So I guess Carvin closed...

[UlricvonCatalyst]

A lot of them are dogs, and most are worth more than my car.

There are also real dogs worth more than your car.

There are also real cats that are worth more than your dog.

[mackerelmint]

Incidentally, I guess the guitars are still made by "Kiesel". One glance at their products chilled my fucking blood. Pick everything I hate about the electric guitar and boil it into a black glue and that's what Kiesel is. Dreadful.

Well I just went and had a look, and sure enough, they've only gotten more tasteless over the years. I remember when you could get your quilted this and transparent that finish over the top of it and that seemed fine for people who like that kind of thing, but I suppose PRS must have poached a bunch of those assholes because the stakes have been raised. Someone have them make me a AAA flame spalted triple color burst coffin with ice blue dyed flame maple sides (did you see that white neck with fucking blue stripes? Jesus christ) and launch me to hell in it laughing. I feel like I've just been fucked in the eyes by all that day-glo tastelessness. I'm going to take a painkiller. It's almost 10, and as it's getting on toward bedtime and I had surgery on wednesday, I'm going to dull the pain of those guitars by consuming opiates. Jesus, we took living things and did THAT to them. We should have just burned those poor trees, or made them into toilet paper. What happened is far less dignified. That's like seeing a garbage can made out of an elephant's foot, is what that was. Like Pinocchio was a bottle of some XTREME flavor of mountain dew instead of a puppet, and wanted to be a guitar instead of a real boy. What a shame.

Where's that Norco?

[Larry Mal]

I think I'm gonna like the new opiate-uninhibited Megan around here.

[mackerelmint]

You know who plays those guitars? Old guys that still wanna be cool, you know, the 73 year old guys who have "cool" facial hair and wear oakleys when they hang out in beach bars wearing cargo shorts. You know the kind. The guys with kinda half assed trophy wives they weren't able to trade in for newer models when their tits started to sag, so they just pretend to be Sammy Hagar to impress younger women while they let their wives go find dudebros on spring break to get those harpies out of their sunbleached hair. Those are the guys who buy these guitars, and who spec them out. And those things, they're ugly. So ugly that I took opiates. Look, I'm dancing with the devil here, that could have been the dose that pushed me over the edge and when people ask why Megan at age 40 was suddenly pushed into IV heroin dependence, we all know where to point the finger. All those old dudes hanging out with ugly guitars in flavortown with Guy Fieri.

[Embenny]

You know who plays those guitars? Old guys that still wanna be cool, you know, the 73 year old guys who have "cool" facial hair and wear oakleys when they hang out in beach bars wearing cargo shorts. You know the kind. The guys with kinda half assed trophy wives they weren't able to trade in for newer models when their tits started to sag, so they just pretend to be Sammy Hagar to impress younger women while they let their wives go find dudebros on spring break to get those harpies out of their sunbleached hair. Those are the guys who buy these guitars, and who spec them out. And those things, they're ugly. So ugly that I took opiates. Look, I'm dancing with the devil here, that could have been the dose that pushed me over the edge and when people ask why Megan at age 40 was suddenly pushed into IV heroin dependence, we all know where to point the finger. All those old dudes hanging out with ugly guitars in flavortown with Guy Fieri.

10/10

[Logrinn]

You know who plays those guitars? Old guys that still wanna be cool, you know, the 73 year old guys ...

Not just old and guys though ...





A good thing people have different tastes

[thenewromance]

I hope those posts don't get deleted when she sobers up.

[Larry Mal]

How could you expect her to sober up in a world gone mad like this one? Nothing makes sense anymore.

[rumfoord]

Nooooo, this is how we help identify like minds.

If we all played nice guitars, how would the wankers know how much disdain I hold for them? ( mostly hyperbole)

But seriously, different evolutionary paths also lead to more diversity and excitement when we cross-pollinate. Or: don't listen to me, I just bought a 7-string RG because the paint was completely cracked and interestingly relic'd and I want to learn to play fingerstyle tapping math rock* (and it was only $65).

*like this: Josh Martin, of Little Tybee, and this: Covet

[Larry Mal]

... I just bought a 7-string RG ...

God damn right you did.

[Maggieo]

I have one story about Carvin that's worth telling. And it's not the one where I was going to order a guitar and they asked me if it wouldn't be better if I just let my husband order it for himself.

In 1999, I was in L.A. and stopped by "Guitar Corner" in Hollywood. You know, the giant Guitar Center, the MESA/Boogie Store, Johnny Guitar, etc...

And, of course, the Carvin "factory showroom."

I was intrigued by the Allan Holdsworth Fatboy hollowbody guitars and was pretty jazzed to try one out, so my future hubby and I went on in. I found a Fatboy on the wall (IIRC, it was a natural, lightly flamed maple top, not too horrid) and took it to one of the demo rooms to play around.

I plug it in to one of Carvin's tweed-covered amps, (I figure that's the closest thing to my DRII.) and start noodling around on it. I start off with my favorite song to play, Al Green's "Love And Happiness." I mess around with it; I move the timing and phrasing around, I dig in, I use only my fingers, I turn the major descending chords into The Stooges. All the usual stuff I do when I'm farting around on a guitar.

Since it's a Carvin, I play some King Crimson and Yes riffs (I don't know any of their songs all the way through!). Then I play a bunch of Lou Reed snippets and Quine snippets. Nothing that difficult. I mean, I'm not Quine or Ribot or even Lou, but...

My hubby gives me a giant smile as I walk out of the demo room and hang the guitar on the wall.

"The entire store fell silent. Everyone was listening, and a bunch of guys went over to the window and watched you play the whole time. I think you blew them away," Michael says to me.

"uh...wow," I reply.

So, there it is. "Love And Happiness" blew the lid off the Carvin Store.

[StevenO]

As it should, Maggie. It's a great song to play!

[mackerelmint]

How could you expect her to sober up in a world gone mad like this one? Nothing makes sense anymore.

Ugh! That thing's like 2 hot-glued pieces of shitty costume jewelry away from being an Uli Jon Roth guitar. And at the same time, it's like 2 lines of meth away from being a beatdown in a mosh pit. How does that even happen? Gross.

[HNB]

I looked at the Carvin printed catalogue back in Junior High and remember thinking about what I would get if I had the cash. I never really did so once in High School I forgot about them. Never really saw them again so I didn't realize they had even still been around.

[rumfoord]

... I just bought a 7-string RG ...

God damn right you did.

I've been looking at sevenstring.org a little bit, and it is like stepping into a guitar culture from the moon. My anthropological analysis so far is that shiny, new, and custom holds similar cultural capital to our vintage gear; Petrucci's tone is I guess worth emulating; and our "needs tort" is most closely approximated by an affinity for plastic knobs and pickups in dimarzio green.