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guitar setup taking a month?

bluesguyjon

By bluesguyjon
in Electric Guitars

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BoneNut Newbie

BoneNut

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so i figured i'd resurrect this thread and tell you what happened.


i got the guitar back. before i go any farther i want to say that it plays and sounds fantastic.


ok, the other stuff. first off, i forget if i mentioned that there was a fret dot missing. anyway, to repair this, he apparently had to take out a slab of the fretboard (from the 2nd to the 7th fret), and replace it with a new piece of maple. then to get it to match, he had to reduce the radius of the whole neck. you wouldn't be able to tell that the neck was worked on, he did a great job. the flattened fretboard freaked me out at first (because i wasn't sure whether i would like it or not), but it plays a little better anyway (luckily). he also replaced all the frets.


the second thing he did way redo some of my wiring. i had originally done a total rewiring job as per the guitar nuts shielding procedure that i first heard about in the sticky thread in this forum. it made the guitar sound a lot quieter. anyway, apparently he thought that i had wired the pickups in reverse, so he fixed that for me (on the invoice he put it down as "rewired star ground", so he might've done a bit more than change the pickup wiring). from what i can remember, the guitar's noise is now back up to what it was stock, and also i think a part of a pot or of the selector switch is touching the copper tape lining the cavity, because every now and again the guitar will stop putting out sound, and i have to bang on the pickguard to shift things around a bit, and then it's fine. i had this problem before and i fixed it by just putting a piece of electrical tape on the side of the selector switch closest to the side of the cavity to keep them from touching. also, to my ears (although i can't be sure), the guitar sounds less, i dunno, ballzy than before, but again i can't remember for certain. not necessarily BAD, but i think it's different. the thing that IS screwed up is the tone controls are reversed. the knob closest to the volume knob controls the bridge, not the neck, and vice versa. i'm gonna open it up again and see for sure.


anyway, the thing that kinda pisses me off the most is i just asked for a simple tune up, i didn't even care about the fret dot thing (which i still think was a lot simpler than replacing a piece of the fretboard). he never notified me that he was doing all these things, and in the end i'm out $160. again, the thing sounds great (a little different i think, but great), and plays a little better. but i think i would've liked to pay $40 for a guitar that sounded the same as before. i haven't made up my mind yet. this kind of thing also happened to me a couple other times, it's like a young blond walking into a mechanic shop to get some work done on a car. she's going to get taken advantage of because the mechanics are gonna do some totally unnecessary things just to get more money. i sometimes end up having techs do more than what i asked for (although i never consent to them >. i'm doing my own setups from now on.



At this point, I really don't know if you're being serious. If you are, I can't even begin to tell you how many things are terribly wrong about your whole ordeal.
:cry:

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D-log Newbie

D-log

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no, i know i got screwed. 20/20 hindsight sort of thing. i never asked for the work, and i did negotiate the price down (he originally wanted $200).

 

 

Well, if that does ever happen to you again, just give him the $40 and tell him to {censored} off. If he presses it, tell him you'll see him in court. This will most likely scare him off, as he knows he doesn't have a leg to stand on. At least we know of one more hack that should never be trusted... Do we have a wall of shame we can sticky this on?

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Knottyhed Newbie

Knottyhed

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go get your money back.

 

 

This.

 

1. You asked for a setup he did allot more than that without consulting you.

 

2. He took a month, you rang him numerous times and he never told you he was doing any of this {censored} that you never asked him to do.

 

3. He is bull{censored}ting you or he's an idiot - there is no reason why you'd need to remove any of the fretboard to redo a position marker. Even if he had needed to repace a section of the fretboard, assuming he had the right tools there is no reason he couldn't have given you back your original radius?!! I mean seriously WTF!? He is damn lucky you happen to prefer it and the fact he did this without asking is unbelievable.

 

4. He has {censored}ed up your wiring - you didn't ask him to do it and were not consulted, he has undone some mods you intentionally made, the tone pots are reversed and your guitar keeps cutting out. You should demand your money back for this alone... and don't let him offer to put it right - because he obviously doesn't know what he's doing to have done it in the first place.

 

I'd have exploded if this'd happened to me! I'd suggest you go back and ask he refunds you because he has screwed your guitar up and you are going to have to either fix it yourself or pay someone else to do it. He may well refuse, knowing that you're not going to take him to court over that amount of money, but you can at least make it a point of trying to deprive him of as much business as possible by telling everyone who'll listen about this guy.

 

The lesson here is, (a) if a repair guy tells you he have you instrument ready within a time frame and then doesn't deliver and pro-actively phone you with a good reason - take it somewhere else and (b) if a repair guy carries out work you didn't authorise, don't pay for it.

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ExiledCrow Newbie

ExiledCrow

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Dude, {censored}ed up from top to bottom. The longest I've waited is just under 2 weeks, for two guitars that were getting pup swaps along with the set-up (changed string gauges too), AND the guy that does the major work was out for a couple days when I dropped it off, AND AND I waited a day or two before I could get 'round to them. And they've ALWAYS called with questions about permission for anything else they thought should be done.

That tech = :facepalm:

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clay sails Newbie

clay sails

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Dude,

 

Your wallet just got rogered by a guitar tech. If you've already paid, don't worry about it, but if you haven't...I'd put up a fuss. I can't believe the guy completely altered the radius of your neck. Holy crap. That's a major change to the guitar.

 

What's the guy's name?

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Riggins Newbie

Riggins

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it's not too late to get your money back.

In my town, the local TV news channels have Consumer lawyer segments; Fox 13's consumer lawyer Eric Seidel, Channel 8's 8 on your side, etc. I'm sure your local stations have something similar.

 

Even if they deny the allegations they seem to mysteriously consent to refunding the money and then say they'll "look into it". so either way win win.

 

personally, I'd love to see you take this shyster down on a public forum like television. You wouldn't allow an auto shop to put new tired on your car if you brought it in for an oil change would you? The way I see it this is no different.

 

you did do the right thing though, paying and getting your axe back. You likely wouldn't have if you bitched about the bill up front. Not right away anyway, and not until after the evidence process.

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bluesguyjon Newbie

bluesguyjon

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it's not too late to get your money back.

In my town, the local TV news channels have Consumer lawyer segments; Fox 13's consumer lawyer Eric Seidel, Channel 8's 8 on your side, etc. I'm sure your local stations have something similar.


Even if they deny the allegations they seem to mysteriously consent to refunding the money and then say they'll "look into it". so either way win win.


personally, I'd love to see you take this shyster down on a public forum like television. You wouldn't allow an auto shop to put new tired on your car if you brought it in for an oil change would you? The way I see it this is no different.


you did do the right thing though, paying and getting your axe back. You likely wouldn't have if you bitched about the bill up front. Not right away anyway, and not until after the evidence process.


yeah i just wanted the thing back in my hands :facepalm:

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nenadnenad Newbie

nenadnenad

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you did do the right thing though, paying and getting your axe back. You likely wouldn't have if you bitched about the bill up front. Not right away anyway, and not until after the evidence process.

 

 

That's why you say hello, take your guitar 'to try it out unplugged' and then just proceed to walk or run out of there.

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irishstu Newbie

irishstu

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I reckon the guitar tech accidentally knocked your guitar over early on and took a chunk out of the fretboard, while screwing up several frets at the same time. The "replacing part of the fretboard in order to replace the missing fret marker" story was then used as an excuse to cover this up.

 

After this was fixed, he plugged in your guitar and got no noise, possibly from something touching the shielding again after the knock. In a panic, he rewired it.

 

Well, you know, I'm just theorising here, but it does make at least as much sense as his story.

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smorgdonkey Newbie

smorgdonkey

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Any work other than what is asked for at the time of handing over the instrument should be authorized by the owner when the service person thinks he has to go that route during the work.

I'd never have the guy work on anything else regardless of the quality of the work that he did.

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