and Carvin’s new headless guitars built for legendary guitarist Allan Holdsworth. The headless guitars were beautiful and fun see, but my favorite piece of new gear is the new three-channel amplifier built for Steve Vai called the Legacy III. Guitar amps aren’t usually very interesting to look at—not so with the Legacy II, as it sports a very surf like sea-foam green painted speaker grill & head. Inside the vented head is a series of LEDs that illuminates the amplifier from within. An angry Kung-Fu Master wouldn’t have been able to knock the smile from my face that day—I was in seventh-heaven.
Even though we didn’t have a chance to tour the factory, we had a wonderful time. Our hosts were the best. Mike was even kind enough to spend much time digging through old parts bins to find the correct replacement part for an older Carvin I acquired through E-bay several years ago. He also reminded me of the YouTube video series they have been filming that follows the building of a guitar from start to finish. It is an excellent series that dispels any Internet-rumors that Carvin guitars are all machine built. In addition to taking advantage of modern technology, there is a tremendous amount of traditional hands-on craftsmanship that goes into building a Carvin guitar as can be seen in the videos.
LEDs illuminating the Legacy III amp
If the only builder we visited were Carvin Guitars, the 4,000-mile road trip would have been well worth the journey. Luckily however, we also got to visit and tour both Taylor & Fender factories— results of which I will post here over the next few days~
No comments:
Post a Comment