Using Carvin pickups

[Deke Dickerson]

Hey there gang, just to add what knowledge I have about the Carvin pickup history....

Carvin started in the late 40's, but they were originally known as "Kiesel." The owner's name was Lowell Kiesel, and he eventually renamed the company Carvin (in late 1949, according to a Guitar Player article by Teisco Del Rey) after his two sons, Carson and Gavin.

You will still occasionally see a Kiesel lap steel around, they have what looks like an AP-6 pickup with no exposed polepieces, and "Kiesel" stamped across the top. In fact, Semie often referred to the Carvin AP-6 pickup as "Kiesel pickups" so he must have known the people from the company since the early days.

The first Carvin catalog was 1954, though if you click on this link you'll see they were making stuff with the Carvin name on it as early as 1950:

http://www.carvinmuseum.com/decade/pre-1950.html

By the way, check out the rest of the site, it's a wonderful resource for this information! http://www.carvinmuseum.com

They continued to make the cream-colored AP-6 pickups until 1971, then they kept making AP-6 pickups with a BLACK cover until 1976. Another hilarious detail is that the humbucking pickups they used from 1976-1978 were actually two AP-6 coils housed under a giant square "humbucking" cover.

The assertion that Carvin keeps trying to make that their M22 humbucking pickup is "the same as an AP-6" is completely ludicrous. For one thing, the M22 pickup is a HUMBUCKING pickup. Secondly, the construction of an M22 pickup is more akin to a Stratocaster pickup with magnets underneath it than the original AP-6 pickup. In the sense that both pickups probably sound like "guitar pickups," then they are similar. In the sense that tone makes a different, the modern pickups could not be more different.

We contacted the Carvin company to see if they could reproduce the AP-6 pickup a while back. Their response was that they had thrown away everything during a factory cleanup in the 1980's. Then they also told us that the M22 humbucking pickup was the same as an AP-6....

Back to Semie and his use of Carvin stuff--Semie used Carvin pickups and Carvin knobs & switches until about 1960 or 1961, when he started using Carvin coils inside his own handmade pickups. The reason, as it's been stated here, is that it was very difficult to buy guitar parts back then, because the major companies would not sell you parts without a guitar. carvin was one of the only companies (DeArmond was another) who sold pickups and other guitar parts to aspiring guitar makers. As for the exact date when Semie quit using Carvins, I used to own a solidbody 1963 doubleneck Joe Maphis model guitar which was interesting, because you could see that the bottom neck treble pickup was a Carvin coil mounted into a homemade Mosrite pickup cover, and the other two pickups on the guitar were early Mosrite-style pickups completely handmade by Semie. This was probably the transitional guitar!

The biggest difference between Carvin pickups and the later Mosrite pickups (there are a world of differences, but this is the main one) is that the Carvin pickups had a low output. Some pickups register around 4K Ohm output, some measure up to about 6.5K Ohm output. When Semie started winding his own pickups, the output was around 12 or 13K Ohms, and some of them, like the Ventures II "Johnny Ramone" guitar had pickup output as high as 20K Ohm. It's a gross generalization, but the lower the output of a pickup, the more "high-fidelity" it is, and the higher the output, the more "mid-rangey" it is. That's the biggest difference between the tone of Joe maphis, and the tone of Nokie Edwards.

Hope this helps....correct me if I'm wrong. I'm no expert, these are just my observations....

Deke

[JimPage]

Hey, Deke--

You wrote:
>>correct me if I'm wrong. I'm no expert . . .

Well, Deke, I think you ARE an expert.

So, upon the authority vested in me by my own sheer audacity, I hereby confer upon you the degree of Expert on Early Electric Guitars with all rights and privileges appertaining thereto.

Congratulations!!!

--Jim

[Sarah93003]

I second that motion! Wow, thanks for the information. I learn so much on this forum, it is just amazing.

[Deke Dickerson]

Ha! Thanks you guys. But I'm just a guitar geek.

Deke

[Veenture]

Deke, that was a most interesting bit of reading on the Carvin pickups. How come you know so much...you're still so young?! ...

[jfine]

Hey, Deke--I really dig the info and photos you've been posting on here. Great stuff. And, yes, you are an expert. I agree that Carvin M22s don't sound anything like AP-6s, but Carvin claims that their AP-11 single-coils do. Since I haven't heard a real AP-6 in years, I can't vouch for that, but I've got a Carvin TL60 with AP-11s that sounds great. Interestingly, I was at the Santa Ana Carvin store in '88 and played a DC200 that they'd built with two black AP-6s--apparently, they'd found a few early-'70's ones in a drawer and decided to use them up. That thing sounded great! They wanted $500 for it and I didn't have the money, so I had to pass on it. I really wish I'd bought it--I'll never find another one!
I have played one of the Hallmark Deke Dickerson models--it came through the store I teach at a few months ago. Sounded real good. I'd be curious to know how you rate the Hallmark pickups vs. the Carvin AP-6s--are they pretty close?

[Deke Dickerson]

Just got back from a weekend of gigs up in San Francisco....in response to your question, yes, the Hallmark JM-6 pickups to my ear sound exactly like the Carvin pickups. Anybody that has tried them agrees, and I've had some very nit-picky tone conscious players try the DD models out and give them the thumbs up.

And I'm sure that Carvin pickups made today aren't bad pickups, but the company's assertion that they sound like AP-6's is ludicrous in today's world where companies like Seymour Duncan and Lindy Fralin are offering reissue Fender and Gibson pickups based on the nit-pickiest of details, not only that the pickups are visually identical to vintage ones, but that their reissue pickups offer construction details identical down to the minute details. Carvin's modern pickups are essentially Strat-type pickups, and not even close in construction to an AP-6. The assertions they try to get away with might have been possible in the 70's, but people are too educated now on pickup "mojo" and attention to detail to believe their claims.

Deke