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Carvin SH575 Synth Access Carved Top Guitar
Summary: One of the better synth guitars I’ve played to date. Great response time into the synth. Very well built and gorgeous looks. The one I played was a blue burst (not the one pictured). Pros: Great looks and incredible acoustic sound, especially when plugged into an acoustic amp. Synth feature is VERY cool and the response is about the best I’ve played. Very light in weight – you could play this for hours and not get tired. Cons: I was disappointed with the sustain, or lack thereof; especially in the top strings. Notes trailed off pretty quickly, no matter how hard I dug in and shook the strings. The driven sound of this guitar was a bit uninspiring, though the cleans are magnificent. Price: ~$1900 direct Specs: Visit site Tone Bone Score: 4.5 – There’s a lot to like with this guitar, and if it weren’t for the lack of sustain and uninspiring drive sound, this would be a joy to play. In spite of my negatives, this is a very versatile instrument, and the mere fact that you have both guitar and synth going at the same time is simply awesome. |
Several weeks ago, my good friend Dave shared with me that he had ordered a Carvin SH575 at the Carvin store while in Southern California on a trip. I had heard of this guitar from the Winter NAMM show, and was pretty excited about it. Dave finally got the guitar a couple of weeks ago, and let me borrow it so I could play around with it and do a review… so here it is! 🙂
Fit and Finish
Carvin makes some very pretty guitars, and this is no exception. A lot of care went into the details in building this instrument, and I have to say that I’m totally impressed with the build quality. The blue burst finish of the guitar I tested was quite magnificent, and everything down to the hardware was perfect.
Playability
Wow! I had never played a Carvin guitar before, and I have to say that I am incredibly impressed by how nice this guitar plays! The medium-jumbo frets are perfect, and moving around the neck is a real dream. Your fingers glide very easily over the strings (though I have to admit, I am NOT a fan of Elixir strings, which I think these come with stock). It’s no small wonder Steve Vai plays a Carvin. The SH575 is simply a dream to play, and this is really the saving grace of this guitar.
How It Sounds
I’m really conflicted in this area. Acoustically, this guitar rules. I love the acoustic sound of this guitar, especially when plugged into a good acoustic amp (Dave uses a Genz-Benz 150). But even plugged into my DAW from the synth unit, the acoustic tones were nothing short of amazing. Here’s an example:
In the clip above, I ran the 1/4″ out on the guitar into my pedalboard, and had the MIDI out go into the synth so I could have a nice background string pad to play over. Very neat! 🙂 In other words, I have two separate signals going into my DAW. As you can tell, the natural acoustic tone of the SH575 is gorgeous – it doesn’t sound like an acoustic plugged into an amp. It sounds like a big-body acoustic with a microphone in front of it! I love it!
In this next clip, I’m running only the MIDI out from the guitar into the synth, then into my DAW. I recorded two separate tracks: One for the guitar, then I overdubbed a “bamboo flute” patch over the guitar.
To play these parts individually, the volume knob is a combination volume knob with one volume “ring” around a central raised knob. The center knob controls the synth volume, while the outer ring controls the guitar volume. With the first clip, I had a mix of both guitar and synth. With this clip, for each individual part, I turned down the synth or the guitar to isolate the signal. Again, very cool.
In this final clip, I feature the guitar alone. I wanted to see how it sounded driven. The end result isn’t a bad sound at all, but I really had to work hard to get some sustain out of the guitar, and instead of just using the natural drive of my amp, I opted to run the guitar through my Tube Screamer and a touch of compression to add some sustain and give the signal some balls. Also, I played this clip with the neck pickup of the guitar, as the bridge pickup pretty much did nothing for me. Mixing the two was nice, but if this were my guitar, I’d lower the bridge pickup to reduce the treble just a tad. In any case, here’s the clip:
Overall Impressions
As I mentioned above, there’s a lot to like about this guitar from the synth access to the acoustic tones. I was thinking that perhaps a function of the lack of sustain might have to do with the Elixir strings that are put on at the factory. I’d probably string this guitar up with either pure nickel or nickel wound to get more resonance out of the strings. That might be the way to go to get a better electric guitar sound out of it. And as I mentioned, the electric guitar sound is not bad at all, and if I were to rate it just on tone, it would get really high marks. But the lack of sustain just kills me; truth be told, my Strat seems to have more inherent sustain than this guitar. Sad but true.
Don’t get me wrong. I like this guitar – a lot! I’d definitely use it for rhythm guitar and for acoustic simulation; and of course, for playing a synth along with it, which it is particularly great for.
For more information, visit the Carvin SH575 site!
Guitar Gear 
I have an SH575 and the sustain is outstanding.
Joe, Thanks for stopping by! I actually re-rated the guitar in this follow-up. I just had to lighten up my touch a bit.
I think another thing that would do wonders for this guitar is to have it set up. The dead B string might be due to slight fretting or something impeding its vibration.
The sustain on mine is great!
As I mentioned in a previous reply, I re-rated the guitar after I spent more time with it and getting familiar with the neck. Once I lightened up my touch, the guitar really sang!