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Carvin V3 Head
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3-channel Full tube amplifier head
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Searched Carvin V3 Head in Reviews
Very versatile Tube head with an appealing price. 
| Sound |
When the Carvin V3 arrived at my house straight from Carvin I was not expecting what I got.
I ordered mine with Brown Saddle leather and A diamond plate faceplate (that I had to install). ALl of it came out to a grand total of just over $900 delivered.
The first two channels are voiced alike, but they can be tweaked and adjusted to be very independent. Personally I don't believe the similarity of the channels to be a drawback at all, it simply gives you the option of having 2 crunch channels, 2 lead sounds, or a mixture of both. Every channel has switches that act like frequency filters and eq cuts...very handy. Another feature that hasn't been mentioned yet is the unique "smart loops" function, put simply (you know how in a normal fx loop in any other head, you step on a stomp box for example and get the nice delay for your solo?, with smart loops when you step off the pedal the delay tails off instead of dissappearing abruptly)
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| Reliability |
Every carvin I have owned had excellent quality for price and except for tubes, rarely needed any work.
Carvin has an excellent return policy too.
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| Customer Support |
Carvin has been hit or miss when I called, but the email responses I have gotten about their guitars and amps have left me happy.
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| Liked about it |
-Massive bass
-Smart loops
-Price
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| Didn't like |
-Having to replace the front plate myself.
-Doesn't make you say "hey that's a V3" when you hear it.
-Stock tubes are kind of mild.
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| Overall satisfaction: |
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4.0 |
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Underrated Beast
| Sound |
The sounds you can get from this amp are amazing. It leaves you with lots of tone controls for each channel and a master section with mid-cut, presence and depth regulation. Each channel has 3 characteristics you can select with a switch and you can expand the 3-way EQ for each channel with the EQ-expand switch.
Hence dialing in sounds is not as easy like with more straight forward amps, but you can definately get lots and lots of sounds.
What I like most is that while you can get a huge range of sounds, the Carvin still has a little bit of that strange Vai'isch mids, that are so typical for a Carvin Amp. They only go away if you crank the mid-cut all the way. So sound character is also present.
Some say it is not a real 3-channel as the channels 1 and 2 are basically the same. However I use channel 1 as the high gain beast channel, which has some similarities to my Dual Rectifier and channel 2 as a crunchy channel. It definately gets the job done. The channel 3 clean channel can also go from twangy fender to a slight crunch with the flip of a switch.
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| Reliability |
No problems so far. I always wondered if the footswitch cable was up to the job, but so far it lasted months of gigging.
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| Customer Support |
It was purchased through Musik Schmidt in Germany, so I only have experience with their customer support, which is absolutely great.
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| Liked about it |
Very versatile amp.
Nice own character.
Can be customized (mine came with brown saddle leather)
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| Didn't like |
It is a bit hard to dial in sounds, because of the many possibilities.
Did not find other things.
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| Overall satisfaction: |
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5.0 |
 By Tank
Oct 12, 2009
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internal use: spec82 spec621
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