Quality of Weber Kits

[camnicklaus]

Interesting about those CopperCaps..I've yet to have a failure or loose cover.

for what it's worth, a friend and I just built our first kits. They were both webers (the price reeled us in) mine a 5e7 and his the 18watt marshall style. His copper cap came apart on day two of working on the amp, mine failed the 4th time I powered the amp up, I put in a tube and am going to leave it at that. His kit shipped with one el84 two 12au7s and three 12ax7s?. having said that, I read the warnings beforehand and was prepared for these troubles, so I'm not disappointed, seems like weber's biggest issue is consistency. good cheap first build...

[WholeToneMusic]

Weber Kits

Hello camnicklaus,

Thanks for your input. From a business perspective I agree with Bruce,you must have high standards and be picky with QC. When a business grows usually the first thing that suffers is quality control. When a company expands it gets harder to keep an eye on everything that goes out the door and in the end the owner ends up be responsible for the integrity of their work or products.

I know I appreciate when a customer emails me or calls about a concern or issue, especially if I was not aware of a situation. I am sure Ted would appreciate if you sent him an email or left him a voice mail about your issues with his kits.

[mbratch]

I am sure Ted would appreciate if you sent him an email or left him a voice mail about your issues with his kits.

Absolutely. He's not a "buyer beware" kind of a seller. He sells inexpensive kits. I don't know many vendors who will bend over backwards as far as Ted will for a dissatisfied customer. He always aims to "make it right".

[camnicklaus]

yeah, I didn't mean to come off too negatively. I have emailed back and forth with Ted, which is pretty cool in and of itself. My main point was just that it's true that you get what you pay for in this case. I don't think ted is trying to advertise better than he sells. As long as you're prepared for a few issues to sort out I don't think you'd be disappointed.
when I bought my second kit, the packing slip said that they'd shipped the wrong OT (a lower headroom version as opposed to a higher headroom one) and I emailed ted about it. He helped me take some measurements to see which one it was, but also said up front that if it was the wrong one I could keep it and he would ship out the correct one, that way I could try both and see what I liked better. It turned out to be a error on the packing list, but still pretty nice of him.

[jbefumo]

I know this is an old thread, but may be worth resuscitating.

I also dealt with Weber when the founder was still with us, and found him extremely responsive. Have bought a few of their lower-end speakers, and found them to be a good value.

At this juncture I've been searching for a top-quality cabinet, and based on everything I've read, have concluded that Weber is probably not the best source.

My other cause for concern is their responsiveness in recent years. I have written to them on numerous occasions on a variety of topics. In some instances they simply don't bother to respond. In one, we were in the middle of working up specs for a custom speaker I needed, and they simply stopped responding. I wrote a few time, from different email accounts, just in case my provider had been temporarily blacklisted, but still nothing, so I just gave up.

I was a busy engineer and business person at some big, high-pressure companies (incl. AT&T Solutions) during my career, and my one golden rule was that I never failed to respond and/or follow up with prospective clients, even when I knew damned well they weren't going to pan out. It was simple business, and more importantly, human courtesy. To be fair, there are increasing numbers of people/businesses that lack this orientation these days, but for me, it's simply rude, and in most cases, I consider it a deal-breaker.

Conversely, I've been corresponding with MojoTone about my needs, and though I haven't bought anything yet, have been positively impressed with their responsiveness.

I would still consider Weber for speakers, if what I need is something 'off their shelf', so to speak, but I think they have a lot to learn about customer service if they're going to avoid running the founder's good reputation into the mire.

[g1]

I've ordered one item from Weber (a power transformer). Their shipping policies were so outrageous I will never order from them again. If some one else was handling their product I would look at them, it seems to be ok product.