Black Machine Guitars

[Virgil.]

Need a nick ass quality custom build guitar? CARVIN.
Seriously they are more affordable than a lot of these other startups and I believe their quality will rival any other builder out there. I love my DC127 and plan on getting a CT6 in the next 6 months or so. And if you call them, you can talk to them about doing other customizations not listed on their website. Super cool place to deal with.

 

[Keregioz]

Need a nick ass quality custom build guitar? CARVIN.
Seriously they are more affordable than a lot of these other startups and I believe their quality will rival any other builder out there. I love my DC127 and plan on getting a CT6 in the next 6 months or so. And if you call them, you can talk to them about doing other customizations not listed on their website. Super cool place to deal with.

I will +1 this...but it's not as cheap if you're outside US. I bought mine directly from them and I had to pay quite a bit of taxes here in Greece. But now I think they are selling only through dealers which I assume adds even more to the price. I'm not 100% sure though, you should do some research.

 

[Virgil.]

I will +1 this...but it's not as cheap if you're in outside US. I bought mine directly from them and I had to pay quite a bit of taxes here in Greece. But now I think they are selling only through dealers which I assume adds even more to the price. I'm not 100% sure though, you should do some research.

Carvin never sells through dealers. They have always believed in the philosophy of buying/selling direct from them so the markup isn't as high as it would be if they had to pay a percentage to dealers. When you buy a Carvin, you can rest assured that the money you invest is going into the finest craftsmanship and materials you can buy. When you purchase an Ibanez (for example) from a store, the actual guitar may be worth $500, when in fact you end up paying $800 for it because of all the profits and markups they have from all of the retailers, distributors, manufacturing plants, etc. Carvin is a family owned business, so you can be sure that if you spend $1200 on a guitar, you're getting a guitar worth $1200. Damn, I should sell for them.
There's not much you can do regarding taxes and s&h if you're outside of the US, but you can expect that from most US companies though unfortunately. But believe me, Carvins are worth the money. The CT6 is far better build quality than any PRS or Gibson I've ever played.... and they play so smooth too. They play like butter

 

[laszlozsolt82]

Take a look at this site:

http://www.ranguitars.com/

 

[Virgil.]

Charvel customs are really nice too if you can afford them.

Same with Bernie Rico Jr.'s http://www.ricojrguitars.com/reserve/

Edit:
But as you can tell from my previous posts, if you like the traditional strat or PRS body style, Carvins are just as good (if not better) than some of these others that are just as expensive as hell. These other companies have some cool designs and headstock designs that I would prefer over some Carvin's, but it's all a matter of personal preference and how much cash you have for a nice custom build. Me personally, I don't have a lot of dough so that's why I favor carvins for offering great quality custom builds, but if you have more money, then do what you want.

 

[dan weapon]

I emailed left messages etc for the guy for a couple of years while he was

building and got no response . Super flaky I reckon , must be why he stopped .

Not flaky at all. Doug is a great lad - a few months back he sent me a free replacement bridge saddle for my blackmachine the next day I asked - 3 years after buying the guitar.

Shame to hear he has stopped producing for the time being, but he is a one man operation and it takes him a month to build each guitar - I can't imagine he earns much, considering he uses first class materials and sells each guitar for around £2k.

If I had £2k lying around, and he was still building I'd put my name down for another one this second. I can't stress how much I love my guitar - it plays like a dream, and contrary to what someone mentioned earlier it doesn't sound thin at all.

 

[BrettT]

+1 on Carvin. I've owned 5 different Carvin guitars (currently own 2), and they have all been exceptional.

 

[Boerboel666]

Not flaky at all. Doug is a great lad - a few months back he sent me a free replacement bridge saddle for my blackmachine the next day I asked - 3 years after buying the guitar.

Shame to hear he has stopped producing for the time being, but he is a one man operation and it takes him a month to build each guitar - I can't imagine he earns much, considering he uses first class materials and sells each guitar for around £2k.

If I had £2k lying around, and he was still building I'd put my name down for another one this second. I can't stress how much I love my guitar - it plays like a dream, and contrary to what someone mentioned earlier it doesn't sound thin at all.

Look the guy was in business to make and sell a product . It would have been easier to get an audience with the Queen .... which effectively equals no customer service at all . He could be the nicest guy on earth but he ran his business like an amateur . That is my experience of trying to put down a cash deposit on a Blackmachine and maybe has something to do with why
he stopped building ?

 

[Virgil.]

Sounds to me like his customer service was great for previous customers, but he probably got inundated with so many requests to build that he had to pick and choose his customers. I'm sure he couldn't accommodate and take EVERY order request people sent him.

 

[TaylorG]

Look the guy was in business to make and sell a product . It would have been easier to get an audience with the Queen .... which effectively equals no customer service at all . He could be the nicest guy on earth but he ran his business like an amateur . That is my experience of trying to put down a cash deposit on a Blackmachine and maybe has something to do with why
he stopped building ?

He had a 3 year backlog.
It would be poor customer service to take more orders that he couldn't fill.

The SUSPECTED reason he has stopped taking orders, is that he wants to bring in CNC machines to do the basic body work like outlines and whatnot, and leave the fine crafting to himself.
Speeds up delivery without compromising build quality.

 

[Keregioz]

Carvin never sells through dealers.

From the carvin site:

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]**We only ship to countries listed in the country menu.If your country is not listed here, you need to contact our authorized dealers to place your order. [/FONT]

Also:

http://www.carvinworld.com/dealers.php

 

[Virgil.]

From the carvin site:



Also:

http://www.carvinworld.com/dealers.php

Oh, I thought you meant in general. I didn't realize they used dealers to sell internationally. That sucks. Oh well, most companies in the US most likely sell through dealers for international orders.

 

[jeb]

What about this guy??

http://www.hufschmidguitars.com

I share the lefty pain with you brother!

The musicman JP7 is available for lefty now!!

I play a lefty musicman silhouette special for 10 years now... I just have good things to say about them!!

Good luck!

 

[Boerboel666]

I agree he was prob getting way too much interest to cope . I know a world class bass Luthier and between answering the phone email etc he can't get anything done if on his own . However it would not take much for Blackmachine to let potential customers know the score via internet etc to stop them wasting their time .

 

[Rich - Rannoch]

I can highly recommend a guy here in the UK called Marty Siggery:

http://www.siggeryguitars.co.uk

I recently bought an 8 string multi-scale off him; to be honest I'd never heard of Siggery Guitars before but I really fancied something akin to a Blackmachine fanned 8. So, when I spotted this and after some correspondence I decided to take a risk and get it. Marty was even good enough to do some modifications for me at no extra charge. I've gotta say I'm not disappointed at all with what he delivered:

 

[guitarguru777]

these look good and i've read thousands of
good reviews but still it feels strange, they look
to good and have really good specs for this price.
sure most of the models do not look fancy (i like it!)
but...sum up the used hardware and assume that
good quality wood was used, it'll cost more than
the guitar itself.

i mean look at this...PURE AWESOMENESS!
(and it's a NECK THRU!!)

so what's the catch?

cheers
S.

There isnt one at all ...

No Celebrity endorsements to pay for...
No middle man taking his cut...

Have you ever built your own guitar? Costs about $400 in parts and $150 of that is the floyd. So take the $600 - $700 hes charging minus build costs of building them in a Korean factory with a billion other guitars and he makes about $200 - $300 a guitar.

Hes a really great guy and has some awesome designs!

 

[Jaymz]

Really wish Agile did the Ghost Pro with a fixed bridge.

 

[Virgil.]

Really wish Agile did the Ghost Pro with a fixed bridge.

You can custom order it through them.

 

[JeffTD]

That doesn't sound like quitting to me.
Anyway, BM get's a lot of hype but as everyone has said, there are a ton of great luthiers out there.

Ah that makes sense, from what I was told buy a guy who knows Doug and has two, he wasn't taking any orders and would eventually stop building entirely.

There isnt one at all ...

No Celebrity endorsements to pay for...
No middle man taking his cut...

Have you ever built your own guitar? Costs about $400 in parts and $150 of that is the floyd. So take the $600 - $700 hes charging minus build costs of building them in a Korean factory with a billion other guitars and he makes about $200 - $300 a guitar.

$400 in parts? What are you building it out of - plywood?? Good wood costs a lot more than your average Korean guitar costs fully assembled. There is a catch, and the catch is that you're never going to get anything better than your typical run-of-the-mill Korean Schecter/LTD/PRS SE axe out of an Agile.

 

[kass]

I can highly recommend a guy here in the UK called Marty Siggery:



I recently bought an 8 string multi-scale off him; to be honest I'd never heard of Siggery Guitars before but I really fancied something akin to a Blackmachine fanned 8. So, when I spotted this and after some correspondence I decided to take a risk and get it. Marty was even good enough to do some modifications for me at no extra charge. I've gotta say I'm not disappointed at all with what he delivered:

wow i was just asking about Siggery in the equipment section.


Was it somewhat affordable? Im not sure of his prices