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From Purchase to Installation, what is your experience with Bartolini?

Keithwah

Keithwah

Jan 7, 2011
810
54
66
Milwaukee WI
www.unclewhiskeybreath.com
#1
New thread for the D-I-Y'ers. I recently bought a Bartolini HR3.4 wiring harness for my Valley Arts/Samick 5 string Artist series bass. I ordered it via Catalina Guitars and it was sent to me quickly and without trouble. Good guys as far as sending the product to me.

My issue is the drawing included with the HR3.4 harness doesn't show me how to hook up what I need to hook up and to where. I had existing factory installed Bart P/J pickups and you would think they could whip me up a little diagram and FAX it back to me toot sweet. Not so.

I sent them a FAX last thursday, its not late Monday afternoon, no word. Not very good customer support.

Why don't they have an email address or a live person phone number? What are they hiding from? Paying customers?

Anyone else not have the greatest luck with these guys?
 
#2
I might add I emailed Catalina looking fro assistance and they told me I should take it to a competent repairman. Having been in the pro audio/video contracting industry for over 30 years, mostly in the field, I am well qualified to perform this installation and with good well drawn instructions or Bart could just email me or call me (they were given all contact info) and give me a couple minutes and we would resolve all problems. So good guys to sell and ship you something but not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed when it comes to tech support either.

So again, are they working hard enough for your money?
 
#4
Today is a holiday, so maybe that's why they haven't gotten to you. I bought several of their pickups, and recently a used NTBT 918 preamp with no diagram. I never bothered to contact them; I just looked up the diagram on the web, and it worked fine for me. It's a volume/blend deal; if it were a volume/volume, I could have figured it out from the drawing I have. Of course, the reason I didn't try to contact them is my attempts to do so about 10 years back (email. phone) were utter failures.
 
#7
Keithwah said:
..... Having been in the pro audio/video contracting industry for over 30 years, mostly in the field, I am well qualified to perform this installation and with good well drawn instructions or Bart could just email me or call me (they were given all contact info) and give me a couple minutes and we would resolve all problems. So good guys to sell and ship you something but not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed when it comes to tech support either.

So again, are they working hard enough for your money?
Click to expand...

:rolleyes:
 
#8
Eirik, the point of complaining is to raise awareness of unprofessional customer support and manufacturing practices. To say that out of 26 harness systems they make, why couldn't they make one specific drawing for each type of harness I bought. Why the hell should I figure anything more than "do I have room for all of this in the cavity". If Bartolini could lose business because more people are disgruntled with their customer support, Bartolini might do something about it to show they actually care about their customers and their reputation. I paid $150 for the harness complete with installation instructions, what I got was a sheet that I could use to kinda figure things out. Austere gave me perfect directions on wiring their harness in my Jazz a few years ago. The least they could have done is to have a secretary email me or OK they can FAX me back saying, "we have no clue, the only person who has a clue is about an hour away schmoozing with people who are already using our product." That I can understand.

Dano, thanks I have attached a pdf of the P pickup that is the issue. All Bart info points towards using single coils, I see no reason this can't be wired into the circuit, But what is what on the pickups wire leads? Sure there are two reds, a green, a white, and a black, but what function do these various wires have? The HR34 harness is a stacked volume/volume pot, with a mid with a push pull freq select pot and a stacked bass/treble pot. The drawing they sent me which oddly enough was the same as the second link Maurilio sent me. This drawing isn't the same as the HR34 harness. My point again is, if you make the thing, you must make it from some drawing, why not make a copy of THAT drawing and put it in the danged box? Using my Fluke meter I have solved my other issues. Its just down to what to do with this active "p" humbucker.

Maurilio:confused:, being "at NAMM" is a crock of bullhockey:spit: I don't care who you think you are in the entertainment industry. I spend a full week each year at "Infocomm" the world's largest pro audio-video trade show (this is where the big stuff is, not the porn stars), and I still need to respond to and take care of my existing client base long before I bother gathering new clients. If the existing ones aren't happy, they are far more dangerous to my product than not getting a new client on a trade show floor. Thank you for the drawing links, but as I had mentioned before, they do not directly reflect the product I purchased from Bartolini. While some of those parts are in my HR34 harness, there are many more parts shown in that drawing than were not included in my harness. I just want them to man up and make the right drawing for the product and include it with the product. I should not have to "figure" anything out. I PAID THEM TO FIGURE IT OUT FOR ME!

Do you guys not get the point that I PAID THEM TO FIGURE IT OUT FOR ME, and they did not do what they were paid to do. Just a simple case of bad business practices on Bartolini's behalf. And I am an unhappy client no matter how good this winds up sounding in my 5, I am having a very unhappy experience with them.
 

Attachments

#9
if with all those diagram and info you can find on the bartolini site you can not figure out how to install/mod/adapt your installation, it means you don't have enough knowledge on this matters. See a tech (a decent one, please).

I'm out

M
 
#10
maurilio said:
if with all those diagram and info you can find on the bartolini site you can not figure out how to install/mod/adapt your installation, it means you don't have enough knowledge on this matters. See a tech (a decent one, please).

I'm out

M
Click to expand...

I never said I couldn't figure it out, I did say........

I PAID THEM TO DO IT (the figuring) FOR ME AND THEY DID NOT DO IT (the figuring) FOR ME! If I wanted to "figure" anything out, I would have ordered every thing ala carte and paid less, and I would not order a completed harness. But thanks for contributing to the lively topic in your own special way.

If I didn't have the chops to handle this I would take it to my guitar tech, but I solder 100% better than he does and my wire lacing is also vastly superior to his. I can adjust my own necks and bridges, cut my own saddles and I've wired more pro sound and video rigs than you've ever seen. I didn't want to "figure", I wanted to see clear cut how to wire Bartolini pickups into the Bartolini harness. I should have gotten a drawing that showed how to hook it up to a pair of single coil J pups and for a P/J pup setup. There was no blend pot in my harness why is there one on the installation drawing?
 
#12
Crappy service in my experience. Not just because I cant find a simple explanation of what wire is the hot wire on my Bart MM 4 wire pups on their site. But when having issues, or rewireing previous basses, or calling or emailing them about potentially buying new pups. Just bad experiences personally overall. Maybe thats not the norm but thats my .02
 
#17
Keithwah said:
.....
If I didn't have the chops to handle this I would take it to my guitar tech, but I solder 100% better than he does and my wire lacing is also vastly superior to his. I can adjust my own necks and bridges, cut my own saddles and I've wired more pro sound and video rigs than you've ever seen. I didn't want to "figure", I wanted to see clear cut how to wire Bartolini pickups into the Bartolini harness. I should have gotten a drawing that showed how to hook it up to a pair of single coil J pups and for a P/J pup setup. There was no blend pot in my harness why is there one on the installation drawing?
Click to expand...

If you don't know where to wire two pups to either a blend or two vol pots......
 
#18
Maurilio, I do appreciate your sticking with this topic in an attempt to help a fellow bassist and to attempt to drive home the concept that accepting mediocrity for your hard earned money is not only perfectly fine, but should be the industry standard.

I have seen that drawing, I do understand how to finish the wiring on my bass. What I don't understand is how a company can take your money and kick a customer to the sewers. Why reward sh*t service? Whether I can figure it out or not is not the point at all! It has everything to do with getting what I paid for. For cripes sakes, I even told them I was running a blog on this forum to let everyone know what a terrific company they may or may not be depending on how they handle my request for help. I am not wasting their time because they are the big bad manufacturer, they have taken my money and wasted my time. I at least want my time back, and I will get that by getting people to look at other avenues. I have gotten tons of pm's from guys all over the world who have experienced the same troubles I have with them.

Let's say you bought a jungle gym set-up from Sam's Club or similar. It has 60,000 pieces. The drawing inside the shipping crates showing you how to put this thing together reflects a swing set, not a jungle gym, BUT heck, they both use nuts and bolts and there's a picture on the outside of the box showing what it looks like when its built and in somebody's back yard with eight kids crawling all over it? You've built a few play pens and strollers...but man it would have been 100% easier and you would have gotten a closer value for your hard earned dollars if they sent the correct assembly instructions.

Not saying a resourceful person could not figure it out. But why make me pay a bunch of money so that I can waste ump-teen hours figuring out how to assemble this thing, when I could have knocked the whole project out in less than an hour, which is all it would have taken had they been clear in the first place?

Thanks to the other guys who do get my point of dragging Bartolini's sacred name through the mud and attempting to expose them for the sh*t service and concern for the customer that they have. Every day I am dealing with and cutting deals with the likes of E-V, Symetrix, Roland, Allen-Heath, Audix, Community Loudspeakers, Marantz Denon, QSC, Peavey, Extron, Eiki, Mitsubishi, Shure, and the list goes on. All of these companies provide world class tech support and go way above and beyond to make sure the reputation of the product is top notch by taking care of their customer. I didn't expect to get brilliant knowledge from Catalina Guitars, after all they are a music store, and guys working at music store are always just one day away from flipping burgers again (not all but at least 90%). But from a manufacturer, this was behavior that is unbecoming of an industry leader.

That was my point. The preamp and pickups do sound very good. But the lack of response from Bartolini is ridiculous. Regardless of how I like their product sonically, I would never purchase from them again and strongly urge others to spend their money elsewhere as well.
 
#20
At some point in the past (few yrs ago) I wanted to change the Barts on my Warrior bass, because the tone was not happening (while the "acoustic" tone of the bass was great), and emails were not replied, so I chose to call them up. I called them and spend a good 30min online (international call) to speak to the right people and to figure out the model I needed to use to achieve the desired tone and a decent B str tone. I changed the pickups once, but still it was not happening, so I called up again and spoke to some tech guy again to suggest another model (why waste time waiting for an email reply, when you know the story from past experience?). Again they suggest and I purchase the pickups and still not happening. I call up a 3rd time (in a matter of months) and they suggest a discontinued model. They were of help locating a distributor that had stock of the disconinued model, so I got in contact with the distributor and purchased the discontinued model (2 pickups every single time). Pickups came with wiring diagrams

So the moral of the story, from my side at least, is to call them up. They are of immediate help when you call them up. YMMV

PS The same non-reply policy I have received from Seymour Duncan too, when I tried (three times) to get a quote to have a set of Silverbird pickups for my guitars, but I did not bother calling up
 

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