From my last blog post, you'll see that Musikhaus Thomann had refused to honour the warranty on my six-month old Harley Benton TE90 FLT where the frets had started to disintegrate, saying this was due to normal wear and tear. I had written to them and they had decided to stonewall me - pay for the repair or we'll send it back to you unrepaired. I approached the Citizens Advice Bureau as I believed their action was against the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the equivalent EU legislation. Citizens Advice are normally very informative and were so in this case.
They told me that Consumer Rights Act was not really applicable, but as the company was located in Germany, I should contact the International consumer Centre (www.ukecc.net) for impartial advice on how to handle this issue in respect of the German Penal Code. I think the organisation is underfunded as they don't seem to answer the phone, their web forms don't work and despite me spelling out chapter and verse in an email to them, they haven't yet responded since I mailed them three weeks ago. However, one useful piece of advice the Citizens Advice Bureau gave me was to call Thomann and ask for the company's complaints procedure.
Harley Benton Thomann Customer Service
So I called them and asked for it, citing my dissatisfaction with their service response and that I need to make sure my complaint was addressed by someone at director level. That threat seemed to do the trick. Literally fifteen minutes later I received an email from Thomann to tell me that they were making a 'one-time exception' and were offering me a store credit to the full value of the instrument, valid for an unlimited period. Now, this isn't as good as getting a full cash refund, but I decided that it was the next best thing and accepted, thus preventing a long, drawn-out argument. I do have accessories I want to purchase and Thomann's prices are reasonable in today's market.
So, it appears that Thomann were, in the end, sensible enough to offer something I could accept and avoid having a super-pissed-off customer who was determined to give them a headache. Now I know it's only a budget guitar (and more about that follows) but what would their original attitude have been if I'd returned a £3000 Gibson Les Paul? It makes me wonder.
I've said it before, as I've experienced with budget guitars you do get more bang for your buck these days, but you also get what you pay for. Last Saturday I was playing a gig and used as my first guitar my G&L USA ASAT Classic - a 'Tele' model and my preferred guitar which has had a bit of a history of string breakages, so I always take a spare guitar and lately this has been my Jet JS400 HSS 'Strat' model which I also swap over to from time to time where a tune calls for some whammy-bar action, which the ASAT doesn't have. Unusually, I broke a string on the JS400 and had to play the rest of the gig on the ASAT. That's why you take two guitars to a gig, after all.
Good job I didn't have to change a string on-stage. As it happened, when I looked at the guitar the next day, the ball-end of the broken top E string was so jammed in the tremelo string block that I literally had to remove all the strings from the tuners, then remove all of the saddles (six on this model), disconnect the tremelo springs at the back of the body (which I think is why a lot of Strat players leave the back plate off), take off the saddle plate and finally using a small carpenter's hammer and a small picture-hanging nail as a punch, drive the ball end out of the block. That's when I saw that it wasn't just the top E string, but all the other string ball end were snagged too, I decided to treat the guitar to a new set of Ernie Ball Super Slinkies. Repeating the process, I restrung the guitar, but I noticed the same problem was going to occur, with each ball end being seated very tightly in the block. It appears the block has been poorly machined.
Although not a disaster like the finally-unplayable Harley Benton with the self-destructive frets, I think you'll find these 'budget' issues cropping up on all kinds of budget guitars, albeit that they play great and sound fantastic - until they don't, or you get unresolved sticky little problems you - or maybe a luthier - may have to deal with, the kind you won't get with a much more expensive, branded guitar, pitched at the mid-range price level or above.
Budget guitars have their place, like with the occasional, user or learner. I'm not saying that budget guitars are not gig-able - I've been pleasantly surprised with my purchases - but chances are you'll soon be looking at a repair to the value of the original purchase price or a replacement, whereas your branded G or F or even a mid-priced Y guitar from Japan will most likely be issue-free for a good number of gigging years. Unless they're not, of course!
So if you're looking to buy budget and intending to give it extensive play, remember that budget producers tend to make their savings on things like poor quality tuners, cheap and nasty fret wire and cheap electronics, especially the pick-ups. Therefore, they won't have the shelf-life of a branded guitar. You get what you pay for.
The TE90FLT was fun to play, sounded great and had radical looks. But I've got five branded-quality electric guitars and my budget Jet JS400 which cover my range of requirements, so will I miss it? Probably not, but it was an experience!
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