I’ve been dreaming about doing it for a couple of days and endlessly trawling their web site and finally decided to pull the trigger.
I got a bonus surprise when I found out all the options were 1/2 price! 
It’s an AE185, greenburst on flamed maple with matching head stock, mother-of-pearl block inlays, phase and coil tap switches, with cream and black pickups.
Now I just have to wait for it to be delivered. :rolleyes:
Carvin makes some great guitars, especially for their prices. My friend had one. Koa wood. It was gorgeous.
I play a budget guitar that I’m rather proud of myself. It’s an Epiphone Sheraton, a copy of the Gibson 333. semi hollow body, that wide Gibson neck that plays so sweet… ah
good luck with the Carvin.
tell me how it works out…
I have been wanting to custom order a Carvin for years… the price is right… especially for a custom… but I have only played one Carvin… and while it was a sweet guitar, I still don’t have enough data for purchasing one without feeling like I am gambling…
Skillet38 - Thou dost malign the proud Sheraton. It is not a copy of a Gibson design, and hails from the days when Epiphone was not owned by them. It’s their own design, and a true classic, favored by the likes of John Lee Hooker, George Harrison (plus John Lennon played the Casino, a nearly identical guitar with single coil pickups), and Noel Gallagher (of Oasis). It’s a rockin’ guitar, and if I ever buy a hollowbody, chances are that’ll be it.
I got a used Fender American Series Fat Strat Texas Special (mine’s black with a rosewood fingerboard and a white pickguard) for graduation, and it is unbelievable. Nothing special to look at, but the SOUNDS! The Texas Special pickups have the most amazing sparkly clean sound… good enough that it gets Stevie Ray Vaughn tones from my cheap-but-very-powerful Crate solid state amp. Toss a BOSS Blues Driver pedal in between, and I can get a whole other range of sweet sounds. The Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates humbucker has a few tricks up its sleeve as far as distortion goes, but it’s outclassed by its roommate in that category (see below). I am so in love with this guitar.
Of course, I’ll always make time for my Epiphone Demon, a guitar that’s very impressive to look at, and that can blow minds when used for heavy stuff. I keep it in Drop D, and use it for most things where I like a distorted sound. The pickups are massively hot, and they have an obscene amount of bottom end, which means that it will produce raging distortion tones that never sound thin and weak. In fact, if you ever play it on the clean channel, you have to turn the amp’s bass way down. This is definitely a guitar that was meant to be used to perpetrate amp violence, not for sweet wailing. It’ll always be my baby, too.
Between the two of em, I can get every sound I want to, which is pretty darned cool.
Congratulations on you new child, Yellowtail. Take good care of it, and tell us what you think when you’ve had time to work it out.
LC
Green flamed maple is one of my favorite colors for custom guitars. For the last guitar I built, I used a 5A-grade flamed maple top and dyed it translucent green. Looks really cool, but it isn’t a “burst” scheme, as I didn’t trust myself enough with an airbrush to do it well. At first I wanted all gold hardware on the green wood, but after deciding all gold was too hard to maintain, I opted for chrome hardware (telecaster style bridge etc) with two gold knobs, which worked out really well in the end and looks very good with the birdseye maple neck.
And since people are swapping details, I finished it off with Joe Barden pickups, which sound incredible played through a tube amp with no effects in the way. If you’ve heard Danny Gatton (the inspiration for using telecaster hardware in the first place), you know what they sound like.
Personally, I’ve always had an unhealthy lust for Tom Anderson guitars, which are the most incredible things I’ve ever set eyes on, or been fortunate enough to play.
Anyway, good luck with the new axe, guitars are wonderful things.