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An amazing customer service story!!!

#41
That's awesome on the customer service side, I wasn't as lucky.

4 years ago I bought a used Rapture J2 Five String. It was a pretty cool bass besides the fact that it didn't come with the box-end truss rod wrench. I emailed Michael Pedulla about it and he told me that I should pay $40 for the owner's kit. All for a stupid wrench. Needless to say I don't have that bass anymore, but kudos to you.
 
#44
Joe Clark said:
That's awesome on the customer service side, I wasn't as lucky.

4 years ago I bought a used Rapture J2 Five String. It was a pretty cool bass besides the fact that it didn't come with the box-end truss rod wrench. I emailed Michael Pedulla about it and he told me that I should pay $40 for the owner's kit. All for a stupid wrench. Needless to say I don't have that bass anymore, but kudos to you.
Click to expand...

This looks identical (including the name on it) to my Pedulla wrench.

Invalid Link Removed
 
#45
Mike's basses are superb, and his customer service is among the best. If my Rapture J2 fiver had been my cup of tea tonally, I would still have it.

And then you have people like a guy who builds a boutique brand with graphite necks, who won't stand behind them when a fingerboard separates from the neck.

If I ever buy a new boutique fretless, I know who will get my business. And I know who will not.
 
#46
Joe Clark said:
4 years ago I bought a used Rapture J2 Five String. It was a pretty cool bass besides the fact that it didn't come with the box-end truss rod wrench. I emailed Michael Pedulla about it and he told me that I should pay $40 for the owner's kit. All for a stupid wrench. Needless to say I don't have that bass anymore, but kudos to you.
Click to expand...

FWIW, I think the Pedulla truss rod wrench is the same as an autoharp tuning wrench, which should be commonly available.....
 
#47
That is amazing. There are some hreat luthiers with great customer service but I doubt any of would replace the whole bass.

Fix the problem and do something a little extra, yes. But build you a whole new bass with upgrades at no charge? no.

Mad respect for MP.
 
#48
Mike and everyone over there at Pedulla are great! I had a problem with a Pentabuzz neck once and they fixed it imeadiatley no questions asked. Later I had a problem with the electronics and they fixed it again quickley with no cost to me!

I still can't get over how good their customer service is! They should be the customer service model for all companies!

Peace
 
#49
i have a pedulla fretless 4 string from back in my 4 slinger days - wonderful bass, was my main axe for a long time. sorta carried it around a bit cavalierly though - took it everywhere, like linus and his blanket, and one day i paid for it. dropped the bass on the concrete from waist high as i was getting out of a car. cracked the control area of the body pretty bad

i got in touch with pedulla (this was around '92) and talked to some guy (not the man himself, someone else who i don't remember now). i sent the bass back to get fixed. cost me about $300 iirc, and took a while. when i got it back there were two problems - 1. the color and gone from a red burst (with a real orange/yellow center) to almost straight red, no burst, which sorta sucked - i really liked the burst, and 2. the truss rod cover was missing. called pedulla up, got a new cover really fast, but it didn't fit heh, was too short. never made any more stink about it, but that was sorta weak.

as for the repair, that was -amazing-. considering the level of damage, you can hardly tell anything had happened to it, let alone that it had been dropped - there had been a 3 or 4 inch long split in the body on the edge by the controls, it was really awful, and the repair was completely sweet - you can't even notice unless you are right up on it.
 
#50
Mike and company are first-rate folks. When I was in retail at Bass Central, they were one of my favorite companies to deal with, because they were so easy to talk to and get things done for customers, and they obviously really cared about their work. They influenced me a great deal in my present job.

Joe Clark said:
That's awesome on the customer service side, I wasn't as lucky.

4 years ago I bought a used Rapture J2 Five String. It was a pretty cool bass besides the fact that it didn't come with the box-end truss rod wrench. I emailed Michael Pedulla about it and he told me that I should pay $40 for the owner's kit. All for a stupid wrench. Needless to say I don't have that bass anymore, but kudos to you.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that you feel that way, but as it was a USED instrument, wouldn't it be the responsibility of the original owner to have supplied you with all of the tools? You can't expect the builder to be responsible for the instrument once it has been sold by the dealer. Oh, and the owner's kit is more than just a trussrod wrench, so he wasn't being unreasonable - please try to remember that the folks building these things do it for a living, they can't afford to just constantly give stuff away.
 
#51
Gard said:
Sorry to hear that you feel that way, but as it was a USED instrument, wouldn't it be the responsibility of the original owner to have supplied you with all of the tools? You can't expect the builder to be responsible for the instrument once it has been sold by the dealer. Oh, and the owner's kit is more than just a trussrod wrench, so he wasn't being unreasonable - please try to remember that the folks building these things do it for a living, they can't afford to just constantly give stuff away.
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+1 Kind of hard to fault Pedulla because the person who sold a used bass did not include everything with it.
 
#52
Gard said:
Sorry to hear that you feel that way, but as it was a USED instrument, wouldn't it be the responsibility of the original owner to have supplied you with all of the tools? You can't expect the builder to be responsible for the instrument once it has been sold by the dealer. Oh, and the owner's kit is more than just a trussrod wrench, so he wasn't being unreasonable - please try to remember that the folks building these things do it for a living, they can't afford to just constantly give stuff away.
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They just gave away a 5000$ bass, and they couldn't give him a truss rod tool? :P The bass replacement story is very cool, but it does not make sense that he would need a customer to buy an overpriced truss rod tool when he would make an entirely new bass for a man based on a few neck flaws that were due to weather.
 
#53
i have a feeling that he probably gets asked about the truss rod tool A LOT since its sort of an out of the ordinary tool compared to most basses...maybe he just got sick of people asking.
 
#55
Earwigger said:
They just gave away a 5000$ bass, and they couldn't give him a truss rod tool? :P The bass replacement story is very cool, but it does not make sense that he would need a customer to buy an overpriced truss rod tool when he would make an entirely new bass for a man based on a few neck flaws that were due to weather.
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A flawed NEW instrument under full warranty deserves and receives a totally different level of responsibility from a manufacturer than a clearly USED one no longer under warranty.

Again, the onus is on the seller of the used instrument to have the tools available or source them, not the builder. If the tools were not there at the time of the sale, the buyer had the responsibility to request them from the seller, it is not the builder's responsibility to supply them at his cost when he has already done so once.

(That said, we just send the tools if someone can't find a 9/64" allen key - but they're CHEAP compared to the tool Mike uses!)
 
#56
12bass said:
FWIW, I think the Pedulla truss rod wrench is the same as an autoharp tuning wrench, which should be commonly available.....
Click to expand...

judging from the picture someone posted, its the same as a drum tuning key. A VERY cheap tool that is readily available at all drum stores.

not to mention they actually make some tools they sell at say Home Depot that would fit the bill as well.

The poster with this problem should have looked around for a tool a little, I don't blame pedulla on this one, its a cheap readily fixable problem, the bass going bad is more serious and only a few people can fix it well.
 
#57
The nut is about half the size of a drum tuning key. I already tried that one time. I asked Christine about the truss rod wrench. They are made by a custom tool company and are not cheap. They include them in the case with new basses, period. They are simply too expensive to just give away at every request.
 
#58
steve4765630 said:
Not only that, but he agreed to build me a Hexabuzz (6 string) in the color I wanted (Peacock Blue) with the hardware (Black) and pickups I wanted (Bart Soapbars), no lines or dots on the fingerboard, 19mm spacing and he's upgrading me from AA flame maple to AAA flame maple.
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That's too ehf'ing cool. Plus I finally get an answer to whether or not a 19mm Hexabuzz actually exists or is just a rumor.
 
#59
Kael said:
That's too ehf'ing cool. Plus I finally get an answer to whether or not a 19mm Hexabuzz actually exists or is just a rumor.
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Yes, they do. Most guys don't know it, but you can always ask for 19mm on any Pedulla bass. To tell you the truth, I've never seen one. This will be a first for me and many others on this forum I'm sure. I promise I'll post some pics. I owned a Warrior 6 string fretless for a long time that had 19mm spacing and it just felt right to me. You can also order them without lines or dots which a lot of guys don't know. This will be my first unlined fretless bass. It going to be a beast! I can't wait. I'll even try to post some sound clips on my myspace page when I can.
 
#60
Gard said:
A flawed NEW instrument under full warranty deserves and receives a totally different level of responsibility from a manufacturer than a clearly USED one no longer under warranty.

Again, the onus is on the seller of the used instrument to have the tools available or source them, not the builder. If the tools were not there at the time of the sale, the buyer had the responsibility to request them from the seller, it is not the builder's responsibility to supply them at his cost when he has already done so once.

(That said, we just send the tools if someone can't find a 9/64" allen key - but they're CHEAP compared to the tool Mike uses!)
Click to expand...

I believe that if the manufacturer stands behind the bass they build even after the first owner, then that should include truss rod tools. You know his truss tool was proprietary by his choice, and the ones he makes can't be bought separately from the "player's package" which is 40$. Seems like such a scam to me, especially given their otherwise gleaming reputation.
 

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