The Carvin B50 has arrived!

Hey guys, the Carvin I ordered finally arrived on February 7th! I ordered the bass on 11/28/11, so it took about 2 months from order to completion. I paid for the bass in advance, which turned out to be somewhat of a “sour” moment, only because they never sent a notice or email that the bass had been shipped, and I wanted to make sure I was home to sign for it.

Another bassist on YouTube ordered a B50 about a week before I did, and he advised that I contact my sales advisor because the factory was running a week or so behind, in which he wasn’t notified. My advice to you guys is that if you really want to know when your bass is on it’s way to it’s new home, that you wait and pay closer to your completion date. They won’t ship the bass without payment in full, and this way they’ll be forced to keep you abreast of your build info. If you call and ask about your bass, just know that it may take a day or so for them to get info from the guitar department.

I was very excited about receiving my bass and I wanted to post info about it on the blog on that very day, but I decided to wait until I had time to try it outand see what I really thought about it first. So here we go!

The Specs

Carvin Box with specs list

•  Carvin B50
• Swamp Ash Body
• Black Stain w/ Flame Maple Top
• Blackburst Edges
• Active/Passive Electronics
• SB HeadStock / Flame Maple / Color Matches Body
• Abalone Dot Inlays
• Abalone Carvin logo
• Master Volume / Blend
• HardShell Case (free promotion!)

Carvin Hardshell Case

This is my first custom bass, so the experience was akin to the “kid in a candy store” adventure that everyone can relate to!  I ripped through the box, opened the case and found this beauty:

Carvin B50

What a gorgeous bass!  I was very impressed with how this bass turned out.  The paint and craftsmanship is impeccable!

SB Headstock on a Carvin B50

Back of the Carvin B50

There is so much beautiful detail in this guitar.  If you look closely, you can really see the grain pattern of the ash on the back of the bass.  Even on the back of the neck, there’s this lovely “dancing maple”:

Maple colors on the neck of the Carvin B50

And here’s the back of the headstock:

Carvin B50 - Back of Headstock

Aesthetically, there is absolutely nothing to dislike about this bass.  I had a vision of what this bass would look like, and the actual product turned out to be many times better!

The Sound

Okay, so in all honesty and to get right to the point, I didn’t like the way it sounded.

I tried this bass out in three of my normal playing situations, and the tone just wasn’t for me.  Nothing is functionally wrong with the electronics, but the J99A’s and the preamp are just not my taste.  I’m sure this is all my fault.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, I’m a huge Sadowsky fan that was looking to expand into some other kind of basses, mainly for backup purposes.  Carvin is one of a few companies that I’ve tried.  With that being said, I opted for the volume blend, an by many accounts this affects the range of tones you can achieve.  With this option and a very very very generous tone knob (I usually only opened it up to about .5  on a scale of 10 because it seemed to make everything really really “treble-y”), I just couldn’t find a tone that I liked.  I also thought that I could appreciate the 70′s pickup spacing, boy was I ever wrong on that.

I listened to countless clips on YouTube and other places of the B50 / SB4000 / SB5000 (same electronics), I’ve actually played Sekou’s personal bass, I’ve even heard Sekou in concert and the one thing that occurred the most in all these instances was slapping.  This bass is a slap monster.  I couldn’t find a clip or recording where the bass was used prominently for fingerstyle playing (which I do 95% of the time).  My hopes were that I could dial the tone back enough to not be so bright (Marcus Miller 70′s type), but also not too dark (when you eliminate all the treble and roll the tone knob all the way off).  Maybe a midrange control would have helped?

The Bottom Line

Carvin makes incredible basses.  I just hate that I didn’t really like the J99A’s.  Maybe my ears are just tuned to the Sadowsky’s.  The preamp has a very strong presence, but in most of my playing situations it was really bottom heavy.

There aren’t many Carvins in the Atlanta area that would allow me to really dig in and “try before I buy”.  I had to just order and hope for the best, and in my case take advantage of the 10 day return policy.  And I honestly don’t think 10 days is enough time to make a decision.

I really like the size of the bass and thought about just upgrading the electronics to maybe a Nordstrand combo, but that would be another $300-$400 investment into a 70′s spacing that I can’t appreciate.  Not really worth it to me.  Looks like I’ll be trying something else… maybe even another B50 with a different setup.

I know the obvious solution is to just get another Sadowsky.  But let’s just keep searching for now!

We had to travel from Lund, Sweden to Gothenburg.  It was only about a 2 hour’s drive, but this is a great opportunity for me to show you the tour bus that has become my second home!

Everybody tries to act like it doesn’t matter where anyone sits, but the truth is everyone has their favorite spot and that seat to the right is mine..ha ha!  It’s in the front where I can see out the front windshield and play the Playstation 3, have some say so in which movie is watched and never get left!  Here’s other pics of the bus:

We like to call this the bedroom. There’s a door that allows this room to be private.  The room also has its own tv, surround sound, DVD, PS3, Satellite and light dimmers in about 10 different colors.

These are the bunks where everyone sleeps.  There are only 6, so you know someone has to sleep elsewhere.  I personally sleep in the seat I showed you earlier.  It actually reclines to about 120 degrees.

This was supposed to be my bunk, but there is a draft from outside that was making me sick.

Windows Media Center with over 300 movies and a router for wireless internet on the bus!

Here’s a pic of everyone in the front watching a movie.  This was before I claimed my seat…ha ha!

This is the inside of the venue for Gothenburg

Above is a shot of the stage.

We didn’t spend the night in Gothenburg, so I don’t have any city shots.  But here are pics of outside of the venue in all of the snow!!!

It was snowing pretty hard!

The Parking Lot

The sidewalk.  They had to dig out a path for people walk through!  Do you see the evening rush to the right?

Outside of the venue.  Can you believe people actually came to this gig?

The fried chicken that blessed my soul after the show!!!

Stan Steam and “The Feel” from DetoxXx.Music on Vimeo.

My New Boss - Angie Stone - Photo by Dave Ellis

Hey guys!  For those of you that don’t know I’ve recently joined Angie Stone’s band and I have been doing shows with her all over the US.  It’s been a great experience and as of Monday 02/22/10, it’ll become an experience that we’ll take over seas to Europe! We’ll be visiting Sweden, London, Norway, France, and Poland over a three week period.

I’m very excited about this opportunity and another chance to see parts of the world that I’ve only seen in books or heard about in the movies!  As usual, I’ll try to blog as much as possible and post as many pictures as I can.  This will be a great adventure!  Stay tuned!

Let's Remember and Pray for the people of Haiti

My heart is heavy from hearing the news of the Earthquake in Haiti on Tuesday January 12, 2009.  This country had recently suffered numerous tropical storms that almost devastated the entire area.  Because of this and many other reasons the number of people that lived in a state of poverty was incredibly high.  The addition of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake to the woes of the area has caused near total destruction and over 500,000 people are feared dead.  The presidential palace has collapsed along with many other buildings.  The rising smoke right after the earthquake gave me a vision of what the end of the world or destruction of the earth would be like.

This is a great time of mourning for the world.  My heart is heavy for the people that have lost their lives and the families all over the world that have been affected.  I continue to think and wonder what if this had happened in our city or country?  I remember how blessed I am and I am admonished to pray for the people and the families of Haiti.  I’m going to make a donation to the American Red Cross and I urge you to help in any way that you can as well.  We give because we are blessed.

You Can donate here: American Red Cross International Response Fund

Atlanta seems to be bringing in the new year with a bang!  Less than a week after The Peach dropped into Underground Atlanta to welcome a new decade into the world, a ferocious storm attacked Georgia dumping inches of snow in Atlanta!  Thermometers every were have been struggling to make it past about 25 degrees and Ga Power executives are somewhere celebrating over the revenues that only God can bring as heating systems continue to run non-stop.

Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit about it being an actual blizzard, but we did truly get some snow fall.  Anyone in Atlanta that’s not from Atlanta knows that the whole town goes crazy at the mention of snow.  Roads shut down, schools close and there are accidents galore!  We’re talking about a city that may see 8-10 inches of snow a year.  Everyone thinks we over the top with our reactions to the weather, but we’re just not used to it and just not equipped to operate in something that we hardly ever experience.

The pic above is of my car while I was pumping gas.  I didn’t have the luxury of staying at home this time around.  Unfortunately I have the kind of job where there are no vacation or sick days!

I didn’t have much difficulty driving in the conditions.  You just have to drive much slower than normal.  Besides, driving slowly and being the only car on the road helps you to get nice pics!

While it was a pretty site, the snow was more of a dusting than a blizzard!   I didn’t have much of a chance to enjoy it other than taking pictures.  Let’s see what next week brings!

Not only was the OS a hooker, but the laptop seemed to cover many processor intensive tasks with ease… as if to say “Is that all you got?!!?!?! C’Mon Son!!!”  In the past year, I haven’t had one single Mac (hardware or OS) issue at all.  This means so incredibly much to me.  I’ve had an iPod nano (1st Gen) and iPod Touch (1sr Gen), iPhone 3G, then my MacBook Pro that I now use exclusively for music production and recording, and I now own the White unibody Macbook (and this little joint is a beast!) to replace those two PC’s that crashed.  From a tech standpoint, I am incredibly pleased at how well everything works and integrates seamlessly.  Everything works so well together with almost no user setup…. this is something that would take much time and headache to accomplish on a PC!

I’m so happy with my products that I almost feel contempt when watching those Windows 7 commercials!  I was in a tech store the other day and an employee told me that people often purchase computers with Windows 7, and eventually return to purchase XP!  What’s up with that?  Just kinda helps my case.

Bottom line, I love Macs right now!!!  And I think I’m becoming a MAC SNOB!!!

The first is a Black Soap called DuDu -Osun. A soap called DuDu, or even worse tropical DuDu at that.

The Second is a can of watermelon flavored soda.   I can’t tell if it’s racist or just a bad effort….

A Black Soap called Dudu (pronounced Doo Doo)...

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