Can someone help me with my Carvin DC7X GP ?

[Vogg_and_Vitek]

I just got one of the used Carvin DC7X Guitar Porn run, of which there are 50. These have a Piezo pcikup, which I had never heard of, but I really like it, sounds cool on clean channel. Anyway it has a battery 9V plastic spot in the back, two input jacks one black and one silver metal color, two magnetic pickups, a 5 way switch like a normal guitar, and a 3 way small silver switch that seems to either put it in pure piezo mode, pure magnetic pickups mode, or blend of the two but I am not sure. The Guitar Center I bought it from knows nothing at all about the guitar and basically refused to look at a simple record of what they sent me to tell me about it, seems rally dumb they said they had to see it in person, when they JUST shipped it to me. so can someone explain to me what the two inputs do/are for? When I try to use the black one no sound comes out, so I guess that one can only be used in conjunction with the silver/normal one? Also, is the battery for the pickups or for the piezo? And does anyone know which positions the silver switch correspond to which settings, I am pretty sure I can tell by listening but just to be sure. Lastly, does anyone know what kind of pickups these are and if the battery is for them or piezo? I read online a lot and I think that the pickups might be Lithium pickups. Anyway, thank you.

 

[JSanta]

Piezo output and magnetic output. A piezo is an acoustic guitar pickup, which in this case is trying to emulate a traditional acoustic guitar tone. It's an active circuit and requires a battery to operate. If the acoustic output is not engaged, that output jack won't work. I believe this run was standard lithium pickups and not an active circuit.

 

[odibrom]

All of the above, however with a different approach from my part. I don't Piezos as acoustic sounds, but rather as a different tone from the magnetic. This will allow you to use them for other instances than just trying to sound like an acoustic guitar... which you will not unless under the same rig (amps, and so on).

My bet is that you have there a Graphtech Piezo System (piezos and pre-amp) which are feed by the 9V battery. The 2 out put jacks are for mixed signals and independent signal, which will only work if both in use (again, my guess).

About the mini toggle positions, if on the piezos only, the magnetic pickups switch should not make any difference to the sound because it is disconnected at that moment, so pretty easy to understand what does what.

Other controls should be Mags or master Volume, Mags Tone and Piezo Volume. This allows you to mix the needed amount of the piezo signal to the mix when using both signals. Dial to taste. However, pay attention that it will also interfere with the piezos volume when used in "solo" mode (no mags signal). Pretty forward but may lead to some mistakes on control use.

Other than that I can only guess, 'cause I never played such instrument. I do have, however 5 guitars with piezos, 3 of them where after market installments, 2 from factory. The aftermarket piezo tones are all from Graphtech, the factory piezo equipped guitars are loaded with LR Baggs stuff. Different systems but same overall kind of tones. Love them all...

Final, TRUST YOUR EARS...

 

[Zhysick]

If you are using both jack outputs you will have constantly magnetic pups sound out of one lead and the piezo out from the other lead so you can have your "piezo" sound to one rig and the magnetic for another rig: mainly you will have the piezo for clean tones and the magnetic for more "metal" tones (distortion as normally the piezo doesn't like distortion but that is up to taste of the player anyway).

If you are using only one output jack there will work only one and it have to be the magnetic. In this case the mini toggle switch will be for, as you said, magnetic-mix-piezo. One of the knobs, as odibrom said, might be for piezo volume (probably the farest one from the bridge closer to the bottom end of the guitar). When the mini toggle is in middle position (mix) you can blend the piezo into the magnetic pups signal so you can add the famous brightness of the piezo into your mix... advice: try it with the neck pickup and blend a bit of the piezo sound to have sparkly but full cleans from the neck pickup... really beautiful sounds you can get from there.

I am no expert on Carvin pickups but those doesn't seem to be like the old Carvin active pups, more like the lithiums, and as far as I know those are passive so the battery probably is only for the piezo.

So, basically, unless you have to rigs (one for acoustic/piezo and one for magnetic) you will always use only one of the two jacks and use the mini-toggle to switch or blend between mag-pups and piezo.

Cheers and enjoy that Carvin... pretty beautiful!!!