Rebirth of Carvin?

GilmourD

GilmourD

Eater of Worlds
Staff member
https://carvinaudio.com/blogs/news/announcing-the-new-leadership-team

ANNOUNCING THE NEW LEADERSHIP TEAM

September 18, 2018



We here at Carvin Amps & Audio wanted to take a moment to give you some exciting updates about our company.

We re-launched our website this past January ahead of the Winter NAMM Show and began moving forward with new leadership. Joel Kiesel will serve as President and Kristen Kiesel Lieurance will serve as Vice President. Joel and Kristen are the children of Carson Kiesel, who recently retired from his role as President, and grandchildren of founder Lowell Kiesel. They mark the third generation of the Kiesel family to head up the company.



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From L-R: Kristen Kiesel Lieurance and Joel Kiesel with their parents Linda and Carson Kiesel


In addition to the recent release of the X1 All Tube Preamp Pedal, we are currently designing new guitar, bass, and pro audio products. New product announcements will be made when gear is ready and available. Click here to sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know. We have a new, centralized U.S. warehouse that provides quicker service to customers nationwide. Products are now shipping worldwide and through select dealers. Click here to order your gear today.

We’re excited to share a new chapter in our 70+ year history with you and continue the tradition we’ve established in that time.

If you have any questions please visit our Frequently Asked Questions page.
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The guitar division never went away, they just split off from the audio division and changed their name (back after 70 years) to Kiesel. The audio division went out of business (probably the reason for the split in the first place), but is now relaunching. Also, Kiesel switched over to the standard 6-pole piece design a while back.
 
I used and liked Carvin PA equipment, but this seems like a foolish decision. There isn't any great pent up demand for their audio gear. And their amps were for the most part (with a few exceptions) unremarkable.
 
Poparad said:
The guitar division never went away, they just split off from the audio division and changed their name (back after 70 years) to Kiesel. The audio division went out of business (probably the reason for the split in the first place), but is now relaunching. Also, Kiesel switched over to the standard 6-pole piece design a while back.
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The Guitar Division split off well in advance of Carvin's demise. The Kiesel brothers had very different opinions on how to run the business. One of them is smart, the other... not so much.

So, the smart brother divested himself from Carvin completely, taking the guitar division with him and moving the factory back up the 15 Freeway a few miles to Escondido (my hometown) where it fucking belonged, and re-branded it with the family name.

In 2017, Carvin collapsed under massive debt and downsizing, while Kiesel turned a big profit on just over $8,000,000 in sales.

Carvin no longer exists as a manufacturer, and the "Company" is now run from a home office. The new Carvin labeled gear is nothing more than re-branded generic Chinese products.

More pedals than the Tour De France
 
Carvin has been outsourcing as far back as the 60s. I have a Carvin hollow body guitar from the early 70s that was really built by Hofner. Every company is doing it. Some admit it, some stay silent, and some just lie about it. How did Gibson turn out those custom shop guitars when the factory they were built in was flooded and destroyed. Here is a clue. Ask Cort.
 
joeboy said:
Carvin has been outsourcing as far back as the 60s. I have a Carvin hollow body guitar from the early 70s that was really built by Hofner. Every company is doing it. Some admit it, some stay silent, and some just lie about it. How did Gibson turn out those custom shop guitars when the factory they were built in was flooded and destroyed. Here is a clue. Ask Cort.
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Ok.

Not sure why that was necessary, but I can tell you that up until the 2017 collapse, Carvin manufactured the overwhelming majority of their products in house.

They were an actual company, with a factory and lots of employees.

The "New" Carvin is nothing more than a name. There is no factory, no offices, no employees... it is a purchase and redistribution/rebrand broker operating out of a home office.

That's a pretty far cry from periodic outsourcing.

More pedals than the Tour De France
 
@OGG If the Carvin side of things goes tits up, could Kiesel then start making amplifiers?

Jeff probably doesn't have any interest in them anyways, but I for one would like to see the X100B continue on. Great amp for the money.
 
That's highly unlikely for a few reasons.

First, the agreement upon splitting the company in two included contractual stipulations barring either company from offering competing products. As long as Carvin exists in any legal capacity, those stipulations can be enforced.

Jeff has known for years that it has become impossible to manufacture amps and pro audio gear in the USA and be profitable. Look at Peavey for a perfect example of that. Once the bulk of such gear started coming out of China, South Korea, Indonesia etc, including the stuff from Japanese companies... it was only a matter of time before the company failed.

When you think about companies like Roland, who for decades made many of their products in America as well as at home Japan, that is now having everything built in China... it's pretty staggering. Same with KORG, Yamaha etc.

Carvin/Kiesel would have to effectively double their MSRPs while increasing unit sales just to hang in there. We all know that wouldn't fly.

Maybe, just maybe, if they were to move to some podunk little town in the bible belt could they have the slightest chance, but no guarantees, and neither of the Kiesel kids is leaving California.

You might see items like the X100B return, but only as a cheaply outsourced shadow of the original.

More pedals than the Tour De France
 
C.F. "Fred" Turner, as the Chermans persist in calling him, of Bachman and the Turner Overdrives is a long-term player of Carvin's fine bass guitars.
9165_fredturnerbachmanturneroverdrivebassist_1.jpg

And they surely don't come any cooler than C.F. "Fred" Turner of Bachman and the Turner Overdrives!
 
vonbladet said:
C.F. "Fred" Turner, as the Chermans persist in calling him, of Bachman and the Turner Overdrives is a long-term player of Carvin's fine bass guitars.
9165_fredturnerbachmanturneroverdrivebassist_1.jpg

And they surely don't come any cooler than C.F. "Fred" Turner of Bachman and the Turner Overdrives!
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Bachman overdrives are OK, but the Turner overdrives are rather brittle and fuzzy...
 
OGG said:
That's highly unlikely for a few reasons.

First, the agreement upon splitting the company in two included contractual stipulations barring either company from offering competing products. As long as Carvin exists in any legal capacity, those stipulations can be enforced.

Jeff has known for years that it has become impossible to manufacture amps and pro audio gear in the USA and be profitable. Look at Peavey for a perfect example of that. Once the bulk of such gear started coming out of China, South Korea, Indonesia etc, including the stuff from Japanese companies... it was only a matter of time before the company failed.

When you think about companies like Roland, who for decades made many of their products in America as well as at home Japan, that is now having everything built in China... it's pretty staggering. Same with KORG, Yamaha etc.

Carvin/Kiesel would have to effectively double their MSRPs while increasing unit sales just to hang in there. We all know that wouldn't fly.

Maybe, just maybe, if they were to move to some podunk little town in the bible belt could they have the slightest chance, but no guarantees, and neither of the Kiesel kids is leaving California.

You might see items like the X100B return, but only as a cheaply outsourced shadow of the original.

More pedals than the Tour De France
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I think this is a damn shame that all these products have to be made in China. I have seen first hand the kind of "quality" work they produce. Very poor solder joints and a lot of bridging that has to be reworked. It's like they don't even check their work. They just ship out everything and figure if it's bad out of the box you'll just get it replaced under warranty.

I had a Roland GP-16 that never gave me one problem ever for many years. I replaced it with a T.C. Electronics G Major that has already broken one of the selector wheels (don't know why that happened, since it is in a hardened SKB rack case and I hardly ever move it) and for a while it kept dying out on me, which was resolved by reseating a socketed chip (why didn't they solder it in? Connectors are always flaky).
 
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