The Carvin SX-300 Guitar Head - Product Review

The Carvin Corporation has been making various instruments since the 1950s and still make their products in America. They are one of the few companies that offer guitars that will make their line in America. They offer great quality at a reasonable price. Carvin produces guitars, basses, and amplifiers. All of their products have great quality, but I have mostly dealt with their amplifiers and this will be the focus of my review.

I had a guitar head stolen after a gig one time and needed to replace it. I was debating purchasing another Marshall, but a friend told me to check out Carvin's SX-300. He mentioned that they sound as good as Marshall but are cheaper and are made in the good ole USA. Since most Marshall amps are not as good as they used to be when they were made in England I decided to give Carvin a try. I am really glad that I did. I still use one of these as one of the three heads that I play through live.

The Carvin SX-300 is a 100 watt solid-state amplifier that sings like it has a tube overdrive. It has three channels available for you to create you rhythm and leads with. You have the standard clean channel and two distortion channels. The distortion channels give you a choice of a basic crunch drive called blues drive and a hi-gain drive. Each channel has independent three band equalization to fine tune your sound. They also include four digital effects in the SX-300. You can use reverb, chorus, flanger, and echo. You can use any of the effects with reverb, but you can't combine any two other effects. You can store four settings with different settings to dial in different sounds while you are playing. This can all be controlled by an optional footswitch. If you prefer to use your own effects there is also an effects loop in the amplifier.

I would compare this to several higher end amplifiers like Soldano, ENGL and some Mesa-Boogie amps. It has not replaced my Dual Rectifier, but I use it just about as much. It actually has replaced some Marshalls that I swore I would never give up. I typically put an Ibanez Tube Screamer or Boss DS-1 in front of most of my amplifiers but don't need to with the SX-300. Every now and then I will use a DS-1 just to get some punch but I don't use any gain on the DS-1. The reverb is really good and eliminates the need for separate reverb effects unless you use one you really like. The built in effects are ok, but I would not dump your pedal board or multi-fx in favor of this. The flanger is horrible in my opinion. The chorus is adequate, but does not give enough of a sweep for my personal taste. The echo will compare to some of the cheaper delay pedals. I personally still use my Digitech RP500 for my effects with this. I just use the distortion mode from my Carvin instead of my pedal board. Carvin makes speaker cabinets as well, but I actually use my Marshall cabinets since I have them modified to fit my taste and playing style. Some great players have had sounds that Carvin helped to create. Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen are among the most well known. The Carvin SX-300 will cost about $340 new with a four channel footswitch. I have seen them used for anywhere from $100 to $250 on eBay. If you want a reliable amp without forking out lots of money then Carvin is the way to go.