I certainly didn't speculate about why Mike's deal fell through. Several others did before me. Saying things like "i bet THAT'S why the deal fell through, I knew these guys were shady" is speculating.
i AM speculating about the cause of the problem, which has been laid out pretty clearly by you in the emails you shared, Frudua himself despite not always communicating at an international gold standard (if you can honestly read all of his comments and somehow be unaware of the language barrier at play here, I mean, c'mon) explained the same thing, and Mike in his email says the same thing. He was clearing these out because he only distributed them for a month or two. You bought an old stock guitar from a distributor who quickly jumped ship.
What seems (when i say "seems" that's acknowledging that I'm speculating, see? but in this case i'm doing so based on the evidence all three of you have been happy to provide) to be at the heart of the issue here, is that Mike's website was using parts of the Frudua and Exlusive sites to advertise his products. When this thread first started up, I immediately checked out the valveampusa site to see what the deal is. From all that i can tell, that's Mike's website, not Frudua's. The information seemed to overlap quite a bit, but going to Frudua's actual site brought up his Italian made instruments (IIRC, this was months ago and no i'm not rereading this whole thread to illustrate my point). What made me not want to order one of the basses, was the fact that the "storefront" page on Mike's page had no information whatsoever about the instruments. We knew from the posts on here that several key features were being upgraded on the basses. Yet the storefront had only item names, and nothing else. That to me was enough to steer me away, figuring hey, I'll wait til they get a proper store to purchase from.
So now, when an item was bought from this storefront, that turns out to not be what you thought you were getting because that store never carried the new item, even though THAT STORE was using the newer advertising from the manufacturer's webiste, doesn't it make sense that it'd be the STORE to resolve the issue? I can understand why the manufacturer would be put off if you're being pushy about something that's not really their fault.
An example from a different industry: say you go to best buy to buy a Playstation 3. Now they advertise the playstation 3 you're gonna get is the newest, slimmed down version with the latest processor, etc. Say you order this from their website, and when you receive it, what the hell... they sent you the first version, its still a playstation 3, but its not the slim one, the hard drive is smaller. what the hell, right? Some mope in the factory clearly gave you some new old-stock. Now, would you go to Sony to resolve this for you or Best Buy?
I get that you're mad, i would be too. Really sucks your friend's gift got messed up. But I understand the confusion on Frudua's part too if this is indeed how it went down.
I wasn't sure about the low-output pickup, so I was looking into the Seymour Duncan JB's (which Omar Rodriquez Lopez of Mars Volta uses - a major influence on my guitarist). But when he started playing, it sounded great as is. And I much prefer its sound to the Les Paul in a mix. So now he has a more unique guitar and a more unique sound. With your tip on the tremolo and the Frudua tuners, it'll be just about perfect.
