Carvin Vintage Series Amps with Wolf Mail

Blues guitarist Wolf Mail talks about his career and Carvin's Vintage Series all-tube amplifiers.

[heavenlyguitar]

Carvin amps were so underrated. My X100b is still going strong. Bought it new new in 1988 and it still sounds great. Real smooth overdrive and warm clean channels.

[Saurous]

carvin has been my number one amp for 22 years now.

[Unclevic]

I recently purchased a Belair, a Nomad and now a Vintage 16 and I really love the sound of each of

[nickclube]

Been using Carvin Vintage amps for thirty years and love them to bits still. They always get complimentary comments from those who know good tone.

[PrehistoricBeasts]

Superb tone and even better playing. Wolf is phenomenal. An inspiration.

[michaeld.mahoney]

Wish they still made these classic tube amps. Excellent tone.

[voxpathfinderr]

I am not trying to say Carvin should try to manufacture amps again, but since they have shut down manufacturing for everything except pedals, they should do limited runs from time to time of their most popular amps, but make them hand wired and charge accordingly like many boutique amp builders

[voiceofreason]

I bought a Belaire about 25 years ago. I have a '73 Fender Dual Showman, and the Carvin can easily match the cleans on the Fender. When I switch to the gain side, with the soak knob set to "3", no pedals, it is pure Rock N Roll heaven ESPECIALLY with a P90

[NightBazaar]

I could listen to Wolf play all day. I had a 1965 Carvin T-151 40 watt solid state guitar amp with reverb and 15" Jensen speaker. It was customized to order. Has a solid black covering. The grill screen included silver thread to give it a sparkle appearance. It sounded amazing.

[johnl]

I have a Carvin Nomad that I use on small venue jazz gigs. It's perfect.

[dunki-dunki-dawg]

I owned a Belair with V30s in it for a number of yrs but had to sell it during Covid. I miss it sorely so I am on the hunt for another. They are built like tanks, look beautiful and the tones are just beautiful. There is a rear pot called the Acoustic Resonance just for the Clean channel. It brightens up the clean or acts like a cut. It means you can get shimmering cleans like a Triaxis if you want. I set it about 3/4 for the shimmering cleans.
This amp loves to be played loud and it doesn't start to lose it's colour until it is almost full tilt. The sound just gets massive and stays controlled. This amp would sound different with different speakers. Mine had V30 but I have seen them with a Jensen Spkr if you want to get away from that familiar sound. The great thing is they are at a silly cheap price second hand. I hope they stay that way.

[CountessRatsazz]

I sold my Vintage 33 today. Best amp ever for recording and gigging.

[chzzyg]

That's a beautiful tone. I'm chasing something very much like it.

[Tull]

Have/had the V16 head and 2x12 head died after about 2 years of light use (the tubes were still good), and I have very few techs in my area, and for some reason, no one even wanted to look at Not sure what's up with that, but it would definitely keep me from buying another Carvin. If you live somewhere that has amp techs aplenty, maybe you'll have better luck. But, I now have a really cool looking door stop.

[stevenduval]

Sounds great. Like a Fender Blues Deville. Even the covering looks the same.

[tjborekvideo]

Can anybody tell me the speakers that were in these amps? I'm looking for a recording of the Carvin British Series 100W.

[mrbaiser]

I need the exact specs of both transformer in a Vintage 33 (from the late 90s). Can anybody help?

[justiceontheway]

what is the song title? first one and 4:20

[voxpathfinderr]

I just got this amp a few weeks ago and I am trying to figure out why there are two camps, those that think this amp is the best thing since sliced bread, especially the clean channel. And those that think it sounds unspectacular, especially a “muddy” soak channel. And my theory ranges from the volume on the soak does not have a brightness cap, nor a presence control. Or the crowd that doesn’t like it is a British crunch crowd with strong aversion to the under filtered tweed era?

[sixfoursoul]

Pros, amp has an amazing clean channel and take pedal like a champ, plenty of power and head room live, looks great very gigable

Cons, however I find the soak channel unusable for the most part with out mods, seem to have sheilding issues, no master volume, cant play it past 3
with out blowing everybody off the stage, some times has sudden volume drops, horrible reverb some model have digital and there is no why to tell becuase all the models numbers say the same, I just orderd one on ebay an had all these same issues again! This amp is hit or miss and now the price is way jacked up!

but I will say this is the best clean channel I have ever heard, perfer ofer mesa, fender, and also over matchless