Carvin DC727C review

My Carvin DC727C review
OK I've had this for about a month now and
the "Oh my god it's so pretty" stage is pretty much over,
so I feel I can give a more level headed realistic review of this guitar.

I see a lot of people on this board have these but I've seen zero reviews
so I'll be interested in getting rebuttals and differing or similar opinions
as to what I'm going to say here.

Features
I chose an all Mahogany neck with Mahogany wings/ quilted maple top
Birdseye maple fret board and stainless steel jumbo frets/passive pickups/coil taps for each pick up/25.5 “ scale.

I had read several opinions that the maple neck/alder combination was very bright and
to stay away from that combination so I did, as I wanted this guitar to be full sounding
yet remain clear and sharp.

Rating 1 -5

Construction.
Well this is easily one of the “prettiest” looking guitars I’ve ever seen, but I didn’t buy
it because I needed a “pretty” guitar, I was looking for a 7 that plays as well as my 6
stringers and has a floyd on it.
The stain is beautiful on this, the body is a bit heavier than my hellraiser 7 (also all
Mahogany) so I’m thinking the Mahogany Carvin uses is a bit denser than what
Schecter uses. The Stainless Steel frets are very well dressed and are nice and level
(these frets are freaking big too), the initial set up out of the box was good, but they
shipped it with Elixirs and I’m not a fan. They also shipped with 10-59 gauge strings
on it. I switched them out to D’Addario 9-56. Plays much nicer now, lowered the
action a bit and I’m all good. The only flaw I have found on this guitar is the lock nut.
It seems to be just a little bit too big for the nut width. I call Carvin and these lock
nuts come in 2.0” and 1 7/8” sizes. They say that they use the 1 7/8 nuts (the nut width
of the neck is 1.91 “) but I think some 2.0” lock nuts got mixed in. I emailed a couple
of guys on the board that have these and surprisingly enough several of you noticed the
same thing. Carvin is sending me another lock nut and I’ll take it from there. No
problem with the current lock nut just an observation. The Floyd on this guitar is ok ,
not great not horrible, more than up to the task.
Also the pickup switch "cap" was broken off in the case and it was black

(with creme p/us and gold hardware?)
85 cents later and I got a creme one on there
Overall this is a very nicely made guitar.
Rating =4

Playability.
This is really what I was concerned about since I had never played a Carvin before,
and I was not disappointed. The neck shape on this is surprisingly very similar to the
neck shape of my old ESP M-207, so if any of you have one of those (and like it)
you’ll take to a Carvin neck right away. It’s a bit shallower than the neck on a hell
raiser, but I’ve got no problems with a full profile neck. Once I put 9-56 strings on
here I took this guitar very quickly. I’ve been averaging about 2 hours a day on it since
I got it and I’m really at home on it now.

However there are a couple of things I noticed that are “different “ from my other
guitars.
I hate where the pick up selector switch is. I need to move the floyd arm out of the
way while I’m playing to get at it. I also noticed that the fret spacing from frets 15-24
is a little tighter than on my other 24 fret guitars. This could be good or bad depending
on how you look at it. When I’m playing fast scale runs up there I need to be a bit
more precise with my playing but
I can also play wider stretches a little easier than on say my Jackson soloist.
Besides these 2 things I absolutely took to this guitar right away.
I do like where the coil tap switches are. I also noticed that I can play with a lighter
touch on this guitar (could be due to the huge frets that are on it)
So for playability I give it a 5 (hey it’s not perfect but it’s close)
You’ll either love it or hate it, and I freaking love this thing.
Rating = 5

Sound
Here is the other area that I worried about since the Carvin pickups get trashed here
so often. When I play this guitar exclusively for several hours it sounds great to me. I
love the neck pick up and tapped it sounds very cool. I can get a good range of
sounds out of this guitar and if it was my only guitar I’d be good with it, I can play just
about everything on it (the Greg Howe stuff takes a little more work but it’s getting
there).
The clean sounds out of these pick ups are just beautiful, even thru my 5150 this guitar
sounds great clean.
When I plug in my Jackson Soloist however (after playing the Carvin for a couple of
hours) I can immediately hear the difference. The Jackson (JB/Jazz combo) sounds
much fatter and has more balls to it. The Carvin is a little “mid” heavy and pretty
bright. I can EQ my amps so it sounds as good as my Jackson (well almost as good)
but with a real good pick up in the bridge of this thing it will kill.

So unfortunately Duncan won’t make a crème or Zebra 7 string pick up so it’s either a
Dimarzio or a Bare Knuckle (probably a miracle man)
So here I’m giving it a 3 /12. Not terrible (pretty good actually) but could be way
better.
Any opinions on what to get here are more than welcomed.
Rating 3 ½

Support from Carvin
So far so good, I had no problems getting a hold of my sales guy thru out the process
(by phone, forget about emails they only reply sporadically) and the support guys are
sending me another lock nut for free right now and I got thru to them immediately, so I
like that.
Rating=5

Overall
There are several things about this guitar(company) that rub me the wrong way.
I wish I could get an OFR on here. They offer them on their 6’s why not on the 7’s?
I really wish I could get after market pick ups. A Duncan SH5/59 combo in this guitar
Or a JB/59 combo would sound great.
I also wish we could select a rounded body style or not (an arch top would be nice),
and I’d like to be able to get binding on my neck and/or body.

Besides these annoyances I’ve been very pleased with this guitar. So much so that I
could see getting another one with some different options very soon.
Carvin really isn’t a custom shop it’s an options shop. If the neck shape and body
style appeals to you then you're in luck, it’s a great playing guitar.
I highly recommend checking one out if you can play on a non "wizard" style paper thin neck.

Overall Rating = 4

Ok pics added for the lazy fuckers around here

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Carvin DC727C review