The Curve Carve is made from a 3-piece ash body blank and maple neck with 6 aside locking tuners. The body has double, sculpted cutaways and is stained with a vibrant amber dye. The three dimensional carve of the body produces unique grain patterns that are emphasised with a dark stain.
The maple set neck has a dual action truss rod with aged copper leaf around the access hole. Hipshot locking tuners and a hand carved bone nut provide excellent tuning stability. The fretboard is made from Pau Ferro with Mother of Pearl or metallic fret markers. Jumbo Nickel-Silver fret wire is used and complemented with a bone nut. The fret board comes with or without a copper inlayed gecko motif.
The scale length is 25 inches or 635 mm. This falls between the standard Gibson and Fender Scale lengths and sets a string tension at concert pitch that helps the guitar find a tone that is neither muddy nor too bright.
The Curve Carve features pickups from Iron Gear. These produce fantastic tones that match those of more expensive brands but at a very competitive price. The standard model uses a clean sounding Alchemist 90 single coil pickup in the neck position and a Rolling Mill humbucking pickup for classic rock tones at the bridge. In the example shown, Bill Lawrence wiring is used which uses a 5 way switch. As well as the standard pickup combinations in positions 1-3, position 4 selects the two pickups 90 degrees out of phase and position 5 selects the neck pickup but with a capacitor switched in to produce 10% less base. A push/pull switch on the volume potentiometer is used to split the bridge humbucker. A humbucking pickup can be fitted in the neck position on request.
Pickups are wired with a single volume and single tone control potentiometers supplied by Bourns and a three-way wafer style switch for pickup selection. Humbuckers can be separately coil tapped with a push-pull potentiometer. Custom versions of this model with dual humbuckers can be wired with a 5-way switch that allows each pickup to be selected separately or together, or with the inner and outer coils of each pickup out of phase. This gives sounds that are similar to those found on a Stratocaster guitar. The pickup and control cavities are fully shielded for low noise output.
Chrome pickup surrounds and a chrome Gotoh wrap around bridge allows perfect intonation with elegance and style.
Click on the video to the left to see a short demo of the guitar and the sounds that it can make. Note the lighting in the video makes the guitar look yellow. The real colour can be seen in the image above.
