Grateful Dead Music Forum

anyone have a recommendation for a good setup in the Philly area? will raising the action myself mess up intonation?

keirweir wrote:I have a jerrified Shecter C-1 Diamond series for sale. It's on the Garage sale section. No buzz, plays perfectly. You have a real shitty story dude an I am sorry to hear it.

Thanks for pointing this out, I had seen your guitar on there. It looks like a nice guitar with some good work done to it. Unfortunately, about the last thing on my mind right now is buying another Schecter guitar. That has everything to do with Schecter, I don't mean that as a ding on you at all.

What really sucks about my guitar is that it is a great looking guitar, and the features on it are basiclally exactly what I want. With the caveat that I am not an expert on the technical vagaries of guitars (I don't even claim to be "knowledgable", much less an expert"), based on what I have read about the topic since owning this guitar, I have a feeling I know what is wrong with it. I suspect that the neck is not set at the appropriate angle to the body, such that I can't eliminate the fret buzz without setting the action ridiculously high. I wouldn't be surprised if the Schecter tech knew that, but didn't want to get involved with re-setting the neck, as that appears to be quite a bit of work, and will likely result in extensive refinishing work when it is done.

All that said, the real problem is that Schecter has not returned my phone calls. If we do in fact have a situation where the guitar is dorked up to the point where it really doesn't make sense to repair it, I would be willing to discuss some other accomodation. Instead, they are effectively flipping me the bird.

Well, as long as I have gone this far, I might as well continue the blow-by-blow:

I called "Jay", the GM at the store where I bought the guitar, and told him I was pretty ticked that Schecter hadn't returned my calls. He said he would see what he could do. An hour later, "Randy", the head-tech at Schecter called me at my house.

The guy basically gave me a very hard way to go, saying I was being unreasonable and such. He said other whacky things too, like pointing out that they stopped making this guitar 4 years ago (even though, later in the conversation he said mine was manufactured in 2006, which is only 3 years ago), and it didn't make sense that a problem like this would come up this long after. I pointed out that I have only owned the guitar for a little over 2 years and that the problems I had with it I noticed right away. For about a year, I tried to deal with the problems myself because I wanted the guitar, but in the end, I gave up and contacted Shecter over a year ago saying I was having problems with the guitar, and that I can document all attempted contacts with Schecter. It is not my fault that the guitar sat at Guitar Center for over a year before I bought it, nor is it my fault that Schecter has dragged their feet for 15 months apparenlty hoping this issue would go away on its own. I think the guy got the point that he was going down the drain on this issue, so he changed the subject before I could point out some obvious things like:

1. One of the main reasons I bought THIS guitar, as opposed to the couple hundred other guitars in that price range is that it came with a LIFETIME WARRANTEE, so I thought they would really stand behind it.

2. If 4 years is too long for them to uphold a lifetime warrentee, they should consider only selling their guitars to people who are 95 years of age or older.

I'll be saving these, and some other choice comments for future discussion that I think are likely.

So the guy goes back to the idea that fret buzz is normal, and that I am being unreasonable. I told him that I agree, all guitars will have fret buzz when a string is not properly fretted or if the string is struck or plucked improperly, but this guitar has nasty fret buzz on the B string when played open, as well as some buzz on the D string when played open. It also buzzes all over the place when I play it, even when I am paying close attention to my technique and playing it slowly to be sure I am fretting and plucking properly. Additionally, several other people have played the guitar, all of them more skilled and experienced than I, and they have all unanimously said that this guitar is screwed up.

This decayed into more or less an argument about the other complaints etc. At one point the guy was accusing me of "trying to get a free guitar", which was not only baffling but kind of annoying since I paid several hundred dollars for the guitar, plus now a shipping bill to them to have them not fix it. So in an attempt to end the argument, I said "Look, I don't give a shit about the tone pot, I can change that myself. I don't give a shit about the tuners, I like the Sperzel locking tuner system better anyway, and if I can get the guitar to play, I'll change those myself too. But the guitar as it sits right now is unplayable, and that is not acceptable."

He hemmed and hawed and said "there's nothing we can do" kind of stuff, and I told him: "What you have here is a business decision. You sold me a guitar, and I think it is unplayable. Numerous other players in my area have played the guitar, and they agree with me that it is screwed up. If you are going to make the business decision to walk away from this situation, there is little or nothing I can do about that as I am not going to chase you with lawsuits or any crap like that. But just be aware that several guitar players already know that you made a shitty guitar, AND they are going to be thinking to themselves "Man, those Schecter guys really screwed Mick over on that messed up guitar." So if that's how you want to leave it, then I guess we are done.

Clearly, he didn't want that, so he asked me what I wanted in a "what the fuck do you want" kind of tone. I told him "I want the guitar to play properly. I liked the look and features of the guitar when I bought it, or I wouldn't have paid several hundred dollars for it. I'm not asking for anything for free, I just want the guitar I bought to play."

So, UPS is supposed to arrive at my house on Wednesday to pick up the guitar. It's being sent back to California for the Schecter guys to look at it again. This time, the shipping charges will be paid by Schecter.

I am sure there will be another chapter to this story.

Keep fighting the good fight and get that man's foot off your neck!

Hope it works out for you this time, bro. What a total pain in the ass you have had to put up with. Good luck and keep us posted:D

Good luck man!

http://www.spinjunkies.com/spinjunkies_jzd.htm

Track 3

Hang in there

hogan wrote:http://www.spinjunkies.com/spinjunkies_jzd.htm

Track 3

Hang in there

Thanks for this, it gave me a laugh on a day when I needed one. I think I will listen to it again today!

Anyway, as I have mentioned in another thread, I have pretty much written off my Schecter and am looking for a new guitar. Because of the bizarre events of the last few days, I sat down last night and wrote out my notes (I always take notes on stuff like this, they always come in handy later), this morning I filled it out into postable material. If anyone has any curiosity on the latest developments, here are the details:

So, after the last annoying go-round, UPS came and picked up my guitar again on 12/23. Based on the tracking number, the guitar got to Schecter a few days later, and on 1/4/10 I started calling to follow up. After a week of unreturned phone calls, I pretty much figured out what was happening here, I was getting screwed.

On Monday 1/11/10, things turned from annoying to the truly bizarre. I was at my house Monday evening when the UPS guy rings my doorbell, and my guitar makes an unannounced return to my house. I took it out of the case, and to no one’s surprise, it plays exactly like it did when it left. I tried calling Schecter several more times, to no avail.

So yesterday, I get a hold of Jay from GC and tell him the story. As is becoming habit now, I got a call from Ryan at Schecter about an hour later. To say this phone call was bizarre could only be an understatement. The guy didn’t want to talk about the fret buzz at all, and even though I more or less tried to drag him into a discussion about it, he would only say “there is nothing wrong with the guitar”. But along the way, he wanted to argue about the tone pot (which still sucks BTW), and I told him that changing that is something I can easily handle, and that I just changed a set of pots for a friend on Saturday, so if I don’t like the tone pot, I’ll just change it.

Then he got onto a whole thing about how I have had the guitar for 2 years and how could a fret buzz issue be coming up now. I re-iterated that I noticed the fret buzz in the first month or so, but thought it was me for a while, then I took the guitar to be set-up thinking that would resolve it etc and that because I can’t spend all my time on my guitars, time slipped by and it was nearly a year before I contacted them saying we have a warranty issue. But more importantly, I don’t understand why this is important since this guitar came with a “lifetime warrantee”. At this point, the guy was totally aggressive and basically called me a liar without using the word “liar”. He was going on and on about how 11/2/09 was the first contact I had with Schecter, and that was more than 2 years after I bought the guitar. The fact is, he’s wrong about that. 11/2/09 was the date they gave me the return authorization over the phone, but there had been numerous interactions between me and Schecter for months prior to that. So I said to him “I’m not going to argue about this with you because you are dead wrong, and even if you were right, it doesn’t matter in a lifetime warrantee situation.” But the guy wouldn’t let it go, and was basically yelling at me that I was wrong. I asked him for his e-mail address, and forwarded the first string of e-mails I came across in my “sent items” folder that had back and forth e-mails from the May/June 2009 time frame. For the rest of the call, he claimed he never got that e-mail, but I wouldn’t argue this issue with him any further no matter what he said.

So, in the end, we got to a “Mexican standoff” if you will. He was still claiming there is nothing wrong with the guitar, and I still consider it unplayable.

So, I called Jay, and re-iterated the above. I ended up on the phone with Jay for 20+ minutes, and he was very nice about the whole thing. I agreed with him that this isn’t really his job, and that I appreciated his efforts to help out here and “referee” what has become a truly whacky situation, but that I felt he and I were in a weird place. Since I think this guitar is unplayable, whether I am right or wrong at this point doesn’t even matter anymore. I feel I need to buy a new guitar, meaning spending $1000+ on a new instrument, and the way things are, I couldn’t feel comfortable buying that guitar from GC. I am also in the market right now for a new keyboard for my daughter, and I don’t think I can feel comfortable buying that from GC either.

Jay seems like a fairly bright guy, and seemed to get the point right away. We talked for a while longer, and my impression (he didn’t say this directly) is that if this guitar really is screwed up, he will do something about the situation. I reminded him that he played the guitar, and he remembered, and I reminded him about some of the things we talked about that day etc, and he seemed to be coming around to thinking I was probably right. But, he thought it would be a good idea to have one of their techs look at the guitar to see what he thought about it. So, Jay put me on the phone with “Merv”, whom I have never met. Merv sounded cool knowledgeable, and agreeable, so we agreed that I would try to get to the store before he left so he could look at the guitar. I left work early and got to the store shortly before 6, Merv was still there and wanted to see the guitar right away. I handed it to him, and he played it for less than 2 seconds when the look on his face was worth the price of admission! I was there with him for several minutes while he focused intently on the guitar, until he turned to me and in an almost apologetic tone said “would it be OK if you left it?” Yes Merv, that would be just fine.

I have the feeling I’ll be getting a call from SOMEBODY at some point today.

that Ryan fellow seems like a real dick ...
seems like bad biz to me .....
its like they sold you a bad guitar and are really ok with that .....
Mick I wouldn't have gotten as far as you - I would have lost it !
Seems like it might be turning around for you .....

Will Merv the perv save the day? Stat tuned...

Gotta say if I was in your shoes somebody would have that guitar up his ass. Stay strong!


But I will re-iterate, as I advised recently, that you need a good competent tech in your area and I would use that guitar to weed out the good from the bad. It is pointless for you to spend $1500 on a guitar, which will be shipped or setup by a doof at GC, or settle into a climate change, etc and you will need a tech.

dleonard wrote: will raising the action myself mess up intonation?

I see no one ever responded to this, but even though it is a little out of place, I will. The theoretical answer is "yes", and the reason is easy to visualize by picturing the extreme case of raising your bridge until your strings are at a 30 degree angle to your fretboard. The practical answer is still yes, but minimal changes in bridge height will probably not make a noticable change to your intonation. Changing from .010 strings to .009 or .008 strings would also have a theoretical impact on your intonation, but I have tried this and do not see any significant change on my electronic tuner. Said another way, if you just want to move your bridge a smidge, you'll probably be OK, but if you want to go from a high action to a low action or vice versa, your intonation will probably need to be adjusted.

Back to my guitar: Most of what has happened in the last two days is way too boring to post. The one interesting (to me anyway) development is that Schecter has agreed that whether or not it took me two years to raise my hand on the issue doesn't matter since the guitar has a lifetime warrantee. I assume Ryan finally got my e-mail and has realized they can't win an argument here. I am sure that expecting them to realize they have acted like assholes dragging this out for over a year would be totaly unreasonable.

I'm done. At the end of the day yesterday, I just felt that I had been beaten so hard by these guys that I was really pissed off. When I got home, and told my wife about it, as usual, she had some great insight. She reminded me that playing guitar is a "hobby" for me, and that getting verbally abused and pissed off should not be a part of anyone's hobby. She also reminded me that hobbies cost money, and that the $700 I spent on the guitar is gone, but luckily it isn't our last $700. When I had a good think about that, I realized that she is right. I called Jay at GC, and thanked him for all his efforts. I also told him I am done with this because I have had more than too much from Schecter, those people have insulted me for the last time. I told him I will pay any outstanding balance on the guitar, and I will pick it up on Saturday.

So yes, hobbies cost money. I spent the money, and I got what I got out of it. I learned a lot about guitars, even if most of it was about what a guitar SHOULDN'T play like, and I learned a lot about one of the manufacturers of guitars. The whole $700 isn't wasted either. In that bill, I got a stand that I am sure I will re-use. I also got a hard-shell case that I might use again, or I might give it to a friend of mine who is toting his $1000 Jackson guitar around in a ratty old gig-bag, so someone will get to use that. That just leaves the guitar, what should one do with a guitar that isn't playable? Again, my wife came up with an appropriate and very fitting use for that guitar. See, my house isn't very big, so the whole living room/dining room/entrance way is all one area with her baby grand piano at one end and my guitars all lined up against the wall at the other end and all of our musical endeavors (I am the only member of the family who plays only one instrument) happen in between. Downstairs is a small room that we have used as a computer room, but have recently put a dart board and a small air hockey table in there and are calling it our "game room". My wife thinks that mounting that guitar on the wall in the game room would fit well with the decor. I think this is an excellent idea, using that guitar as a "wall ornament" to get some additional value out of it. That, and if anyone comes over to the house and asks why that guitar is hanging on the wall downstairs while all my other guitars are lined up in stands upstairs ready to be played, I'll be happy to give them a synopsis of what has transpired.

Anyway, thanks for all the comments, advice and support along the way! I am sure writing this over the months has been cathartic.

You shold print this thread and send it to shecter and post it on those GC musician boards at the entrance to most GC's. Good luck man and great point of view. Your wife's input reminds me of my wife.

Good luck

I don't know if you have any interest in it but...I find myself wanting to learn more of the nuts and bolts of guitar repair...wiring...etc. This guitar could become a guinea pig of sorts...mess with intonation, truss adjustment, wiring schemes...etc. that's one expensive guinea pig...but maybe more useful than a wall hanging. Or perhaps pull down the dart board and start throwing at the guitar...a bullseys could be considered three darts in the neck that actuall form a chord.