Carvin Holdsworth H2T Signature Natural Flametop w/ OHSC (hear it!)

If you like the Allan Holdsworth style of legato playing, his signature model from Carvin provides a great platform. I ordered this guitar built to my spec from Carvin’s Custom Shop in 1997. I used it as my main stage guitar for a while, so it’s not blemish-free, but the guitar is in fantastic shape in terms of mechanics and playability. I recently priced the guitar out on Carvin’s website and it came to $1288 if you wanted to buy this configuration new.

Here’s the manufacturer’s description:

• Renowned British jazz guitarist Allan Holdsworth worked with Carvin for over two years in the development of his signature Holdsworth H2 guitar, which was introduced in 1996.The H2 is made in the USA, and loaded with features generally only found in boutique instruments. The H2 is unique among contemporary 6-string guitars. It has a chambered body made from alder, which is a high-quality tone wood used by many manufacturers because of its relative light weight and fine resonating tone. Chambering the body reduces the overall weight of the instrument, making the H2 comfortable to play for hours on end. The H2 features a standard 25.5" scale ebony fingerboard with white pearl dot inlays, and a flat 20" radius with 24 jumbo nickel frets. The Allan Holdsworth Signature Series H2 is built at Carvin's Custom Shop in San Diego, California.

It’s a semi-hollow body (more accurately, chambered) that’s quite light (a little over 6 pounds) with a chunky neck. It’s the H2T model with a tremolo and I had them add 2 coil-tapping mini toggles for more tonal flexibility along with a flamed maple top and black hardware. Everything is stock except for the removable trem stabilizer mentioned below. The guitar has a few dings, although they can be a bit hard to spot on the flamed maple. There's one on the cutaway horn, a couple smaller ones on the front, and scratches on the back. The audience will never see the dings but you can find them if you look closely (see pictures). The finish has deepened in color a little over the years—the maple was almost white when new but now it has a more pleasing yellowish tint and the tiger stripes in the grain are more visible. There is a finish crack on the treble side of the neck at the 10th fret, but it is only a finish crack or scratch—the neck is straight and solid and the guitar is very solidly built overall. The only issue I noticed when taking it out of its case was a bad connection for the neck pickup selector, but this went away with a shot of contact cleaner and the pickup selector now works quietly with no issues.

Sonically, the Holdsworth has a mid-range focus and it sounds best (IMO) in the bridge pickup with the tone backed off a little for a throaty tone. The guitar it’s closest to in tone is the Turner Lindsey Buckingham LB-1 model (and like that guitar the Holdsworth is actual great for fingerpicking) in that notes come through with a certain purity even when overdriven. In the YouTube video below, I play this exact guitar through one amp setting with the only changes being pickup settings and the playing style—I noodle around too much but you can hear that this guitar sounds very good. If you want to hear more H2Ts in action, this video shows a very similar guitar:

I installed a WD TS-1 trem stabilizer (about $30 if I recall) that basically holds the tremolo in place except when you want to press on the arm to lower the pitch. This increases sustain and tuning stability compared to the stock trem—but it makes the trem stiffer so it’s hard to do very small rockabilly warbles like you’d do with a Bigsby. I recommend keeping it the way it is but if the buyer would prefer a stock trem setup I will remove the trem stabilizer and return it to stock as the stabilizer is removable and requires no hardware modification (I will keep the trem stabilizer to sell separately in this case).

The guitar comes with the original Carvin hardshell case that is custom-fitted to the guitar, picks, and an inexpensive Musician’s Friend strap. A strap sounds like a small thing but once you buy a few guitars you find that getting straps for all them can cost you a lot of money!

• Standard alder body with flamed maple top (chambered body)
• 2 X 4 compact headstock (black front, alder back)
• 25.5" scale ebony fingerboard with white dot inlays
• 24 nickel jumbo frets
• Semi-flat 20" fingerboard radius
• Sperzel locking tuners (black)
• Holdsworth H22N & H22T humbuckers (black)
• Master volume and tone, 3-way pickup selector, two mini toggle switches to split each pickup to single coil
• Wilkinson Tremolo with TS-1 Trem Stabilizer installed for tuning/sustain stability