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Local stores don't sell Ampeg anymore

#21
Yeah, that happened here on Cape Cod too. There was an Ampeg dealer in Centerville, where I got a smokin' deal on my American made SVT-VR, which is still working flawlessly I may add, but they dropped them. I have no idea where to go if I ever do need warrantee work on my VR. I'm a little nervous about that.......
 
#23
You should check the store for other LOUD Technologies products like Crate and Mackie.

Customer service shouldn't be bad for JUST Ampeg... unless LOUD outsourced all Ampeg CSRs to Asia as well.

Usually when I called LOUD Tech. customer service I got someone who could answer questions about all their products.
 
#24
JTE said:
BTW, when SLM owned them they weren't very good either. We had some Crate amps with bad output transistors. We could replace them ourselves if we could get them. But they wouldn't sell us power Xistors because they didn't have any for service. I asked if they could go out to the assembly line and grab a half dozen and send them to me. I was told "No, those are production parts, not service parts".
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That's VERY odd............ Must have been a LONG time ago, because for the last at least 15 years of SLM, Service was right downstairs from me, and they had a large room full of parts that were signed out to service. They had parts that R&D didn't have......

Now, once in a while, if there was a serious supply problem, something like what you say COULD happen. There would be a grand sweep through and all the available parts would go to production. But as soon as supplies were available again they would be back in stock.

For quite a while SLM had one of the very best service organizations in the biz........ They were the very FIRST part of SLM to get the ax when Loud bought out the company.
 
#26
64jb said:
you said that you worked for ampeg before? i have a question. is ampeg using the same parts on those amps that's made overseas?
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If I may...It's not a simple answer, because USA Ampegs had some parts made in Asia as well. Some, but not all. And some were out of necessity, such as when Electrical Windings quit making transformers for SVT-VR's and CL's. The only other place they could get them was China. Nowadays all the parts come from China.

Oddly, there seems to be no effect on the tone. I've played over a hundred SVT-CL's, including some LOUD CL's, and blindfolded I couldn't tell a difference. So they may not be your grandpa's Ampegs, but they sure do sound just like them. When they work, that is, but the quality seems to be getting better these days.
 
#27
A very good local music shop has an Ampeg poster in their amp room, but does not stock Ampeg products. I asked them about it and they said that for some reason, they had trouble moving product. I found that very weird, and reading this thread, I think the real reason might indeed be Loud's customer service and they were just too polite to say so.

Seems from what I read that Loud didn't exactly make the most pleasing decisions when they bought the company.
 
#28
Sartori said:
A very good local music shop has an Ampeg poster in their amp room, but does not stock Ampeg products. I asked them about it and they said that for some reason, they had trouble moving product. I found that very weird, and reading this thread, I think the real reason might indeed be Loud's customer service and they were just too polite to say so.

Seems from what I read that Loud didn't exactly make the most pleasing decisions when they bought the company.
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They flat out lied to the SLM employees and told them they weren't moving overseas. Then they rushed everything to market whether it worked or not after the big move, and lost their asses. I don't know the guy, but just from the stories, I consider LOUD's disgraced former head Jaime Engen a class-A greed-infected moron. Fortunately, all the idiots in charge of running LOUD into the ground are gone, and according to Jerrold Tiers, the new head idiots may actually be on the ball.
 
#32
johnk_10 said:
Hmmmmm...My experience with their customer service has been very good . I didn't call them, but rather emailed a tech at LOUD with some questions about my new SVT-VR. The next day (about 8 hours later) I received a response with the information that I needed. I have corresponded with them several times since and always have gotten a prompt and informative reply from a knowledgeable tech.

As it turns out, my SVT- VR is one of the ones that has more hum than it should in channel #2 and needs to have a PCB updated (replaced). I called the local Ampeg warranty center (Ampwerx in Long Beach, CA) and the owner (Armand) was also very polite and prompt with contacting LOUD to acquire the parts that my amp needs. So far, I'm pleased with their support of their product.

I actually kinda hate to take it in since I use channel 1 and it sounds awesome, but I suppose that its best to have it done now while its under warranty.
Here's a pic of it with it's new SVT-410HLF cab. This amp sounds HUGE!


svt-4-2-w.jpg



2 cents.........
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that stack looks nice... were it me, however, I'd see if I could replace the cab logo to match the VRs. I think that would look super clean!
 
#34
Yeah, Ampegs have been at Best Buy for a while now. My town has one of the test locations for their music shop. It's not bad, you're paying retail, sometimes the stuff is on sale, and once in a while they get an employee who actually knows what they're talking about. It's basically like a less stocked GC, but not the cool GCs, the ones with employees who could care less.

I asked my local place why that stopped carrying Ampeg, their reply was that they just couldn't get stuff fast enough. They had orders that were literally over a year old. Ampeg was their big bass stuff they carried, now they're going GK, Genz Benz, SWR, etc. They've got some leftover Ampeg stuff that they can't sell (just not moving) and once that's gone I doubt they'll carry Ampeg again except for used stuff.

I just got off the phone with Ampeg support. I waited about 3 minutes to talk to someone, got straight through to tech support, and the dude spoke English as a first language. Told him my issue with my SVT-4 Pro blowing up, and he said it'd be covered. Luckily my local music shop is a ampeg repair place and I can just take it there...so everything seems pretty good so far :-)
 
#36
64jb said:
you said that you worked for ampeg before? i have a question. is ampeg using the same parts on those amps that's made overseas?
Click to expand...

Well, that answer is tied in with the customer service deal, and lots of other things....

In a word, NO. And that is the heart of the matter for service.

Most of the parts will be locally made in Asia. This does not HAVE to mean they are bad parts, although the folks making them certainly are not as good at it as the Germans who USED to make the capacitors, for instance.....(I can prove that).

This links into customer service because of the whole "outsourcing" deal and how it works.

When you start to make things elsewhere, with parts which are 'substituted" for the parts you used to use, you lose access to those parts, because you never see them except in a complete product. Getting a simple capacitor or control potentiometer is an issue.

This is because you pay the contract manufacturer to make finished product. They buy enough parts to make the product, and no more, because they are not fools and don't want leftovers when they may never get another order.

So where do repair parts come from?

Sometimes the company decides to repair by exchanging PC boards, making the decision NOT to repair to the component level. IIRC that is what LOUD tried to do. if you are smart, you order extras of all the boards.

That's fine, but it may not work out too well, because maybe you don't order enough. Then you are stuck again, and what are you going to do now? The contract manufacturer isn't going to make you another 100 boards....... They often won't listen unless you want to buy many thousands.

So maybe you decide to source parts locally, for repairs. You aren't getting them from china, you don't want enough of them.

Now you find out that in many cases (not all) the parts have a difference..... leads are a different distance apart, etc, and your contract manufacturer made some changes to save money. nothing that affects the product operation, but you can't buy any other repair part to fit.

naturally, for controls, knobs, etc, you just cannot get them without cannibalizing complete units. Maybe you are forced to do that with PC boards too. And you end up with useless hulks of what used to be saleable product laying around.

This is "Harbor Freight Syndrome"....... That company sells tools, and some machinery. To get a part to fix a machine, they have to take it off a machine they have... The stuff in their stores is often missing many parts.

That's no way to run a company. It isn't "sustainable".... It may be acceptable for a car that was last made in 1925, but not for units under warranty.

So, Ampeg has still got customer service... but a certain lack of repair parts will be felt quite soon, in my opinion.

And this traces DIRECTLY back to moving production, losing control of the parts supply chain, and some particularly poor decisions by Jamie Engen which resulted in truckloads of SLM parts being scrapped and landfilled.

That affects the ability to support the product. The lack of customer service and field service is a direct result of corporate mindset (does a flatworm HAVE a mind?) which made the bad decision to scrap the entire SLM service department, with the product knowledge and parts supply that went with it.

They TRIED to send the stuff to someplace in Shanghai for repair, but that place could not do Ampeg (no parts)....... and didn't do well with other things either.

So the plan to dispose of all US service and source it in china died a horrible death...... But not before all the US service centers except for 7 had been fired. So Dave Ryan had to try to get them back.... until he got the boot also.

If I had to point at ONE decision which was clearly the worst one Loud made in the whole sordid story of their botched purchase of SLM, that whole service thing would be it.

They coulda been a contenda.........
 
#38
Jerrold Tiers said:
So the plan to dispose of all US service and source it in china died a horrible death...... But not before all the US service centers except for 7 had been fired. So Dave Ryan had to try to get them back.... until he got the boot also.
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This move is something that makes me question the new guard's sanity, too. Now I don't know all the details, but under Dave's watch, he says that he got a lot of service centers happening again and the QC and CS was getting better. Then they canned him at Christmastime. So it makes me wonder if there was more to that story that we don't and shouldn't know, or if they just couldn't afford to keep him as they went bankrupt, or if LOUD just thought he outlived his usefulness. At any rate, it happened on the new guy's watch and canning someone at Christmastime really sucks.
 
#39
heath_r_91 said:
So, I was out and about the other day browsing through the local guitar stores, and I started noticing a trend of them not stocking any Ampeg anymore.

So the people at one store were very nice, so I decided to ask them why they stopped selling Ampeg, because every time I had been in there before (over a year ago) they had at least 3 Ampeg stacks and a few combo amps.

Before he even started to respond, I asked him if it was because of quality control, or anything like that. He promptly said no, he said they are virtually the same product they always have been with just a different country stamped on the back. (That is opinion, of course)

Since he said that it wasn't quality, I asked him what it was.

He said that it was because there customer service went so down hill since they moved their production. It is not that he has anything against companies that produce things in China, or other countries. He said that he cannot even get through, and if there is a problem with one of their amps, there aren't any service centers in the states any more, so you always have to ship it over to China, to get a new one. He said customer service wise, they have become worse than Behringer, which I had always heard was very bad.

I thought about it for a while, and then did notice that their customer service didn't seem to be as well as it used to be. Just about a month ago I called to ask a question about my SVT-4PRO, and after about 30 minutes of being on hold, they still couldn't really answer my question. Over a year ago when I'd call for assistance, I was never on hold for more than 5 minutes and the people were always very knowledgable about the products and always able to help me.

So, have any of you noticed any changes in customer support at Ampeg since they moved production or is it due to something else?

I just thought it was an interesting point that I had not really read on the forums.

I still love Ampegs though, either way, as long as they keep making awsome products! :bassist:
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I was wondering if those things would suffer; customer service, quality etc...when they sold out. I play an SVT-CL and an 8X10E or 4X10HLF so I was curious, and I have to admit, when they left America, I started looking around....I was an Ampeg/ SLM Warranty center for around 10 years, and maintained that status up until about 5 years ago, so I am sorry to hear that they don't have that service anymore. That was the good thing with them, they had good authorized warranty centers and supported them well. I used to get, in the mail, free of charge every year the scematics for their entire product line. Not just Ampeg either, but Crate, and the rest of their line. If yo need tech assistance, they were a phone call away, and you were never on hold for more than a minute or two. And most parts were received in a day or two (of course, I was in KC Missouri, so it was only a drive across the state). Real sorry to see them not American Made, and even more sorry to see the service go away. Might have to retire my Ampeg equipment, and wait for the used market to go through the roof. Mesa, here I come....
 

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