Carvin B4 Bass

Sounds
To begin with we checked out the B4’s three basic pickup settings with the tone knob on full, and unearthed lots of good stuff. In twin-pickup mode the sound is clean, evenly responsive and fat with a real feeling of solidity across the range. Although not over-laden with chiming harmonics there’s a growling edge to the lower strings and more than enough punchy impact to make the Carvin sound like it really means business. We detected just a hint of metallic zing on thinner strings, but it never gets brittle.
So far, it's nicely unbiased and pleasingly versatile in a stylistic sense. The neck pickup follows suit: obviously it's more biased towards the business end, creating a greater feeling of width without a real difference in output level. That might sound a fraction limp, but it's not – it's a smoother sound with a rubbery quality, but it’s also got a pleasing earthy rasp complete with enlivening acoustic elements and there's plenty of zing for definition in the lower octaves. The D and G strings have plenty of cut and bite but more than enough body for practical purposes, too.
The bridge pickup is a slightly lower in output. There's a little less width on display, but this is more than made up for by the smooth tone and that tell-tale burpy, gurgling quality… not enough to be annoying and overbearing, but just right.
As always on any bass with passive electronics and a single master tone control, the variations available are limited. To the Carvin's credit, full treble cut isn’t totally sub-aquatic and woolly, giving a rumble with just enough focus for limited practicality. It's better to ease that tone knob just a smidgen away from fully-off. With both pickups on this setting produces a tight, silky, funky sound shorn of snappy spike – excellent for modern soul and pop. The neck version is duller, but the wider response and extra thud sends the B4 in a definite retro blues/rock direction, while cutting back the treble on the bridge pickup removes any steely elements from the B4’s sound but still leaves it playable.

The B4 is very well put together. It shows excellent balance from its two pickups, and gives a good range of quality passive sounds without any setting being totally unusable. With all the options available on the Carvin website you could pay up to £1000 for a B4, but we’d say that unless you fancy being overly ostentatious or hanker after an active version, there’s no real need. This is a good bass as it is.