jetpackbassist said:
Uh, thanks. Mang.
To clarify, do you think Ashdown's reputation is unwarranted (no pun intended)?
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Okay, so who else is having serious problems with their Ashdown ABM?
- Thread starter pablomigraine
- Start date
Uh, thanks. Mang.
To clarify, do you think Ashdown's reputation is unwarranted (no pun intended)?
JAUQO III-X
Inactive
If any one feel they are having problems with their Ashdown amp simply contact Asdownd directly.Don't rely on the store to deal with this for you.Ashdown has no problem at all taking care of this,but I have to say some of the problems with the Ashdown amps are not a product problem but some users not knowing how to set there rigs up properly and in some cases they blame it on the product(and I have seen this on many occasions).
There are two separate issues being discussed here... product quality and service. They are relatively independent. When I see threads with multiple posting of problems with a particular piece of gear, it does make me wonder if there is a problem. And...a quality or design problem does not mean that every unit will fail, only a significantly higher percentage of units versus the competition or industry expectations. So, no matter how problematic a particular piece of gear is, there will always be a majority of customers who do not experience the problem. It's all about the probability of failure (failure rate), not the fact that many work fine.
Service is again a separate issue, and a number of brands get a good service reputation because so many customers need to use the service.
Of course, high failure rate and poor service is a disaster, but luckily there aren't many instances of that (usually those companies go under).
I'm not so much commenting on Ashdown one way or the other as trying to provide some context for the seemingly contradictory posts by a significant number of Ashdown customers who have had problems, and the larger number who have not.
Also... while it seems there is a product quality issue, Ashdown seems to be aware of it and, from reading other posts on this thread, is starting to deal with the issue. I wish them good luck....that 500 is a VERY nice sounding head.
Service is again a separate issue, and a number of brands get a good service reputation because so many customers need to use the service.
Of course, high failure rate and poor service is a disaster, but luckily there aren't many instances of that (usually those companies go under).
I'm not so much commenting on Ashdown one way or the other as trying to provide some context for the seemingly contradictory posts by a significant number of Ashdown customers who have had problems, and the larger number who have not.
Also... while it seems there is a product quality issue, Ashdown seems to be aware of it and, from reading other posts on this thread, is starting to deal with the issue. I wish them good luck....that 500 is a VERY nice sounding head.
JAUQO III-X said:
In my case, I did deal with them directly. My VU meter stopped working. Gave them a call (very early for me because of time zone difference!) and they were really nice and offered to sell me a new one for ~$50 shipped from the UK. It did take them over a month to get it to me after I paid, and I prodded them several times throughout that month.
Love the amp though....awesome tone.
CaptainWally said:
sorry. i was a bit drunk when i wrote that. hope i wasn't rude.
here's what i understand: around 2002-2003, ashdown's us distribution company changed from HHC (i think?) to music distribution group. during this time, anyone who DID have problems with their amps were NOT being taken care of. their stuff was sitting on the repair shelves for upwards of a year, sometimes. this led to many angry customers. this problem appears to have been addressed.
now: i've heard that during this time, ashdown was also busy working hard on their guitar amp line... and so the bass amp qc kinda got back-burner'd. i forgot where i heard this (harmony central...?), and it's not really an excuse or anything.... but it might be a contributing factor.
i've bought an ashdown head now, and i'll be buying more of their products (the abm 210 and the bass pedals look mighty sweet!) in the future. i have faith in them.
it would absolutely SUCK to have an amp die at a gig, no doubt. preparation is key, i stand by that. and i hope it never happens to me or anyone else, regardless of what rig is being used. i think the only way to alleviate this is to have your rig looked over every once in a while to make sure it's tip-top.
mang.
JAUQO III-X
Inactive
During the period late 2001-late 2003 Ashdown was sharing a warehouse in Semi valley Cali with a company at the time called HHB(they made very good quality recording equipment)this warehouse was Ashdowns US distribution and warehouse company and during the later part of this period A very large competitor of Ashdown made a very very large cash offer to which Ashdown turned the offer down,that infuriated this company and while this is taking place HHB was sold to a very big microphone company so that puts Ashdown out of a USA distribution point(HHB was also a UK based and owned company)the microphone company bought HHB not Ashdown so that meant that Ashdown had to vacate the building,so while Ashdown is going thru the painstaking effects of dealing with the fact that they had to take what was stored in Semi Valley and get it out of the warehouse and into another north American warehouse they also had to deal with a petty law suite brought on from the company that Ashdown had turned down.So Ashdown was under pressure to find a new warehouse and distributor and deal with the law suite which was solely based off of trying to keep Ashdown out of America.During this period stores and customers were catching hell with Ashdown because of Ashdown products that were taking forever to get in the hands of those who ordered Ashdown products.The reasons were because of the law suite attempting to block Ashdown from shipping product inside the states and selling product that was already here in the states.During this period Ashdown won the law suite and found a new north American distributor on the east coast in the company called Music Distribution Group and once that deal was sealed and the competing company lost the law suite that was brought against Ashdown,Ashdown has been climbing out of a very deep hole.I don't know if any of you guys remember but before the issues with Ashdown turning down the competitions offer(it was a very very large offer)and needing to find a new north American distributor/warehouse they were every where and getting rave reviews and really a great positive buzz,really one of the biggest buzz's in the Bass amp world in a very long time.Remember what slowly happened to Trace Elliot(a company founded by the same person who also founded Ashdown)? when it was sold to it's American competitor and now after going thru a few hands I can say that Trace Elliot has really bounced back with a very very nice new product line.
well... add another one to the list... the power output stage of my ABM500-210 combo totally fried, at least it put on a neat fireworks display when it did it. All 6 power transformers. For those who don't know, they are $20 EACH, and thats not even for a matched pair like should be used in a high end amplifier. Levels on input gain and output volume were both under the 12:00 position...
Pretty sad, all it was having to do was keep up with a 15W Matchless guitar amp and it couldn't even do that apparently... I was sooooo sold on Ashdown too.
To make a long story short, I basically am gonna e-mail them as others have and see what they'll do. Unfortunately I bought mine used so I dunno if it will go anywhere. But I do intend to tell them that if it's gonna be the $200-250 or probably even more to repair the whole output stage, then I am just gonna go get an Eden setup which I wanted to do in the first place till I got talked into ashdown and loved their tone. I kinda figured reliability was a given for equipment in this price range.
Like someone else in this thread said, I can't afford to have killer sounding equipment that doesn't hold up on the road...if I wanted an amp that blew every other gig, I woulda just bought a Crate
Pretty sad, all it was having to do was keep up with a 15W Matchless guitar amp and it couldn't even do that apparently... I was sooooo sold on Ashdown too.
To make a long story short, I basically am gonna e-mail them as others have and see what they'll do. Unfortunately I bought mine used so I dunno if it will go anywhere. But I do intend to tell them that if it's gonna be the $200-250 or probably even more to repair the whole output stage, then I am just gonna go get an Eden setup which I wanted to do in the first place till I got talked into ashdown and loved their tone. I kinda figured reliability was a given for equipment in this price range.
Like someone else in this thread said, I can't afford to have killer sounding equipment that doesn't hold up on the road...if I wanted an amp that blew every other gig, I woulda just bought a Crate
JAUQO III-X
Inactive
TheNico,how long did you have the amp before it went out on you and ?you say you bought it new,was this from a private party?
no, I did not buy it new, used, I have had it approximately for 7 months and used it when I got it back from the repair shop from UPS damaging it, I used it for about 5 months before the power section gave up the magic smoke that makes it loud...
I don't intend to get anything free from them, I'd be suprised if I did at least. I will have to eat the cost of the repair on a output module (that may be badly designed) or just cut my losses now and buy a new head... very soon too as I am gonna be starting back up with 2-3 gigs a week again...
I don't intend to get anything free from them, I'd be suprised if I did at least. I will have to eat the cost of the repair on a output module (that may be badly designed) or just cut my losses now and buy a new head... very soon too as I am gonna be starting back up with 2-3 gigs a week again...
JAUQO III-X
Inactive
TheNico said:
Yes your scenario is a little different from some of the others who have had problems with their Ashdown Amps.Was the repair done by an authorized Ashdown dealer/repair shop ?and with UPS damaging it,no telling where said problem may have originated.
I dunno if he is an authorized repair shop or not, but the guy has been in the buisness of repairing and building replica amps for many many years...
Uncle Alberts in Indy.
The fact is, it was working fine, then just quit with no real warning with no changes to the knobs, it had been played for about 2 hours prior to quitting just fine. It's just frustrating that I have invested so much money into getting an amp worthy of playing live only to have it quit on me mid show at the second gig I played it at.
Uncle Alberts in Indy.
The fact is, it was working fine, then just quit with no real warning with no changes to the knobs, it had been played for about 2 hours prior to quitting just fine. It's just frustrating that I have invested so much money into getting an amp worthy of playing live only to have it quit on me mid show at the second gig I played it at.
Well, after sending a nice e-mail to their main support e-mail I got a reply from Mike Van Tine. He helped me out a bunch and I have a new output module on the way!
I should be up and running by my next long string of gigs we'll hope.
I should be up and running by my next long string of gigs we'll hope.
1kinal
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TheNico said:Well, after sending a nice e-mail to their main support e-mail I got a reply from Mike Van Tine. He helped me out a bunch and I have a new output module on the way!
I should be up and running by my next long string of gigs we'll hope.
That's the typical great service from Ashdown, and that's why I use their products. When something goes bad, they will take care of you faster than anybody else in the business.
Let us know how it went when you receive the new board.
An update from me as well...got my ABM 500 EVO-II back after TEN months in the shop. The fans were replaced, and supposedly the original problem was dealt with as well, but on the first gig the same old "cracking noise" came back.
Could someone please offer me some advice?
I LOVE the tone, but the reliability is always going to be a question in my mind.
Should I call someone or email them? Is there any chance for this to be reliably fixed or replaced?
Thanks all.
Could someone please offer me some advice?
I LOVE the tone, but the reliability is always going to be a question in my mind.
Should I call someone or email them? Is there any chance for this to be reliably fixed or replaced?
Thanks all.
TheNico said:Well, after sending a nice e-mail to their main support e-mail I got a reply from Mike Van Tine. He helped me out a bunch and I have a new output module on the way!
I should be up and running by my next long string of gigs we'll hope.
Do you mind telling me if you had to pay for the output module? You can PM me if you want. The same thing happened to me recently.
hmmm. Bummer.
I'm going to send a nice email to Mike and see if he'll offer any help.
I love the amp, and nothing else I have sounds as good, but I cannot use it like it is, and if I fix it to sell it I'll want to keep it for sure.
Catch twenty-two...
I'm going to send a nice email to Mike and see if he'll offer any help.
I love the amp, and nothing else I have sounds as good, but I cannot use it like it is, and if I fix it to sell it I'll want to keep it for sure.
Catch twenty-two...
THB_bassman said:hmmm. Bummer.
I'm going to send a nice email to Mike and see if he'll offer any help.
I love the amp, and nothing else I have sounds as good, but I cannot use it like it is, and if I fix it to sell it I'll want to keep it for sure.
Catch twenty-two...
I doubt it will provide you much insight, but have you read my Ashdown trouble thread?
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=280403
I'm not overly happy with how my situation seems to be resolving.
