Carvin AE-185 Acoustic/Electric "Hybrid" Semi-Hollow Body - Flame Maple - Made in USA - Free Pro Setup

Carvin / Kiesel AE185 acoustic/electric semi-hollow body - Flame Maple
Weighs only 6.5 lbs.

Professional quality.  Made in USA.  
Hand crafted by Carvin in San Diego, California

Includes our Pro Set Up - $100 Value

See below for details

Available Cases:

• Gig bag, $49
• Aftermarket case, $139
• Carvin molded hard shell case, $179
• Carvin deluxe hard shell tweed case. Made in USA by G&G, $219 (shown)
• This guitar will ship without a case or bag, unless you add one to your order.

Description: The AE-185 was introduced at the end of 1994. It's an acoustic/electric semi-hollow guitar about the same size and shape as a Telecaster. Think of it as an advanced Tele Thinline with an acoustic style bridge and an under-saddle acoustic pickup. This neck-thru guitar is made with a chambered mahogany body and this particular model features a flamed maple top. The mahogany neck has a 24 fret ebony fingerboard. The base price of the AE185 was $799 in 1994 ($1,800 in 2025 dollars).

Flame Maple Top: The flame maple top on this guitar is incredible and the brown stain really brings it out. It's a real beauty. Photos don't do it justice. Looks even better in person!

Tons of Tones: The magnetic humbuckers provide electric tones and the acoustic piezo pickup provides acoustic tones. Stereo outputs allows running the acoustic pickup through a separate acoustic voiced amp if desired. Or run one amp and blend the acoustic pickup in with the humbuckers. That combined with coil splits and phase switch offers an almost infinite amount of tonal variations. 

Made in USA Custom Shop Quality: Carvin is the old name for Kiesel Guitars. Founded in the 1940's, they are a contemporary of Fender. They've been making high-quality custom-built guitars for almost 80 years. Kiesel is still doing that today in their state-of-the-art factory in Escondido in San Diego County. Our shop is about 20 minutes from Keisel and old Carvin factories. We've been to them many times, and have been working on and selling vintage Carvins for years. We love vintage Carvins. The build quality is first rate and they use top quality materials and parts. They represent a real bargain in a vintage Made in USA guitar. We buy them whenever we can, and love to turn our customers on to them.

Luthier's Assessment and Measurements:

• Serial No. 69046
• Weight: 6.5 lbs
• Nut width: 1.68"
• Neck width at 12th Fret: 2.03"
• Neck thickness at 1st fret: 0.78"
• Neck thickness at 12th fret: 0.88"
• Action (high e): 0.050"
• Action (low E): 0.060"
• Neck pickup DCR: 7.0k Ohms
• Bridge pickup DCR: 13.4k Ohms
• Truss rod: Excellent. Turns easily
• Fret condition: Excellent (9/10)
• Cosmetic condition: Very good. Has a few nicks along the edges.
• Functional condition: Excellent
• Playability: Excellent. Easy to play
• Electronics: Excellent
• Sound: Excellent
• Overall condition: Very good

Features and Specs: 

• Brand: Carvin
• Model: AE-185 (AE = Acoustic Electric)
• Country of Origin: USA
• Factory: Escondido,
California (San Diego County)
• Body shape: Single cut
• Body type: Semi-hollow body
• Body wood: Mahogany
• Body contours: Radius edges
• Body finish: Gloss
• Top: Flame maple
• Color: Sienna burst
• Neck wood: One piece mahogany, neck through
• Neck shape: C profile
• Scale: 25.0"
• Fretboard wood: Ebony
• Fretboard radius: 12"
• Fretboard inlays: White dots
• Frets: Medium jumbo
• No. of Frets: 24
• Graphite nut
• Sperzel locking tuners
• Tailpiece: Ebony acoustic style bridge with string through body loading
• Saddle: Acoustic type, compensated
• Pickups: Carvin C22 humbuckers
• Acoustic pickup: Piezo acoustic under saddle pickup with active electronics
• Pickup switch: Three-way toggle for humbuckers
• Controls: Master volume, acoustic/magnetic pickup blend, treble boost/cut (humbuckers), treble boost/cut (piezo pickup)
• Other controls: Mini-toggles to coil split each humbucker and phase reversal for that out of phase quack!
• Stereo outputs (piezo only or humbucker/piezo blend)
• Hardware: Black

About Del Mar Lutherie: We’re a small shop in San Diego County, California. We build electric guitars, hand-wired tube amps, and do mods and setups.  We also buy and sell vintage and used gear.  Our owner is a guitar enthusiast, wood worker and professional engineer by training. We’re part of the local guitar community (Fender, Taylor, Carvin/Kiesel).  We welcome clients by appointment. 

Why buy from us?  Our customers have peace of mind knowing they are buying from a highly rated professional shop.  We've been doing this type of work since 1999 and have thousands of happy customers.  We pride ourselves in providing best-in-class personalized service for each of our clients. We are a Reverb Preferred Seller, and our approval rating is close to 100%.

Dr. T’s Professional Inspection and Setup: You may find a similar guitar at a lower price, but ours may still be the better value as we include our professional inspection and setup. This service costs from $100 to $150 at most shops. With over 25 years in the industry, we’re convinced that a good setup is the single most important investment to improve the playability and sound of your guitar.  Here’s what in entails. We go through our 66-point checklist and make sure everything is right at each step.  Once the initial inspection is done, we remove the strings and tighten and set the drag on the tuners. Next, we inspect the frets, find any high spots, then level, crown and polish. We clean and oil the fingerboard, restring, tune to pitch and set the neck relief, action and intonation. We then play each fret and check for fret buzz and fret-outs during bends, and we fine-tune as required.  Next, we test the electronics, clean and tighten pots and jacks and balance the pickups.  Occasionally, we find a fault with the electronics, so we dig in and diagnose and repair that.  Once the electronics are tip top, we play the guitar to make sure everything is just right.  Finally, we clean and polish the guitar, then slacken the stings to get it ready for shipping.

String Gauges and Settings:   We do our setups using common string gauges and settings, which we've found work well for most players. For electrics, we use 9-42 gauge strings for Fender (25.5") scale guitars and 10-46 for Gibson (24.75") scale guitars.  We set action to 0.050 on the high e side and 0.060 on the low E side. This action is fairly low and allows for easy fretting without buzzing or sacrificing tone. If you have special preferences, please let us know, and we will do our best to accommodate you.

Fine Tuning Adjustments:  Your guitar will be playing and sounding wonderful when we finish our setup. However, occasionally minor adjustments will be needed after shipping due to changes in temperature and/or humidity, rough handling or other unfavorable conditions. Since we have no control over this, we cannot cover the cost of these adjustments. However, if your guitar was mishandled during shipping, please let us know, so we can see if a shipping claim is in order. Sometimes it’s possible to get you a partial refund to help cover issues if we can show that they were caused by shipping.

Condition Ratings: We do our best to be consistent with Reverb’s condition rating system.  Please keep in mind that Reverb’s descriptions are very general and can be open to interpretation. The guitar you get will be the one shown in the photos, and if it has any major flaws or defects, we will point them out in the listing.  Our guitars rated below “Mint” will have signs of use and cosmetic imperfections, including minor dings, dents and swirl marks, which might only be visible upon close inspection. If you are sensitive to minor cosmetic defects, please let us know, and we can provide you with close-up photos.  We do not accept returns nor give partial refunds if you receive your guitar and believe that it should have been rated lower.  We’ve sold thousands of guitars, and almost without exception, our clients have not had issues with our ratings.  This tells us that we are doing a great job with our condition ratings.  

Standard of Care: We strive to meet our clients’ expectations, and we want you to be happy with your purchase.  Guitars develop wear with use and it’s widely accepted that honest wear adds character and shows that the guitar has been played and loved. Our used and vintage guitars will have signs of use. Our Del Mar Lutherie brand guitars are hand-built and will have artifacts that some people might view as "imperfections".  If you want a guitar in “perfect” or “flawless” condition, we advise you to buy new from an authorized dealer or buy locally so you can inspect it in person. We do not guarantee that our guitars will be cosmetically flawless, and we don’t accept returns or give partial refunds due to cosmetic imperfections.

Specs: We list specs as a courtesy. Some specs are measured by our techs. Others are taken from the manufacturer's data. Manufacturers change specs all the time, and their listed specs may not be 100% accurate. Also, some used guitars have mods that may not be apparent upon visual inspection. The guitar you will get is the one shown in the photos. If there are any "deal breaker" specs that you must have, please let us know so we can double check for you before your purchase.

Videos: We often include YouTube links to provide our clients with more information. These videos will be of a similar make and model which is representative of the guitar in our listing. 

Shipping: We ship guitars via UPS ground. The fee shown includes shipping within the contiguous USA with insurance. It also includes packaging materials and our time to pack up and drop off at UPS.  For guitars, shipping costs are controlled by box size and insurance is based on value. Your guitar will ship without a case, unless one is described as included in the listing or you add one to your order. If you decline to add a case, we will pack your guitar well with bubble wrap and other padding and ship it in a sturdy guitar box. However, if you want your guitar to have even better protection, we encourage you to add a hard case to your order. See below for details.

Cases: Some guitars we buy come with cases and some don't.  Some clients want cases, and some have so many they don't want more.  To offer flexibility, we make cases optional.  This allows us to pass on some savings to those who don't want cases and to offer several case types to our clients who do want them.  If you want a case, please let us know.  There are many benefits when you buy a case from us; we have good prices, we make sure your guitar fits, we offer free shipping on the case (when combined with a guitar) and we ship your guitar inside the case for better protection. Each year, we see a small number of guitars arrive with damage caused by mishandling during shipping. However, when shipped inside a hard case, the incidence of damage is almost zero. See the top of the listing or inquire for options.

Delivery Time: We do our best to get your guitar setup, boxed and shipped as soon as possible. However, sometimes this can take a few days depending on our workload and other factors. Once UPS receives your guitar, they will estimate a delivery date, which you can access via Reverb. UPS will typically deliver your guitar within 2 to 7 business days after they receive it, depending on your distance from Southern California. If you're in a hurry, please let us know and we’ll do our best to accommodate you, or at least we can advise you of the estimated wait, so you can decide if you need to make other arrangements.

Damage Claims: Although rare, guitars sometimes are damaged during shipping. If you receive a guitar that is damaged, please let us know immediately so we can open a claim.

Returns and Canceled Orders: We are a small business and can’t afford to offer free returns like the big guys. There is a lot of time, effort and cost involved with processing your order, pulling your guitar from inventory, setting it up, packing and shipping it. Please make sure you want the guitar before you commit to buy. If we agree to a return or to cancel your order, you will be responsible for shipping costs (both ways) and a restocking fee to cover our time.

Trades:   We are a professional guitar business. Anything we take on trade, we resell. Due to shipping costs and transaction fees, we only do trades in person. To make sense for us, we can only offer wholesale value, which is typically 40% to 60% of what it would sell for on Reverb. This is usually as good or better than Guitar Center.  If you’re OK with this, please send current photos of the actual gear you have for trade. We need brand, model, year, and condition. Note any mods, repairs or other issues. If your guitar includes a hard case or gig bag, send photos of that as well.