Carvin DC145

Specifications
The Wood:	Mahogany Neck
	Mahogany Body
	Ebony Fingerboard with Dunlop low-wide fret wire The paint color is "Pearl Silver"

The Electronics:

One Volume Control, One Tone Control

Pickups: The setup that I originally ordered from Carvin was - Humbucker / single coil / humbucker pickup configuration (Carvin C22 dual coil humbuckers and a Carvin AP11 single coil in between).

The humbuckers were wired to be switched to single coil by using the two coil split switches. There was also a phase switch below the coil split switches to reverse the polarity of the in-between settings and give an alternate tone.

Later, after installing a set of Bill Lawrence pickups, I eliminated the phase function and the lower switch now selects either coil of the bridge/neck pickup when either pickup is in single-coil mode.

Below is the control layout:

Bill Lawrence Pickups

The electronic setup that came from Carvin gave a nice sound, but me being the "tweaker" that I am, went on a quest to see if the sound could be improved. This is when I discovered Bill Lawrence pickups. Bill (Willi Stich) is a legend in the music industry. He is to electric guitar pickups as Les Paul is to guitars.

If you know about Bill Lawrence pickups, you may know there is some controversy of which pickups are the REAL Bill Lawrence pickups and who has rights to the name "Bill Lawrence". I really don't care about the legal rulings... I want good pickups. In my opinion, since Willi was the original designer of the Lawrence line, he's the real deal.

He runs a business with his wife, Becky (email) where they market, manufacture, and sell his special pickups. Becky is the main phone/email contact. She is very knowledgeable and can recommend pickup models based on customers' needs.

After the pickups arrived, I called their shop about a wiring question and Willi was the one who answered the phone. It was so great to talk to him! He explained pickup wiring to me and talked some about the history of electric guitar pickups and different methods of wiring them.

I described to him the controls/switches that I had in my guitar. He asked me if I ever used the "phase" switch and I told him, "Not really." He said that he never liked the "out-of-phase" setting of a guitar. He asked me to fax him a drawing showing the unwired electronics cavity. He told me he would design a circuit that I would like better than what I had.

A few days later he faxed me back a drawing of a circuit that functioned the same as what I had but instead of the bottom switch toggling in or out of "phase", he showed me how to wire it so that switch will function as a coil selector switch for the bridge pickup.

This is so cool and very useful. When the bridge coil closest to the bridge is selected, the sound is bright, thin, and glassy. When the other coil is selected, the glassiness is subdued and more mids come out while still retaining the single-coil sound.

Later using what I learned, I modified the wiring slightly so that the same switch toggles the coils of either L-500 humbucker pickup - depending on the one selected.

	L-500C: Bill's "low power" humbucker. Clean and deep with a great vintage sound.
	L-280SM: Low noise single-coil... best single-coil I ever heard.
	L-500R: The "regular power" humbucker. So clear, you can "hear the wood". Ample power to push a tube amp and without the mud that high-power distortion pickups have. The L-500R closely matches the original Gibson PAF in resistance and inductance.

For 60's and 70's sounds, the L-500C : L290SM : L-500R is a great choice for a H-S-H configuration.

Inductance (Henry) is a good method of comparing a pickup's sound. Ratings for the Lawrence L-500 line:

C = 2.8 Henry (least "powerful")
R = 4.8 Henry
L = 6.8 Henry
XL = 9.2 Henry (most "powerful")

Bill's L-280SM (Strat/Middle) is rated at 2.4 H

The Hardware:	The vibrato is the Original Floyd Rose which is a "clamping type" system. The ball ends are cut from the ends of the strings and clamped into small vices behind the bridge. This makes for extremely stable tuning even with heavy bar use. The Original Floyd is the industry's best designed and manufactured vibrato unit. If you are interested in a foolproof tuning method for a guitar with a Floyd Rose (or any free-floating) vibrato, click here.

	The tuning keys on the headstock are the Sperzel locking tuners. These tuning keys clamp the strings, which eliminate the need for multiple windings around the post and also makes a locking nut unnecessary - even with extreme bar use. CLICK HERE for a description of their operation.