Vintage 1961 Carvin SGB-3 Electric Guitar

Carvin guitars, made in Covina, California, are one of the Rodney Dangerfield’s of the American guitar world. They’ve been around as long as Fender. They’re actually still in the family (as I write this, at least!), not passing through various corporate hands or part of a conglomerate family of brands. The company has contributed numerous innovations. These days the guitars reflect a high standard of quality. Yet for some reason Carvin doesn’t spring to most folk’s lips when you bring up the subject of venerable guitar brands.

I confess I was not really much aware of Carvin guitars until I started collecting back in the ‘80s. I probably saw some of their ads in Guitar Player Magazine, but since I wasn’t in the market for an electric guitar, I didn’t pay attention. Plus, I was living in the Great Lakes area and Carvin was out in California. You didn’t see too many Carvins.

Vintage 1961 Carvin SGB-3 Electric Guitar

My first Carvin was a classy 1982 DC-200KI with a body make of figured koa and a heel-less glued-in neck. Very sweet. After that I always kept my eyes peeled for interesting Carvins, and there are plenty.

I found this Carvin SGB-3 languishing in a music shop in Toledo, Ohio, before I knew much about the brand. Turns out this was one of Carvin’s first solidbody guitars, originally introduced in 1955 and offered until 1961.

Vintage 1961 Carvin SGB-3 Electric Guitar

Carvin—the name is a combination of the founder’s sons’ names Carson and Gavin—was started in 1946 when a Hawaiian guitar player from Kansas named Lowell Kiesel moved to L.A. Kiesel began developing an idea for a Bakelite lap steel and introduced the Kiesel lap steel in 1947. These were distributed by Continental, at least. I actually found one of those laps a few years ago. No one knew what it was! (Knowledge is power.) I spoke with one of the younger sons Mark years ago and he recalled assembling those laps in their kitchen. These did well and the Hawaiian line was expanded and they began making Kiesel amps.

The Carvin name appeared in around late 1949 or so. Carvin’s first Spanish electrics were hollowbodies sourced from both Kay and Harmony, with a Carvin pickup mounted on them in California. Until Carvin opened a couple retail outlets in the 1990s, Carvin guitars were always mail-order. Because they used that method of marketing, your guitar was basically custom-made when you placed an order. No dealers to supply, etc. As a result, Carvins have always offered lots of options, so you’re likely to find a lot of variation between examples of the same “model.”

Vintage 1961 Carvin SGB-3 Electric Guitar

As I said, the SBG solidbodies (Solid Body Guitar, SBG) debuted in 1955 with the design you see here, a big slab maple body and a sort of Stratish neck. I love the look, but there’s no way that point on the top side is comfortable to play! The pickups on this guitar are probably not original, although with Carvin’s “customizable” approach, who knows? I don’t know who made them. They look like DeArmonds and have the date Sept. 16, 1957, which DeArmond often did on older pickups. And they sound like DeArmonds, not my favorite units. Anyhow, they’re not stock Carvin pickups but they were probably mounted close to when this guitar was made. This one came with the all-important original hard case AND a Carvin brochure! These don’t have serial numbers yet, so your guess is as good as mine, but they were only made for 6 years. Pretty cool—if basic—guitars!

Vintage 1961 Carvin SGB-3 Electric Guitar

Carvin got a little more hip with a quasi-Jazzmaster style following these first SBGs, but switched to importing parts, briefly bodies made in Japan, then for much of the 1970s made its own Strat-style bodies but outfitted them with Höfner necks from Germany. In 1978 Carvin started making all of its own guitars again, including use of glued-in necks like my DC-200KI.

Fortunately the Plains-states migration into California didn’t yield The Grapes of Wrath for guitars. I’d say both Fender and Carvin are success stories. Carvin just needs a little more respect.

The Other Dust Bowl Ballads (Vintage 1961 Carvin SGB-3 Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1974 Carvin CM95 Electric Guitar

Bob’s House of Music was the creation of Bob Goodman, a former music teacher from New Jersey, who’d made his way out to the Denver area. He did, indeed, own a little strip mall in Wheat Ridge, a single-story L-shaped cinderblock affair with four or five storefronts facing the main street and another three or four along the left side. The space in back made by the two legs of the L constituted a large service and storage area. Parked in the spaces in front were various “vintage” cars and trucks that Bob had taken in on trade, none of which ran, and all of which got him periodic citations from the city. Along the front row was Bob’s House of Music, very crowded with guitars, basses, amps, and accessories, close quarters but for all intents and purposes a normal music store. However, all was far from normal!

That’s because there were no other tenants. Every—and I mean EVERY—square inch of the rest of the building—from the former beauty shop to the service area—was crammed floor to ceiling with vintage instruments. Hanging on racks, stacked in piles, lying in cases. Thousands of guitars everywhere and barely enough room to walk!

Vintage 1974 Carvin CM95 Electric Guitar

Mainly this was the case because Bob followed a unique business model. You’d walk in and see, say, a Rickenbacker on the wall marked $600. You’d say, “You take $500 for that?” Bob would scowl, draw himself up straight, square his shoulders, glare at you and spit out, “$700.” The Guitar Nazi. Bob didn’t sell a lot of guitars. Indeed, Bob lived on thrift shop clothes and expired canned food. For himself and the feral cats. Did I mention the cats? Hundreds had the run of the place. Use your imagination…

Vintage 1974 Carvin CM95 Electric Guitar

Bob and I got along fine. I was a “celebrity” and he let me photograph hundreds of prime guitars. Plus the chaos around us. I even bought quite a few guitars. As long as none were obviously valuable and I priced things fairly, he didn’t jack up the price. I even checked them into baggage for the flight home; this was way before you got a per-bag charge! They all arrived safely, with no “United Breaks Guitars!”

This 1974 Carvin CM95 was one of my prizes from Bob’s. Carvin was begun in Lowell Kiesel’s kitchen back in 1946. Kiesel, from Kansas via Los Angeles, began producing Bakelite lap steels carrying the Kiesel brand. After some early distribution through Continental, Carvin became one of the earliest direct-to-consumer mailorder guitar companies, a model it follows to this day. In around 1949 Kiesel’s brand name changed to a contraction of his two sons’ names: Carson and Gavin. Carvin.

Carvin began making solidbody electric guitars in 1955, the first a kind of cross between a Tele and a Les Paul. This was supplanted by more Fender-inspired solids in the early 1960s. In around 1965 Carvin began importing necks from Höfner in Germany. Carvin guitars sported imported necks until 1978 when it returned to making its own handles again.

The Carvin CM95 seen here was a short-lived model made in 1973-74. Carvin made the Eastern hard rock maple single-cut body, the APH-6 humbuckers, and the hardware; Höfner made the neck (it’s signed by the German makers on the back of the heel). The serial number is 1745, putting this at around 1974. This was at the height of the so-called “copy era,” and would have provided guitarslingers with an American-made (well almost) alternative to an Ibanez or Electra or Bradley from Japan.

I think there’s something in our DNA that looks down on a bolt-neck Les Paul-style guitar, but, honestly, there’s really nothing not to like about this CM95. I’ve always felt that Carvin’s pickups from this period lacked personality, but since all of us color our sound even if we just use an amp, nevermind effects, about all you really need is pickups that work and a guitar that plays well and this fits the bill!

In around 1979 Carvin’s brief fling with Gibson-style solidbodies began shifting toward pointy Strat-style guitars that would subsequently characterize the brand, several years before that style became popular, it should be pointed out.

Curiously enough, Bob’s father also had a music store in Wilmington, DE, and when I returned to Philly I drove down to see it. In stark contrast to Bob’s overflowing Temple of Doom, his father’s shop was a temple of gloom. It had an ancient pump organ in one corner and a couple new Johnson guitars on the otherwise totally bare walls. A few months later the story I wrote on the whole adventure ran in Vintage Guitar Magazine, and several weeks later Bob suddenly died. The next day—that’s the NEXT DAY—Bob’s father passed away. My friend Tom, who’d initiated the whole tale ended up buying Bob’s stash, liquidating it on eBay. I’d think I dreamed the whole story if I didn’t have this Carvin and a few other tokens to remind me of that fateful email once upon a time!

Bob's House of Music (Wheat Ridge, Colorado)

Bob's House of Music (Wheat Ridge, Colorado)

From the Temple of Doom (II): Carson & Gavin [Vintage 1974 Carvin CM95 Electric Guitar] from MyRareGuitars.com